Dr. Billington this week asked Congress to approve a Library of Congress budget of $372,996,000, including the authority to spend $28.3 million in receipts, for fiscal year 1997, which begins Oct. 1.
The budget proposed by the Librarian represents an increase of 5.8 percent, or $20.6 million, over LC's FY 1996 budget of $352,399,000, including the authority to spend $27,699,000 in receipts. LC's authorized receipts come from the Copyright Office and the Cataloging Distribution Service.
Dr. Billington and senior Library officials appeared March 5 before Rep. Ron Packard's House Legislative Branch Appropriations Subcommittee.
Dr. Billington told the panel: "I fully appreciate both the budget constraints put on other agencies and the continuing generosity of this Committee toward the Library, but I feel that I have an obligation as Librarian of Congress to point out . . . [that] we are reaching the point where the essential nature of this library will soon be threatened even by a continuation of the relatively level budgets we have had for three of the last four years. . . .
"Using Congressional Budget Office assumptions about inflation and mandatory pay increases, the Library's budget would have to increase 19 percent by the year 2002 just to maintain current services, since 70 percent of our budget is for payroll cost. Continued level budgets would, by the year 2002, deprive the Library of resources to support more than 1,000 positions, in addition to the 369 lost between 1992 and 1995," Dr. Billington said.
Two-thirds, or $13.9 million, of the proposed increase in LC's funding is needed simply for mandatory pay and price-level increases. The remaining third, or $6.7 million, of the proposed increase includes funding for "growing workload increases" of:
- security of LC employees and the collections (44 full-time equivalent [FTE] positions at $2,307,930),
- an expanded Inspector General's office (five FTEs $887,636),
- automating LC's manual shelflist ($734,000) and serials records visible file ($750,000),
- computer programmers and others in Information Technology Services to keep up with LC's increased use of computer networks (six FTEs $420,821),
- the Copyright Office Electronic Registration, Recordation and Deposit System (two FTEs $500,000), and
- a centralized Braille Book Distribution System run by LC's National Library Service for the Blind and Physically Handicapped ($294,000).
Questions and Answers
Representative Packard (R-Calif.), chairman of the panel, said at the beginning of the two-hour hearing:
"I have a commitment to balance the federal budget in seven years and I can do that only with the help and cooperation of the agencies under this subcommittee. The Library of Congress was the only agency for which we did not impose a significant decrease in budget levels last year. I do not expect that to be the case this year."
The chairman then told the Librarian that he doesn't yet know what deficit reduction levels will be imposed upon him as an appropriations subcommittee chairman.
In addition to Mr. Packard, Reps. Vic Fazio (D-Calif.), Charles H. Taylor (R-N.C.), and Dan Miller (R-Fla.) attended the hearing in room H-144 of the Capitol. All praised the Library.
Mr. Taylor commended Dr. Billington and LC staff for their contributions to education by making information available electronically to sites around the country. He said he hoped the Library could continue to catalog and disseminate information electronically as quickly as possible. Mr. Taylor said he would like to see more funding for digital library efforts, and he wanted LC to look to the 21st century to take advantage of new technologies.
During the question-and-answer period, Mr. Fazio asked Dr. Billington and Register of Copyrights Marybeth Peters about various proposals to transfer the Copyright Office out of the Library and
into the executive branch and what effect this would have on the Library.
"I can say categorically that such a transfer would be harmful to the country, bad for the legislative branch and disastrous for LC," Dr. Billington said. Any separation or "scrambling" of the copyright registration and deposit functions would harm the Library, Dr. Billington said, adding that it would take at least $20 million to acquire the published items LC receives through copyright deposit. This includes neither the unpublished record, he said, nor the money necessary to pay people to search out, order and track items if they did not come in under copyright.
Ms. Peters echoed Dr. Billington's views. She told Mr. Fazio that she knew of no bills pending in Congress but that there had been "much talk." She said the Copyright Office, with approximately 600,000 copyrights secured each year, differs greatly from the Patent and Trademark Office, with its approximately 20,000 patents and 100,000 trademarks secured each year.
Mr. Fazio asked Dr. Billington about the postponement of the Freud exhibition and the removal of the "Back of the Big House" exhibition last December.
Dr. Billington noted misleading press reports linking the postponement to outside controversy over Freud.
"With the Freud exhibition," Dr. Billington said, "it was a question of not having the money raised as we hit the [original] countdown period. . . . This exhibition has been rescheduled for autumn of 1998."
"With the plantation-life exhibition," he said, "it was a no-win situation. . . . As a small, traveling exhibit, it was not originally scheduled to be shown at LC. There was a small envelope of down time and it was put up without much publicity in advance. It was not put up in a normal exhibit space, and a number of employees were offended. . . .
"In the long run, [removal] was better for the health and healing process of the [Library]," Dr. Billington said.
Reps. Packard, Fazio and Taylor all asked about measures the Library was taking to improve security. Dr. Bill-ington cited LC's plans for establishing better "perimeter control," as recommended by the Computer Sciences Corp. study, at places such as the Library's storage facility in suburban Maryland and LC's Madison Building loading dock. The Library is also installing more video cameras, theft detection gates and door alarms. It is taking other measures in reading rooms limiting seating to observable areas and requiring patrons to use "reader ID" cards with photos and leave their belongings in cloakrooms. The proposed budget also includes a request for more police officers, he said, due partially to the Jefferson Building reopening in 1997.
Following is the full text of Dr. Billington's testimony.
Mr. Chairman and members of the subcommittee:
I appreciate the opportunity to appear here to discuss the Library of Congress budget request for fiscal year 1997.
The Library of Congress is the world's largest and most varied treasure chest of information, knowledge and creativity. It is a resource of incalculable value to the United States in the information age.
These simple, stunning facts put an unusually heavy burden of responsibility on those of us who administer this unique institution and on the Congress which created it, governs it, and determines its level of support.
The Library is fundamentally different from any other institution in the legislative branch of government. It directly serves not only Congress, but the entire nation with the most important commodity of our time: knowledge and information. Our national health depends: (1) on our collective economic productivity, which is increasingly based on information; and (2) on our creative use of individual freedom, which increasingly requires more lifelong learning by more people.
The Library of Congress has developed over 196 years massive collections, institutional networks and a knowledgeable staff that give it a unique potential unmatched by any other institution for making almost any kind of knowledge and information accessible to almost anyone almost anywhere. Thus, evaluation of its budget requires not only understanding what the Library is doing now, but also realizing that decisions made now will increasingly affect what the Library will or will not be able to do in the future. Most major functions currently exercised or under consideration by the Library are unlikely to be taken up by any other foreseeable institution if they are not performed by the Library of Congress.
The Library's central institutional value is service. Its mission is to sustain its universal collection and to make it useful to Congress and the nation. Its key priorities are, first, service to Congress for its current needs; second, sustaining a universal collection for the present and future needs of the nation; and third, making its collections and staff ever more useful to more people in libraries, schools, businesses and homes throughout the country.
The Library of Congress budget for fiscal year 1997 supports its mission and priorities and requests a total appropriation of $373 million (including $28.3 million in authority to use receipts), an increase of $20.6 million, or 5.8 percent, over fiscal 1996. Two-thirds, or $13.9 million, of the total increase is required simply to fund mandatory pay raises and unavoidable price-level increases. The remaining third, $6.7 million, is requested to fund strategic priorities, including ensuring the security of the collections and the transition to the electronic information age.
The Library of Congress currently faces the extraordinary challenge of rapidly institutionalizing new electronic services while sustaining its traditional services to Congress and the nation.
After extensive internal and external studies, the Library developed a broad strategic plan in 1992, which assigned top priority for 1993-96 to four long-neglected basic needs of the traditional library: financial management improvement, arrearage reduction, strengthening collections security, and human resources improvement. The second phase (1997-2000) adds the task of developing the core of the "electronic Library" needed to serve Congress and the nation in the 21st century.
With the support of Congress, the Library has now launched a National Digital Library Program as a pathbreaking, private-public partnership for learning to be realized during this second phase of our strategic plan. The National Digital Library is providing both valuable educational and inspirational material for local use throughout the country and a manageable model for creating within the Library of Congress the electronic service of the future, required by the on-rush of digital information. In addition to the National Digital Library, the Library has made important innovations during the past year in electronic delivery of services from the Congressional Research Service (CRS), the Law Library and the Copyright Office, creating economies and synergies for the taxpayer as well as better service to Congress and our other clients.
We are already processing about 1 million electronic transactions a day. The recent restatement of our mission and strategic priorities has shaped the fiscal 1997 budget, which is based upon these priorities. The Library is also using this restatement to identify functions and activities that may have been desirable in the past but do not support core priorities or do not support them well enough to justify their costs.
The General Accounting Office (GAO) is now conducting both financial and management reviews of the Library. I look forward to receiving the results of these reviews, and expect that the reports will both document improvements implemented and suggest where improvements are still needed.
Since the 1991 report of the GAO financial audit that I had requested shortly after becoming Librarian (the first financial statement audit in the Library's history), the Library's financial system has improved dramatically. We have implemented a modern central financial system, outsourced payroll processing to the National Finance Center and improved financial policies and procedures. Our plan had called for another financial audit next year, but this audit was advanced a year and is currently under way.
Following widely publicized allegations of security problems in the general book collections in the Thomas Jefferson Building late last year, I directed the Library's Inspector General to investigate the allegations, and I addressed these problems in an oversight hearing by the Joint Committee on the Library on Nov. 29, 1995. As I explained at that hearing, the Library has made significant progress in improving the security of its collections ever since I ordered the bookstacks closed to the public on March 30, 1992. Since that time, moreover, there has been a dramatic increase in the number of books that can be found on the shelves to deliver to readers in the reading rooms.
The report of our outside consultants, as well as our own current evaluation of security measures, will document that, while much has been done, further measures are necessary. The fiscal 1997 budget requests $3.5 million for continued expansion of our security initiatives, including new X-ray equipment at building entrances, improved staff and collections security at loading dock entry points, increased security personnel presence throughout the Library's buildings and expanded theft detection and reader registration programs. We will continue to work diligently to serve the research needs of Congress and the public while emphasizing our historic duty to preserve and protect the items entrusted to our care. Our continued progress in reducing the arrearage of unprocessed materials is steadily improving the control of the collections.
Human resources management poses special challenges, not unlike those in other federal agencies. The Library's hiring process is unacceptably slow; and holding individuals accountable for poor performance often results in a lengthy grievance and appeal process.
While the Library has made improvements in the minority hiring profile for administrative and professional positions, there is much work yet to be done both to accelerate the hiring process and to modernize our regulations and collective bargaining arrangements so that the Library's staff are fairly treated, efficiently deployed and held accountable for performance.
For top management, I have strengthened decision-making and accountability during the past year by replacing a large Management Team with a new, six-person Executive Committee. I have consolidated all core library programs from three service units into a single unit under a single manager and placed all major support functions also under one manager. I have appointed a retired Army lieutenant general with extensive management experience as my acting deputy and chief operating officer of the Library.
Though there are plenty of improvements still to make, the Library has streamlined management, improved accountability and is currently doing more work with fewer people.
Since fiscal 1980, the Library has increased: (1) the number of congressional requests annually answered by the Congressional Research Service from some 340,000 to almost 600,000; (2) the number of print materials cataloged annually for the nation's libraries from 206,000 to 276,000; (3) the annual number of copyright registrations from some 465,000 to nearly 610,000 and the number of copyright inquiries answered from 170,000 to over 500,000; and (4) the number of free reading materials delivered across the country each year to the blind and physically handicapped from 16.9 million to nearly 23 million.
Most astonishing of all has been the growth in the Library's total electronic transactions, from only a few in fiscal 1980 to 8 million a month in fiscal 1992, to 21 million a month in fiscal 1995.
This rapid growth results from putting large portions of our card catalog and copyright records online, along with congressional information (our THOMAS system), and the contents of all our major exhibits since 1991. These numbers will continue to increase as we begin to put online our American history collections for our new National Digital Library.
I am proud of the Library staff's efforts as we continue to seek new ways to do more with less, and I am happy to present the Library's fiscal 1997 budget in the context of our strategic priorities.
1. Support to the United States Congress
The first priority of the Library of Congress is, and will remain, to serve the information and research needs of Congress.
The Congressional Research Service, the Law Library, the Library Services' Loan Division, and other parts of the Library of Congress provide a cost-effective shared resource that serves all committees and members in a nonpartisan manner.
Like the legislative branch as a whole, the Library is leaner today and changing its approaches in order to maintain services on which Congress depends. CRS's new Legislative Alert System illustrates our ability to anticipate and react more quickly to congressional needs. At the start of each week that Congress is in session, the Alert System identifies CRS products directly related to legislation pending for immediate floor consideration. It is accessible through the new CRS World Wide Web homepage (available to congressional offices only) along with other new products.
The Law Library is rapidly expanding its multinational electronic database called the Global Legal Information Network (GLIN) to ensure that Congress has rapid and reliable information on foreign, international and comparative law. There are now 10 member nations participating in this pioneering network (including Mexico, Brazil, Argentina, Hungary, Poland and Ukraine) with 10 more scheduled to join shortly. GLIN is expected to grow at a rate of five to 10 countries each year.
We will continue to look to technology for greater economies in providing our services. If we do not receive funding for mandatory pay and price-level increases, however, we will be required to reduce services during fiscal 1997.
In order to handle the level budget approved for fiscal 1996, CRS adjusted its services, including closing the reference center located in the Ford House Office Building, one of three such centers that have served the House.
The Library regrets any reduction in services to Congress, but, since our operations are predominantly labor-intensive, unfunded mandates for pay raises necessarily confront the Library with difficult choices involving the reduction of services.
2. Preserve, Secure and Sustain a Universal Collection
The second priority of the Library of Congress is to preserve, secure and sustain for the present and future use of Congress and the nation a universal collection of human knowledge including a comprehensive record of American history and creativity. The Library does not collect everything or keep everything it receives, but it is built on the foundation of Thomas Jefferson's own wide-ranging personal collection of books; and it embodies Jefferson's belief that there is "no subject to which a member of Congress may not have occasion to refer."
A universal collection is even more essential today than it was a few years ago if Congress is to meet its legislative and representational responsibilities. There are many more countries, institutions and individuals creating important knowledge, and the Congress and government have more complex, extensive and international concerns and needs than ever before. To keep America competitive and to foster creativity in the information age, Americans will increasingly have to rely on better use of knowledge. This in turn requires access to the continuously expanding range of languages and formats through which important knowledge is generated, recorde, and communicated.
The Library has not only the knowledge base but the knowledge navigators whom Congress needs to find that "needle in the haystack" which could be the key fact needed in refining a bill or sharpening a legislative debate. Many members can say, as a senator said on the floor last session, "I asked the Library of Congress yesterday and they gave me the answer today." The present and potential future needs of Congress and of the government more broadly require two unique resources that only the Library of Congress can provide: (1) a comprehensive record of American history and creativity firmly based on the copyright deposit record and (2) a universal collection of human knowledge based on a cost-effective international network of exchanges. The Library's collections provide an indispensable reservoir of information upon which important legislative decisions can be made. If a democratic society is to be dynamic, access to information is not a luxury, it is a necessity.
The fiscal 1997 budget request supports this priority by funding several major items. A price-level increase of $718,000 would sustain our purchasing power for books, machine-readable works and other materials; many of these materials are foreign publications that are purchased from countries with high rates of inflation. The amount of material we can afford to purchase from appropriated funds has declined seriously from 930,747 pieces in fiscal 1992 to 714,127 pieces in fiscal 1995. This decline has to be stopped.
The fiscal 1997 budget request also supports the priority of sustaining a universal collection by seeking $500,000 in additional receipts authority to continue implementation of the Copyright Office Electronic Registration, Recordation and Deposit System (CORDS). At the historic signing of the Telecommunications Act in the Library's Main Reading Room on Feb. 8, the Speaker of the House of Representatives again emphasized the Library's importance to the information age. CORDS is an important key to the future growth of the Information Superhighway, because copyright owners need such a system to protect their intellectual property rights. CORDS will allow automated copyright registration and the electronic deposit of works and will provide electronic access to copyright ownership information. The CORDS system is an investment in the continued prosperity of this country and in an efficient copyright system for the 21st century. The software for initial use of the registration testbed system has been completed.
The first electronic submission was received and registration made in the Copyright Office on Feb. 27th. During 1996, additional submissions will be received from a small number of universities and a few publishers. As the registration system is gradually enlarged and enhanced, we will also be developing plans for a testbed to process copyright ownership transfers electronically.
The largest growing workload increase request for fiscal 1997 is $3,472,782 for security. This requested increase to secure and protect the Library's staff and collections is partially offset by other decreases of $1,060,000 in the furniture and furnishings appropriation. The increase is needed to establish the use of X-ray and metal detector equipment at building entrances (making the Library's buildings consistent with other Capitol Hill buildings), to improve the safety of staff and collections at loading dock entry points, to improve security administration, to increase security personnel presence throughout the Library, and to expand the theft detection and reader registration programs.
Our principal current concern is to protect the collections. During the past three years, since the stacks have been closed to the public, Congress has authorized additional resources to improve collections security measures, including surveillance cameras, antitheft targets in books and security gates at the exits to each building. In September of last year, Congress approved the reprogramming of funds for a contract with Computer Sciences Corp. (CSC) to conduct a comprehensive review of collections security. Subsequently, the Government Accounting Office (GAO) began a management review of the Library, including security. We believe the increase of $3.5 million for security is needed to augment and enhance the Library's current efforts, and we plan to revisit our funding requirements when both the CSC review and the GAO management study are completed.
Two growing workload automation increases are requested to improve the control of and access to our collections. First, $734,000 is requested to begin the electronic conversion of the outmoded and space-consuming 12 million manual card shelflist. This conversion will permit far better control of the Library's entire collection of more than 16 million books and improve the cataloging process. Second, $750,000 is requested for the electronic conversion of serial records into an automated serials management system. The converted file would improve inventory control for serials and service to users. This is especially important for Congress, which seeks timely access to journals.
Arrearage reduction efforts remain a vital part of our second priority. Despite continued reductions in staff, we have continued to reduce arrearage by a dramatic 2.9 million items during fiscal 1995 achieving a cumulative 43 percent decrease in our backlog since the unprocessed items were first counted and targeted in September 1989. Funding to cover mandatory pay raises is needed so that we can retain staff critical to arrearage reduction. While we will continue to make cataloging and processing efficiencies, and to seek more ways of automating these activities, arrearage reduction work is unavoidably labor intensive, and we have reached the point where any further reductions in staff would slow if not reverse the success of this major effort.
The Library continues to improve the preservation of its vast and diverse collections, another component of our second priority tasks. Recent improvements include: (1) contracting for a new audio system that will significantly improve our capability for preservation reformatting and for the creation of preservation masters of audio materials; (2) protecting the Library's top treasures by designing and constructing oxygen-free, closed-system display and housing cases and an environmentally stable room in which to store them; (3) developing an emergency preparedness and rapid-response plan for stabilizing and recovering collections in the event of disaster; (4) continuing the testing of the Bookkeeper mass deacidification process and initiating a pilot project that will treat 36,000 books in the general collections in fiscal 1996; (5) increasing the capacity to produce protective book boxes by installing a computer-operated automated box-making machine; (6) contributing to the National Digital Library by initiating procedures for the preparation, treatment and scanning of fragile rare materials; and (7) publishing research results that contribute to the electronic preservation of visual materials. The fiscal 1997 budget supports the preservation program by requesting a price-level increase of $228,900, largely for the binding of materials where steady inflation has eroded purchasing power and now risks leaving some materials unbound and susceptible to loss.
Finally, the Library and the Architect of the Capitol (AOC) are now completing plans for the construction of the first collections storage facility at Fort Meade, Md. Plans call for the initial high-density storage facility, which stores collections in cardboard boxes on wide-span shelving and has uniform environmental conditions throughout, to be ready by mid-1998. The new facility will ensure that the Library's materials are secure and accessible as they grow each year.
3. Make the Library's Collections Maximally Accessible
Congress has extended the services of the Library of Congress to the nation by providing public access to its rich resources through its reading rooms, through interlibrary loan, through a variety of special programs and most recently through electronic access.
Congress also established in 1931 a program in the Library of Congress that creates and supplies free library materials to blind and physically handicapped readers throughout the country. Administered by the National Library Service for the Blind and Physically Handicapped, this service actually began in 1897 with the opening of the new Library of Congress building that included a special reading room for blind people. The fiscal 1997 budget request includes a fiscal 1997 growing workload increase of $294,000 for a centralized braille book storage and distribution system. A new system for the storage and distribution of braille books was approved by Congress as part of the fiscal 1996 budget, and additional resources are needed for its implementation. The new system will improve patron services and lower costs for network libraries in participating states.
Congress approved and funded the National Digital Library historical collections program as part of the fiscal 1996 budget. In a visit to the Library in early February this year, Speaker Gingrich praised this innovative educational use of technology and stated, "The work being done here is truly historic." The Library is on schedule with a plan to digitize and make accessible a critical mass of 5 million items from its core American history collections by the year 2000 the Library's bicentennial. A private-public partnership for learning is the key strategy for raising the $60 million needed over the five-year period to achieve the goal: $9 million a year from the private sector and $3 million a year from additional federal appropriations. The Library already has over 500,000???? digitized items of American history and culture in production or available on the Internet. This month the Library will mount five additional collections on the Internet and add several more later this year. These primary source materials from American history provide valuable content for enriching the education of students and life-long learners. We are testing these electronic materials with educators and librarians, as the new technology enables us to reach libraries, schools and homes all over America.
By providing electronic access to these fascinating primary documents, our vast bibliographic record, recent Library exhibits and the workings of Congress, through THOMAS, we have begun to put information in the hands of the American people wherever they live. The Library has raised $19.2 million in support from the private philanthropic sector in addition to in-kind donations and prospective assurances of more such support for converting the historical collections. Fund-raising efforts continue aggressively in order to help us deliver an ever-increasing amount of material to every congressional district in the union.
Finally, a major component of the Library's third priority is executing a three-year occupancy plan for the renovated Thomas Jefferson and John Adams buildings. In January, we initiated regularly scheduled congressional constituent tours and expanded public tours. Beginning this month, this program will be led by volunteer docents. All of the Jefferson Building reading rooms are scheduled for reopening by the spring of 1997. By the fall of 1997, which will mark the 100th anniversary of the dedication of the Thomas Jefferson Building, the Coolidge Auditorium will also be fully renovated, and we will launch a commemorative concert season.
4. Enhance the Value of the Library's Collections Through Educational Programs
Through our interpretive and educational programs, the Library shares its rich collections of printed books, manuscripts, prints and photographs, maps, sound recordings and films with the nation's citizens. These programs use the resources of the Library to inform and stimulate the public and now through the Library's World Wide Web site, to bring major exhibits in digital form to people who cannot journey to Washington, D.C. As the fourth priority, however, we have made these programs increasingly dependent on private funding, and Congress has approved our requests in recent years to shift funding to other higher priorities. For example, Congress approved additional funding for the Law Library's GLIN program in fiscal 1996 by reducing funding for interpretive programs.
The Library of Congress and the Thomas Jefferson building in particular, with its breathtaking interior, are among the most inspiring and appreciated sites for visitors to Washington. In time for the Jefferson Building's grand reopening in 1997, we expect to have in place enhanced visitor services maintained by a large cadre of volunteers whom we have been recruiting and training to conduct tours and provide general information at strategically located points. Self-guided tours and an updated film about the Library are also planned.
The opening of a permanent "Treasures of the Library of Congress" exhibit will occur simultaneously with the reopening of the Thomas Jefferson Building. With funding provided by the private sector, this exhibit will enable visitors to see for the first time in the Library's history a wide variety of the inspirational special materials and original documents of American history from the Library's collections. In the future, visitors who have studied or used electronic resources of important documents of American history and culture from our National Digital Library in their own homes or local libraries will be able to see some of the original documents themselves whenever they visit Washington.
The Library's fund-raising has resulted in generous contributions from donors and from the James Madison Council [the Library's private sector advisory group] in support of exhibits, scholarly programs and publications to accomplish the objectives in the Library's fourth priority stimulating greater interest in, and increased use of, the collections and the facilities by the general public. The recent consolidation of three service units into one brought the interpretive and educational programs together with the areas responsible for the collections, and this integration will lead to more effective exhibit administration in fiscal 1997, funded once again largely by the private sector.
The Enabling Infrastructure
Having defined the priorities of the institution within our overall mission, we are now redefining the infrastructure services needed to ensure the success of priority programs. Without adequate technological support for the legislative information system, the National Digital Library Program or our library services, we will not be able to reach our goals. Without the ability to hire efficiently and to reassign and retrain on-board staff, we will not be able to support our priorities; without modern financial and information systems we will not be able to track our programs and redirect resources as necessary; without developing the mechanisms we need to redistribute our existing spaces according to priorities and to plan for reducing current rental costs, we will not achieve our goals.
For many months now, the Library has been implementing efficiencies that imbue the value of customer satisfaction in each of the four units that comprise our enabling infrastructure. We hope and expect that the General Accounting Office management study, which will incorporate Booz, Allen & Hamilton's review and the Price Waterhouse audit, will suggest further changes and improvements in the Library's infrastructure.
In the area of human resources, we have been working to improve the timeliness of our hiring process. We have tested a new automated system from the Office of Personnel Management that rates applications through the use of a computer program. Using this program, we eliminated the manual review of applications and were able to hire 39 library technicians within 60 days of the posting of the vacancy. We plan to use this system for other positions.
In both our Labor Relations Office and our Equal Employment Opportunity Complaints and Dispute Resolution Office, we have brought in new and vigorous leadership from outside the Library. As a result, both our dialogue with labor organizations and our timeliness in resolving disputes seem to be gradually improving.
Our current ways of doing business in technology need to be updated. To reach our ambitious goals, some current resources may need to be reallocated according to priority program needs. Customer satisfaction must be reinforced as the central value. A fresh determination must be made of what we can do best internally, what can be done more economically by outsourcing and what programs can be eliminated.
To begin our Library-wide technology review, program and technology managers assessed the Library's current endeavors from both the technology and program perspective and described the obstacles they face under current practices. The Library's Executive Committee confirmed that the Library's automation priorities are (1) for Congress, to develop a legislative information system; a congressional inquiry tracking and management system; and a system to receive electronically laws from foreign countries; (2) for Congress and the nation, an integrated library system, the electronic registration and deposit of copyright materials, and the National Digital Library Program. In addition, we need one Library-wide electronic mail system for our staff. We have commissioned a team to analyze what current resources in the technology and program areas are being used to support our priority programs. This baseline will be used to plan for redirecting existing resources and possibly outsourcing some activities. The Booz Allen & Hamilton report will add value to our own efforts, already begun.
The demands in this area are so great and growing that we will need some additional staff. In order to support fully the development of a legislative information system, we will need four new GS-12 programmer/analyst positions. To sustain the leadership role we have established in providing quality content for the Information Superhighway, we also request two additional staff who will be dedicated to systems programming and network engineering functions. Our existing staff has helped the Library to be at the forefront in the Internet environment, but we have reached the point of overload.
We are undertaking new initiatives to revitalize our training efforts. The "internal university" that I am devising will strengthen and broaden the skills of our existing Library staff. Using a public-private support model, and the leadership of one of our most widely experienced library professionals, we aim both to broaden the staff's vision as they work to reach priority goals and to find new ways to mentor and to retrain our staff for alternative activities and new roles at the Library. I have often said that the Library's staff members are our living treasures. With 27 percent of the work force eligible to retire in the year 2000 and with most recent attrition going unreplaced, we need to develop fully the talents of every individual who works at the Library. We are seeking to develop this program with existing resources and are not asking for additional funding.
One critical infrastructure area is the Office of the Inspector General, where we are requesting a total of five additional staff one clerical and four professional positions. This is essential if the Library is to be able to sort out on a timely basis the real problems that may exist behind the periodic recurrences of vague and often inaccurate allegations that can attract media attention and public concern, but cannot always be rapidly, professionally investigated with present resources. Three additional professional investigators will enable the IG to execute a proactive plan to monitor and survey the Library's general collections to deter mutilations and theft. These investigators will follow up on the approximately 200 allegations generally received overall by the IG during a year, which we would expect to yield approximately 128 cases. In addition, one auditor/systems specialist is needed to concentrate on threats to the integrity of the Library's invaluable databases from unauthorized users and "hackers" and to permit the office to audit other key elements of our management information systems, particularly in technology and financial services. These additional resources and funds to hire an independent auditing firm will also help the Library to address recommendations from the GAO audit as well as to perform annual financial statement audits comparable to those of other legislative branch agencies.
Finally, we have been making steady progress in our financial management information systems, but we need additional funds to hire four additional professional accountants in order to take the next steps in our multiyear financial implementation plan, to respond to the recommendations anticipated from the audit of the Library's financial systems and to continue annual financial statement audits.
Proposed Legislation
The Library is seeking legislation to establish a statutorily independent inspector general and to make needed improvements in its financial management to comply fully with the recommendation in a 1991 GAO audit report that we establish a revolving fund to service Library programs now supported by large gift revolving funds and reimbursable programs.
We also seek to work with Congress in order to modernize and clarify legislative authority written in 1902 concerning selling cataloging data to libraries across the nation; to authorize the Library to retain, rather than turn over to the Treasury, income from the sale of limited surplus materials and restitution for lost, stolen or destroyed materials from the collections; and to make technical changes in the operation of the Trust Fund Board. No new government programs or activities will be proposed in the revolving fund legislation or in the other legislative authority we are seeking. The Library would submit audited financial statements annually to Congress for the revolving fund, and the fund's obligations would be subject to the annual appropriation process.
Finally, we are working cooperatively with the U.S. Capitol Police in connection with their study (as directed by House Report 104-141, p. 19) to determine the extent to which the police and security of the United States Capitol, the Library of Congress, and the United States Supreme Court can be combined into a unified operation under a single command utilizing common personnel. One police force could enhance the security of Congress's library, including its visitors and staff, buildings and collections, but the transition would need to be carefully planned and implemented.
Reauthorization of Programs
The Library is seeking reauthorization of two programs the American Folklife Center (AFC) and the National Film Preservation Board (NFPB). The AFC authorization expired Sept. 30, 1995, and the Library is seeking a four-year authorization of its proven AFC program with no growing workload increases.
For the NFPB, the authorization will expire in June 1996, and the Library is seeking a 10-year authorization at the current budget level, $250,000. The NFPB reauthorization legislation also seeks new authority for the establishment of a National Film Preservation Foundation to encourage contributions from the private sector for film preservation. The NFPB reauthorization request is based upon a comprehensive study, "Redefining Film Preservation: A National Plan," that was released in August 1994. This study was mandated by Congress in the National Film Preservation Act of 1992, and its recommendations were presented to the Librarian of Congress through the con-gressionally created National Film Preservation Board. Five working groups of archivists, educators, filmmakers, industry executives and others had participated in an earlier fact-finding study that prepared the basis for the comprehensive national preservation policy recommended in the milestone 1994 study, which will be supported by this foundation.
The Library has also launched a complementary, follow-on study of the preservation problems facing American television and radio. The American Television and Radio Archives Act of 1976 (Section 113, 2 U.S.C. 170) authorized the Librarian to establish and maintain a "permanent record of the television and radio programs which are the heritage of the people of the United States . . . after consultation with interested organizations and individuals." Formal consultations on the long-overdue implementation of this congressional mandate begin tomorrow with a hearing in Los Angeles featuring witnesses representing the industry, archival and educational communities. Television provides an important part of the recent American historical record, and the Library needs to relate its large collections in this area to an overall strategy as it has done in the case of movies. The Library will complete this preservation plan by the end of this year.
Summary
As stated at the beginning of this testimony, the Library is a unique institution within the legislative branch of the government. The Library's collections and staff are a major national resource for the information age. Congress is already, through its library, demonstrating leadership in making available to schools, libraries and individuals a core documentary record of American history and culture. As the historic home of the Copyright Office, the Library of Congress both protects intellectual property and preserves the mint record of America's creativity in response to the mandate given to Congress in Article I Section 8 of the Constitution "to promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts."
As I look to the future, I believe that it is my responsibility to underscore the dangers posed by the prospect of continuing "level budgets." Using Congressional Budget Office assumptions about inflation and mandatory pay increases, we project that the Library's budget would have to grow to some $435 million by the year 2002 just to maintain current services. This would represent an increase of 19 percent or some $62 million in today's dollars. Since the Library's services are extremely labor intensive (some 70 percent of our budget is for payroll costs), a nominally level budget, in reality, means continued reductions in staff beyond the 8 percent loss of staff we have absorbed since 1992. Continued level budgets, therefore, will inevitably produce a fundamentally different Library of Congress, even if a level budget might genuinely represent relatively generous treatment compared to that accorded to the legislative branch as a whole. Without inflationary increases each fiscal year, the Library's budget would lose the resources to support over 1,000 positions by the year 2002 and would have to absorb a 24 percent decrease in FTEs on top of the 8 percent already cut since 1992.
If required to plan for continued nominally level budgets, our priorities would require us, first and fairly rapidly, to begin reducing public programs including public reading room access, public reference support, public access to the Library's buildings and to reduce further, if not eliminate altogether, exhibits and other outreach programs. If level budgets continued, we would then have to curtail our national leadership role in cataloging at great cost to the nation's libraries as a whole and to our own reduction of arrearages. We would continue to maintain a universal collection, but access to our materials would diminish because of cataloging backlogs and reduced reading room hours. Significant reductions in our already seriously reduced acquisitions would be the final step and would rapidly foreclose many of the unique advances in knowledge which the Library's resources could provide Congress and the nation in the future.
Faithful to our first priority, we would maintain until the end critical congressional services by shifting resources away from national services and even acquisitions. But the Library would slowly and inevitably become simply an ordering library for the perceived present needs of Congress rather than the extraordinary national resource for the whole country that it now is. It would rapidly cease to be a strategic information reserve for the American future with an almost infinite number of potential uses we cannot even imagine today.
The very profusion of knowledge and information in the world and of new formats and media of communication requires a diverse and skilled group of "knowledge navigators" and will permit little, if any, diminution in the overall size of the Library staff. I believe that the continued erosion of Library staff and services as a result of level budgets would be a profound loss to the nation, and I respectfully request your support of the Library's fiscal 1997 budget request to prevent such an occurrence.
Two-thirds of our requested increase is required simply to meet mandatory changes in personnel compensation and benefits and unavoidable price-level changes in costs for existing levels of service. The money requested for mandatory pay increases is equivalent to supporting nearly 200 positions, and it is needed to prevent further cuts in Library services and staff.
We have effected a number of cutbacks, efficiencies and privatizations in the last four years; from 1992 to 1995 alone, the Library has reduced its actual FTEs by 369 an 8 percent decrease. We are working on ways to do more, but it does not appear likely that they will provide very large-scale monetary savings from the legislative branch appropriations. The only ways that major savings could be made are by either fundamentally changing the nature of the Library, or by spinning off from the legislative to the executive branch some activities that the Library currently conducts. But rearrangements of the latter type would, of course, produce no real savings to the taxpayer.
The Copyright Office has sometimes been mentioned as a potential transfer, but it could not be separated from the Library without irreparable loss to the collections. When the deposit and registration functions under the copyright law were kept separate for 80 years beginning in 1790, very little material was accumulated for the nation, let alone transferred to the Library. Only when the copyright system was centralized in the Library of Congress after 1870 did the nation begin to gather together and the Library to amass and make accessible a comprehensive collection based on this mint record of American intellectual creativity. Separation of these copyright functions did not work in the past, and it will not work now.
The annual copyright deposits, consisting of books, newspapers, magazines, newsletters, CD-ROMs, music, drama, maps, prints and photographs, manuscripts, sound recordings, computer programs, television programs and motion pictures, which are now acquired free by the Library, are valued at $20 million annually. The actual cost to the Library would be even greater if the copyright registration function were transferred. The economies developed in the last 125 years are such that both the Library and the Copyright Office would face significant and immediate new costs even beyond the purchase price. A great deal of staff time would be required to identify newly published works, select them, order and pay for them and also to administer the compliance provisions of the copyright law.
Finally, Congress recognized that the National Digital Library Program was a way to deliver back into every congressional district a large part of what Congress's library has accumulated over the years here in Washington. This program proved its educational value in the five-year American Memory pilot in 44 sites around the country; it has now attracted major and increasing private support because of Congress's endorsement and support; and it is catalytically accelerating the pace and refining the techniques of the electronic processing of information, which the Library will in any case have to develop in the digital age. However, the NDL is a priority-three program, and it would therefore be put in jeopardy if level budgets continue. As a result, this promising new type of public-private partnership, in which the private sector contributes most of the funding, could be discredited and the prospects for future private fund-raising for the Library deeply and perhaps irreparably undermined.
The Library of Congress has far more re-lentlessly inflexible requirements for both input and output than most government service organizations in the information business. Many other institutions can limit their acquisition of current materials without jeopardizing their basic ability to function. But the Library would lose most of its distinctive usefulness to Congress if it had to stop or defer acquiring periodicals or current monographs for even a single year and most of these items could never be acquired later. Many other institutions can effect economies by regulating their output of services and reports, but the Library must provide continuous, timely information to Congress and continuously sustain and catalog a comprehensive collection, which accounts for its largely irreducible annual budget.
As the president stated in the fiscal 1997 budget: "The nation has entered a period of profound change from an economy based on traditional manufacturing to one based on information the most profound change since the transformation from agriculture to manufacturing a century ago."
The Speaker of the House also noted in a visit to the Library last year, "In a world that is shrinking, in an information age . . . the Library of Congress is the seminal knowledge dissemination system on the planet." He further stressed the enabling importance of providing electronic access to this Library "to every child in America, in every school in America, no matter how rural, no matter how poor." At the Telecommunications Act signing, the Speaker added that the Library "has been a leader on a world basis in knitting together" [through its National Digital Library Program].
Future generations will not forgive us if we fail to seize this opportunity to make accessible the Library's unique and useful materials at precisely the moment when its technological capabilities to expand services are enjoying such enthusiastic support. We believe Congress should sustain its investment and not let erode away what it has so wisely created and sustained for 196 years.
Contrary to popular opinion, it was inadvertent, gradual erosion not the celebrated fire that finally destroyed the world's first storehouse of universal knowledge in antiquity: the great Library at Alexandria hastening humanity's descent into the Dark Ages. We cannot let this happen to the Library of Congress, the Alexandria library of the modern world.
For fiscal 1997 we submit a budget request that will enable us to continue to make the distinctive major contributions that only this Library can make to Congress and the American people.
I will be happy to answer your questions.
