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Deanna Marcum, Associate Librarian for Library Services Library of Congress

Service units, divisions, and offices within the Library have submitted the information in this briefing document for the attention and use of Library of Congress staff who will attend the American Library Association Annual Conference, July 9-15, 2009. The document covers initiatives undertaken at the Library of Congress since the ALA Midwinter Meeting in Denver, Colorado, in January 2009.

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Library of Congress Exhibit Booth

The Library of Congress Exhibit Booth is no. 2818 at the McCormick Place West, Hall F, Chicago, Illinois. The exhibit booth coordinator is Jane Gilchrist. Exhibit hours are:

• Saturday, July 11 - 8:45 am: ribbon-cutting ceremony
• Saturday, Sunday, and Monday, July 11-13: 9:00 am - 5:00 pm
• Tuesday, July 14: 9:00 am - 2:00 pm

Library of Congress staff making presentations in the Booth theater will include: Colleen Cahill, John Y. Cole, Ana Cristan (presenting in Spanish), Reggie Downs, Reme Grefalda, Rebecca Guenther, Patricia Hayward, Ahmed Johnson, Guy Lamolinara, Everette Larson, Barbara Morland, Valda Morris, Mari Nakahara, Michelle Rago, Gabrielle Sanchez, John Sayers, Teri Sierra, Michelle Springer, George Thuronyi, and Peter Vankevich.

We also invite you to join us on Monday afternoon from 3:00 to 4:00 as we honor our colleague, Roberta Stevens, ALA’s President-Elect.

Of special note are the Webcasts planned for the booth theater. We will be featuring selections for the Journeys and Crossing Webcast series. Hear Library of Congress staff talk about the Library’s exciting and historically significant materials. These Webcasts are available through the Library of Congress Website at URL <www.loc.gov> and YouTube at URL <www.youtube.com/loc>.

A complete schedule of booth theater presentations, including perennial favorites, is found on the Library of Congress at ALA Annual Meeting Website, URL <http://www.loc.gov/ala>.

Incentive give-away items at the booth include, from the Cataloging Distribution Service, Class Web keyboard brushes and copy holders; copies of What Is FRBR?, Understanding MARC Bibliographic, and Understanding MARC Authority Records; LC Classification Poster and Pocket Guide; the CDS Catalog of Bibliographic Products and Services; flyers about two recent CDS publications: Subject Headings Manual and Descriptive Cataloging of Rare Materials (Serials) and assorted brochures from other Library of Congress units. The 2009 National Book Festival poster will also be available.

Library of Congress staff will be available throughout the day to answer questions. Selected merchandise from the Library of Congress Sales Shop will be available for purchase and free 2009 National Book Festival posters will be distributed.

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U.S. COPYRIGHT OFFICE

Register of Copyrights Marybeth Peters has named Maria A. Pallante to the position of Associate Register for Policy and International Affairs, effective December 21, 2008. Pallante brings extensive experience to the position, having worked as a copyright lawyer for more than 18 years in Washington, D.C. and New York City, in both the public and private sectors. She succeeds David O. Carson, who returned to his former position as general counsel of the office. For the past two years, Pallante has served as Deputy General Counsel of the Copyright Office, where she has helped shape a wide range of domestic and international copyright issues.

Litigation

Supreme Court to Revisit Electronic Rights Case. The Supreme Court agreed in March to review an appeals court ruling that invalidated a settlement reached between freelance writers and publishers in relation to the Court’s 2001 decision in Tasini v. New York Times.

In Tasini, the Court found in favor of freelance writers who claimed their copyrights had been infringed when publishers licensed inclusion of the writers’ articles in online databases without further compensating them or requesting permission. In its ruling, the Court noted that the parties could enter into agreements that would allow the writers’ works to continue to be included in online databases, such as the New York Times archives and Lexis-Nexis.
In 2005, after lengthy negotiations, they did so, consenting to a class-action settlement involving $18 million that provided payment to writers depending on whether and when they had registered the copyrights to their works with the Copyright Office. As a class action, the settlement required approval by a federal court, which the Southern District Court of New York subsequently provided.

Afterward, however, a group of freelance writers appealed, claiming that the settlement allocated insufficient funds to authors of unregistered works. In November 2007, the Second Circuit Court of Appeals declined to approve the district court ruling, but not for the reason put forth by the appellants. The court stated that under section 411(a) of the Copyright Act, only writers who had registered their works with the Copyright Office were eligible to file claims for damages. Most of the freelance writers involved in the class action had not registered their works. The appeals court held that federal courts have no jurisdiction over unregistered works, and that the district court erred in ruling in a case made up mostly of such works.

The Supreme Court has agreed to review the case to decide whether section 411(a) limits the jurisdiction of federal courts over copyright infringement actions. The justices will hear oral arguments in the fall in the case: Reed Elsevier v. Muchnick. The Copyright Office worked with the Department of Justice on a filing with the Supreme Court that will emphasize the importance of the registration requirement in section 411(a) while trying to find a way to permit approval of the class-action settlement.

Google Book Search Litigation. After a proposed settlement was reached in the litigation over the Google Book Search project, on April 28, 2009, the deadline set for copyright owners to opt out of agreement was postponed by the court for four months. The deadline to opt out is now September 4, 2009, and the fairness hearing will be on October 7, 2009. The settlement involves the resolution of the dispute of copyright infringement brought by publishers and authors against Google over several of the activities involved in the Google Book Search project. The settlement must be approved by the U.S. District Court of the Southern District of New York before it can go into effect. The postponement was the result of growing questions by authors, the U.S. Government and the public over the unprecedented scope of the settlement that would provide Google with significant advantages, particularly in regards to works that are no longer in print. The Antitrust Division of the Department of Justice is examining the settlement and its implications.

Golan v. Holder: Restoration of Foreign Copyrights. Plaintiffs (artists and purveyors of art material) brought an action against the Federal government challenging the legality of the Copyright Term Extension Act (“CTEA”) and the Uruguay Round Agreements Act (“URAA”). Specifically, Plaintiffs claimed that these Acts unconstitutionally removed from, or staunched the flow of, literary and artistic works into the public domain. The United States District Court for the District of Colorado decided, inter alia, that the CTEA provision extending the term of copyright to life of the author plus 70 years did not create a perpetual copyright in violation of the Copyright and Patent Clause of the U.S. Constitution and that the provision in the URAA that “restored” copyrights of foreign works that had fallen into the public domain due to failure to comply with U.S. copyright formalities or due to lack of copyright relations with the United States was constitutional.

Plaintiffs appealed this decision to the United States Court of Appeals for the 10th Circuit. The 10th Circuit held that Section 514 of the URAA altered the traditional contours of copyright by restoring copyright in a manner that implicates the Plaintiffs’ First Amendment right to free expression. The 10th Circuit, however, remanded the case to the District Court for further consideration of the First Amendment claims at issue.

In addition, the 10th Circuit instructed the district court to assess whether Section 514 of the URAA is content-based or content-neutral. If the provision is found to be content-based, the District Court needs to consider whether the Government’s interest in promulgating the legislation is compelling and if the Government could achieve the same goals through alternative means that have less of an effect on protected speech. If the provision is content-neutral, the test is whether the provision is narrowly tailored to serve a significant governmental interest.

The Copyright Office assisted the Department of Justice in defending the constitutionality of the restoration provision of the URAA in the district court. The district court ruled in favor of the Plaintiffs on a motion for summary judgment. The district found that the restoration provision was content-neutral and that compliance with international treaty obligations was a significant governmental interest. However, the district court held that the provision was broader than necessary in relation to reliance parties. The scope of the district court’s decision is unclear, but seems to hold that to the extent Congress restored copyright protection to foreign works that were in the public domain, this provision violated the First Amendment in relation to parties that had a “vested interest” in works while they were in the public domain. Parties that used public domain works are referred to by Congress as “reliance parties.” Even though Congress established accommodations in the statute for such reliance parties, the district court held that the restrictions imposed by Congress on reliance parties went beyond what accession to the Berne Convention required.

The U.S. Government has filed a notice of appeal to the Court of Appeals of the Tenth Circuit.

Constitutionality of the CRB

Following the Copyright Royalty Judges’ Webcasting rate determination, several participants appealed various aspects of the determination to the DC Circuit. One of the appellants, Royalty Logic -- an independent royalty organization, is challenging the Copyright Royalty Judges’ determination because it designated SoundExchange as the sole agency for collecting Webcasting royalties on behalf of the owners of sound recordings, thereby excluding Royalty Logic. Included in Royalty Logic’s challenge to the Copyright Royalty Judges’ determination is an assertion that the Copyright Royalty Judges are not properly appointed under the Constitution (a similar constitutional claim was recently made against administrative patent judges). Royalty Logic questions whether the Copyright Royalty Judges are so independent that they are Principal Officers and are therefore constitutionally required to be presidentially appointed. See Article II, §2, cl. 2. Additionally, they question whether the Copyright Royalty Judges’ appointment by the Librarian of Congress is constitutional, challenging whether the Librarian is the “Head of an Executive Agency” as indicated in Article II, §2, cl.2. On March 19, 2009, the DC Circuit heard oral arguments in the case. The determination of the constitutionality issue may have further implications for the Library of Congress’s relationship to the Legislative Branch.

Studies

Uncertain Copyright Status Limits Access to Early Sound Recordings. Major legal impediments confront libraries and archives seeking to preserve and make available unpublished sound recordings created before 1972, according to a report released in March by the Library of Congress and the Council on Library and Information Resources. Sound recordings made on or after February 15, 1972, fall under federal copyright protection; an assortment of state laws applies to recordings made earlier. Determining who holds the rights to pre-1972 recordings and what laws govern them can be “positively vexing,” Associate Librarian of Congress for Library Services Deanna Marcum writes in the report’s foreword.

June M. Besek, executive director of the Kernochan Center for Law, Media, and the Arts at Columbia University, wrote the report, titled Copyright and Related Issues Relevant to Digital Preservation and Dissemination of Unpublished Pre-1972 Sound Recordings by Libraries and Archives. A companion 2005 study addresses copyright issues related to pre-1972 commercial sound recordings.

Unlike commercial sound recordings, which are meant for reproduction and sale to the public, unpublished sound recordings are created for private use, or even broadcast, but they have not been distributed to the public with a rightholder’s consent. Examples include tapes of radio news broadcasts, oral history interviews, and live musical performances. Many such recordings are unique and have been donated to or purchased by libraries and archives. For the unpublished sound recordings in their holdings, librarians and archivists must determine which laws govern them and ascertain whether the recordings embody underlying copyrighted works, such as musical compositions, for which they must also clear rights. Marcum calls this task a “tremendous burden,” noting that “almost all pre-1972 recordings will be controlled by myriad state laws and common law until the year 2067.”

To help librarians and archivists, the report cites examples of specific types of unpublished sound recordings and examines the laws that apply to those created before 1972. The report concludes that “it is unlikely that a library would be liable under federal or state law for preservation copying or limited streaming for research and scholarship of pre-1972 sound recordings that were never commercially distributed. Still, in some cases libraries do risk liability. . . . For that reason, it is neither realistic nor practicable to create categorical rules of use applicable to all pre-1972 sound recordings, or even to all pre-1972 unpublished sound recordings, without reference to when, where, and by whom they were created and under what circumstances; [who] currently [owns them]; and what they contain.”

The report is available at www.clir.org/pubs/abstract/pub144abst.html.

Further studies are planned. Pursuant to the Omnibus Appropriations Act of 2009, Congress has directed the Copyright Office to conduct a study on the desirability of, and means for, bringing sound recordings fixed before February 15, 1972, under Federal jurisdiction. The report, to be delivered to the House and Senate Committees on Appropriations, is due no later than March 11, 2011.

Administrative Activities

Office Holds Hearings in Anticircumvention Rulemaking. The Copyright Office held hearings in May as part of a triennial rulemaking proceeding under section 1201 of the Copyright Act. Section 1201 prohibits circumvention of technological measures that protect access to copyrighted works. The Digital Millennium Copyright Act of 1998 requires the Copyright Office to conduct such a rulemaking every three years to determine whether the prohibition on circumvention of technological measures that protect access to works has or is likely to adversely affect users in their ability to make noninfringing uses of copyrighted works.

The Office received 25 proposed exemptions for consideration, including, for example, exemptions to allow extraction of clips from DVDs for use in documentary films, for educational purposes, or for noncommercial, transformative purposes, such as remix parodies posted on YouTube. Other proposed exemptions relate to issues such as “jailbreaking” iPhones, circumvention for security testing, and circumvention of measures on eBooks in order to facilitate accessibility by the blind and visually impaired. The proceeding involved a full-day hearing on May 1 in Palo Alto, California, and three additional days of testimony on May 6-8 in the Copyright Office.

In consultation with the Assistant Secretary for Communications and Information at the U.S. Department of Commerce, the Register of Copyrights will make a recommendation to the Librarian of Congress based on the record in the rulemaking proceeding. The Librarian will issue any new exemptions by October 28, 2009. Any exemptions that issue will last for the ensuing three-year period.

The entire record for this and past § 1201 Rulemaking proceedings are available on the Copyright Office’s Website at: http://www.copyright.gov/1201/

Office Holds Hearing about Access to Copyrighted Works. The Copyright Office hosted a public meeting on May 18 to hear comments about access to copyrighted works by blind people and others with disabilities. The hearing was part of a fact-finding effort undertaken by the Copyright Office and the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office to prepare for a May 25–29 meeting of the Standing Committee on Copyright and Related Rights (SCCR) of the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO). At that meeting, member states of WIPO, including the United States, shared information about national laws and experience relating to access to copyrighted works. Those testifying at the May 18 hearing included members of the blind and visually impaired communities and representatives of public interest organizations, publishers, libraries, and firms that develop adaptive technologies. Hearing testimony were staff from the Copyright Office and the Patent and Trademark Office. Register of Copyrights Marybeth Peters delivered opening remarks.

For the full record in this public inquiry, including notices, comments, and transcripts, see: http://www.copyright.gov/docs/sccr/

Possible Revision of Deposit Requirements for eJournals. Currently, Copyright Office regulations exempt “automated databases available only online in the United States” from mandatory deposit. The Copyright Office has interpreted this exception broadly to apply to all electronic works published only online, in part because the Library of Congress had previously neither the inclination nor the technological means to collect online-only works.

The Copyright Office, under its statutory authority, plans to revise this exemption so that the regulation is more closely tailored to the current needs of the Library. The Copyright Office will publish a notice of proposed rulemaking in the Federal Register in or about late June 2009, seeking public comment on a proposal to amend the regulation governing mandatory deposit of online-only works. The amendment would do the following:

• Exempt electronic works published in the United States and available only online (e.g., with no print version) from the mandatory deposit provision, subject to a demand for deposit of copies or phonorecords of such works issued by the Copyright Office. Demands will initially be limited to electronic serials; other categories of online-only works may be added by subsequent regulatory changes pursuant to the Library’s collection needs.
• Specify the characteristics of deposit of a complete online-only work, to include metadata and formatting codes;
• Set forth the process for issuing and responding to a demand for deposit; and
• Establish new best edition criteria for electronic serials available only online.

E-Service and the Copyright Office’s eCO System

The Copyright Office launched its public online registration system on July 1, 2008. The full public launch followed months of beta-testing of the eCO system. As a result of the testing, the Office identified a number of refinements to address, and created a FAQ page, eCO tutorial, and a help desk. The launch included the electronic process in which applications, payments and deposits could be submitted to the Office online, the two-part submission system in which the applicant could file an application online and print a shipping label to be applied to a tangible “best edition” deposit (necessary for published works, with some exceptions), and introduced Form CO as a preferred alternative to the traditional application forms. When filled out on the Office’s Website, Form CO generates a bar code on the application that allows the Office to scan the information on the form into the Copyright Office’s database without the need for optical character recognition software or manual copying of the information on the form by the Office. The goal is to move away from paper in order to create a more efficient registration system and an improved public record that is more efficiently accessible from the Copyright Office’s Website.

There have been many challenges since the launch and the Copyright Office is working diligently on ways to improve the system. Unlike other online registration systems, such as those available from the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office, the necessity of accommodating tangible copies of deposits poses unique challenges that other institutions have not faced. The wide range of file formats in which the spectrum of copyrightable subject matter may be fixed pose additional challenges that are unique to government registration systems. Moreover, the Copyright Office cannot dictate file formats best suited to its needs, but must work in conjunction with the deposit needs of the Library of Congress (whether in tangible form or in preferred file formats) as well as the actual form a work takes when it was published by the copyright owner.
As a result of the challenges faced in the implementation of this new electronic system, the Copyright Office has amassed a significant backlog in processing copyright claims. Currently, there are approximately 500, 000 applications in the processing queue. As a result of this backlog, an article ran on the front page of the Washington Post recently pointing out the backlog and the time frames for issuing certificates of registration. While the account of the severity of the problem came as no surprise to the Office, the article included a number of inaccuracies about copyright protection and the backlog situation. One important clarification that is important to note is that while registration has important benefits, copyright protection is automatic upon fixation of an original work of authorship. It is also important for the public to understand that the date an application is received by the Office (and electronic registration facilitates rapid receipt by the Office) is the effective date of the registration, not the date that the application is processed. Lastly, although there are currently temporary processing delays for some applications, expedited registration processes are available for applicants who need a registration in order to bring suit in federal court. Thus, although the Office firmly believes that the existing delays are unacceptable and is working diligently to address the problems, these delays do not affect the existence of federal copyright protection for any works.

The changes that were made to the Office’s organizational structure, facilities and IT systems were massive. The Office anticipated transition challenges and understood that this transition to an electronic system would be difficult. But the Office also realized that the transition to an electronic environment was a necessity, particularly in light of the continuing mail delays on Capitol Hill following the anthrax threat of several years ago. Continuous assessment and adaptations of the system as launched have been and will continue to be necessary. For the past year and a half, the Copyright Office has been focused on improving the eCO registration process and in increasing production. There are signs that the changes already made to the system are yielding positive results. Further improvements are coming. Additional staff has been hired and more will be hired by the Office. The contract for implementation of the upgrade to Siebel 8.1 will be awarded in the near future. This upgrade along with hardware purchases and workflow adjustments should result in significant improvements, leading to stabilization of the system, increased productivity, as well as better public and staff experiences.

Current processing times by filing method are as follows:

• E-Service with electronic deposit: 5 months for 90 percent to be completed; 33 percent completed in 2.5 months.
• E-Service with physical deposit: 6.5 months for 90 percent to be completed; 33 percent completed in 3 months.
• Paper claims: 18 months for 90 percent to be completed; 33 percent completed in 12 months.

The public can save money and time, as well as help the Copyright Office improve its services, by filing claims online through the electronic Copyright Office (eCO). More information about the eCO system is available on the Copyright Office’s Website at: www.copyright.gov.

Proposed Fee Adjustments

The Register of Copyrights submitted a report to Congress on March 15 proposing a new fee schedule for copyright services to take effect on or about August 1. Thanks to cost-savings achieved through increased Office automation, some fees will remain the same or decrease. Other fees—mostly for services requiring manual labor—will rise.

The report analyzes changes in costs resulting from the August 2007 Office reengineering and the introduction in July 2008 of the electronic Copyright Office (eCO). In addition, it assesses economic factors and takes into account the legal requirement that fees be fair and equitable and support the objectives of the copyright system.

The proposed fee for filing a copyright application online using eCO remains $35. The report explains that the Office realizes substantial savings from eCO as a result of not “having to process a paper form, manually enter and quality-review data, [and] process a fee payment.” The proposed new fee for filings on Form CO is $50; the new fee for traditional paper applications is $65. The report states that these fees reflect the Office’s desire to “discourage use of the traditional paper forms, which are the most costly to provide and process, by imposing a fee that reflects this greater cost.”

For other services for which costs have remained constant or dropped since fees were last adjusted in July 2006, the Office is proposing that corresponding fees stay the same or be adjusted downward. For services for which costs have gone up—specifically those requiring manual work by staff—the Office is proposing fee increases to offset rising costs. In addition to registrations filed on paper applications, services affected include document recordation and searches of records.
“More than 50 percent of copyright claims are now being submitted through eCO,” says Register of Copyrights Marybeth Peters. “If the new fee structure inspires another 30 to 40 percent of filers to use eCO, the total annual savings for filers and the government will be tremendous, and filers will get their registration certificates more quickly—the waiting time to receive certificates is much shorter for users of eCO than for those who submit paper applications.”

To read the full report, go to www.copyright.gov/reports/fees2009.pdf [PDF, 115 KB]. For a list of adjusted fees, go to www.copyright.gov/docs/fees.html. Under copyright law, fee adjustments proposed by the Register of Copyrights can be implemented 120 days after a new schedule is submitted to Congress unless Congress enacts a law beforehand stating that it does not approve the new fees.

Former Register of Copyrights Barbara Ringer Dies

Barbara Ringer, the principal architect of the 1976 Copyright Act who served as Register of Copyrights from 1973 to 1980 and as Acting Register from 1993 to 1994, died April 9, 2009, in Lexington, Virginia, after several years of declining health. Ringer was known for her brilliance in drafting legislation, her authorship of works on copyright, and her ability to harmonize divergent points of view. She was a key advisor to Congress in the preparation and passage of legislation resulting in the first major revision of the copyright law since 1909, and the resulting Copyright Act of 1976 remains her most significant legacy. The complete obituary is available at URL <http://www.copyright.gov/history/bios/barabara-ringer-special-edition-2009-04.pdf> [PDF, 1.33 MB].

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OFFICE OF THE LIBRARIAN

CONGRESSIONAL RELATIONS OFFICE (CRO)

Significant Library-Related Congressional Activities in the 111th Congress

Fiscal Year 2010 Appropriations
The Librarian presented the Library's appropriation request for fiscal year 2010 to the House Appropriations Subcommittee for the Legislative Branch on April 29, 2009 and to the Senate Subcommittee on June 4. The Library requested a total of $699.4 million, representing a $52.6 million (8.1%) increase over fiscal 2009 funding levels. The majority of this increase represents funding for mandatory pay and price level increases totaling $29.8 million (4.6%). Of the total requested, $20 million (3.1%) represents the focus of our fiscal 2010 budget request, seeking support for investment in the Library's technical infrastructure.

The House and Senate have both moved the appropriations bill for the legislative branch earlier than in the past few years.

The House bill, H.R. 2918, was taken up and passed on the House floor on June 19. The House provides the Library with a total appropriation of $688.4 million, $11 million below the request and $41.6 million (6.4%) above the fiscal 2009 enacted level. The House included language:

• directing the Library to work with the Smithsonian to develop the recently authorized Oral History Project (discussed below), and directing $250,000 from the Library’s budget for that purpose;
• supporting the Library's inclusion of a Hispanic component of the Veterans History Program;
• supporting the Library's efforts to expand support from private sources for the Law Library;
• encouraging the Library to maintain efforts to preserve folk, traditional and ethnic music through the American Folklife Center (AFC); renaming the Center in honor of Archie Green, a late folklorist with a focus on labor lore who was instrumental in the AFC's creation;
• supporting the Library’s continuation of its efforts to create curriculum materials and lesson plans through its Teaching with Primary Sources program;
• expressing concern regarding the continuing backlog of copyright applications; and
• directing the Congressional Research Service to evaluate how well its current operations meet customer needs, and to consider creating a Member Advisory Committee.

The Senate Appropriations Committee held a markup of the Legislative Branch bill on June 18. The Senate provides the Library with a total appropriation of $680.5 million, or $19.1 million below the Library' request, and $31.5 million above the fiscal 2009 levels. The Senate Committee report includes language:

• directing the Library to update its digital strategy for IT investments, in consultation with the Government Accountability Office; and
• directing the Library to establish electronic links between the copyright office and the U.S. Customs and Border Protection on-line Intellectual Property Rights Recordation system; and
• expressing concern regarding the backlog of copyright registrations.

Fiscal Year 2009 Appropriations
On March 11, 2009, President Obama signed P.L. 111-8, the omnibus appropriations act for fiscal year 2009, which included funding through September 30 for the legislative branch.

Highlights of the provisions related to the Library include:

• total budget for FY09: $646.7 million; this is a net increase of $33.4 million over FY08
• the Library received full mandatory pay and related cost increases ($26.5 million)
• $910,000 was added to the base for acquisitions
• $6 million was added to the base for digital preservation programs
• $2.96 million received, between the legislative branch funding and Department of State funding, for the security cost-sharing program for our overseas offices. GAO will examine the utility/cost-effectiveness of the overseas office space and report to the committee by August 1
• $350,000 added in the House to showcase Folklife collections
• The Library is to report to Appropriations Committee on plans for building Asian American/Pacific Islander collection
• The Library and its Child Care Center are to provide a report reviewing tuition costs.
• Register of Copyrights to study the desirability of enacting federal law governing pre-1972 sound recordings, currently covered under various state laws
• The Library, the Government Printing Office and the House are directed to report on the feasibility of providing advanced search capabilities for legislative databases

Honoring Dr. Billington’s 80th Birthday
Congressional Record statements were entered in honor of the 80th birthday of the Librarian of Congress. On May 21, Rep. Earl Blumenauer, Co-Chairman of the House Library of Congress Caucus, entered a statement citing Dr. Billington's vision and efforts to make the Library of Congress a "must see destination for visitors in Washington" and expressing appreciation for his his efforts and leadership of this esteemed institution.

On June 1, Sens. Ben Nelson and Lisa Murkowski, Chairman and ranking member of the Senate Appropriations Subcommittee on the Legislative Branch, noted the many accomplishments that Dr. Billington has made both to the Library of Congress and the Nation. They praised him for his energy, enthusiasm and vision for a knowledge based democracy. Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison praised the Librarian for his vision in creating the Madison Council and working with First Lady Laura Bush to initiate the National Book Festival.

On June 2, Rep. Zach Wamp, Co-Chairman of the House Library of Congress Caucus, submitted a statement for the record echoing his colleagues' praise of Dr. Billington’s commitment and accomplishments in service to Congress and the nation.

Civil Rights Histories
Rep. Carolyn McCarthy (D-NY) introduced H.R. 586 directing the Librarian of Congress and the Secretary of the Smithsonian Institution to carry out a joint five-year project at the Library and the National Museum of African American History to collect video and audio recordings of personal histories and testimonials of participants in the Civil Rights movement. CRO actively worked with the Committee on House Administration staff and the Smithsonian on the bill.

The bill was signed into law on May 12 [P.L. 111-19] (a companion bill, S. 395, was introduced by Sen. Dianne Feinstein). The Folklife Center and the Smithsonian staff have met in preparation for implementation of the program. The House Appropriations Committee requested that the Library include a funding request in its fiscal year 2011 budget, and Rep. McCarthy added a floor amendment to the legislative branch appropriations bill directing the Library to expend $250,000 in fiscal 2010 on the program; she indicated that she also plans to insert a similar directive into the appropriation for the Smithsonian.

Law Library of Congress Private/Public Financing
Rep. Zoe Lofgren (D-CA) introduced H.R. 2728 that would provide separate budget treatment for the Law Library of Congress. The bill also authorizes $3.5 million for Law Library operations, and creates a new private, nonprofit foundation to provide supplemental funding for the general operation of the Law Library. The Librarian stated for the record in a letter to members of the Committee on House Administration his objection to a separate line item for the Law Library. Rep. Lofgren’s office worked directly with CRO regarding the Library’s concerns with the draft bill, although the Library took no position on the bill as introduced. The bill was likely to come to the House floor the week of June 22, 2009.

Public Access to Congressional Research Service (CRS) Reports
Sen. Joe Lieberman introduced S. Res. 118, directing the Senate Sergeant at Arms, in consultation with the CRS Director, to make publicly available through a centralized electronic system the specified CRS produced information, along with an index of information that is available through the CRS Website. The information to be made available is limited to Issue Briefs, CRS Reports that are available to Congress through the CRS Website, appropriations products. Information deemed to be confidential or are a congressional research request not placed on the CRS Website are exempt. Public availability would be through members’ and committee Websites.

The bill also requires access to the information made available pursuant to this resolution through Senate committee and Member Websites, and requires the Sergeant at Arms to establish the database and maintain and update the information.

THOMAS legislative database
In the fiscal year 2009 omnibus appropriation, Congress included language expressing support for enhancing public access to legislative documents, bill status, summary information and other legislative data through more direct, no-cost methods such as bulk data downloads. Congress directed the Library, CRS, and the Government Printing Office to work with the House and Senate to report on the feasibility of providing advance search capabilities. The Library is in discussions with the other Hill entities to advise Congress on how to proceed. Preliminary issues include authenticity and accuracy of data once they leave the originator.

Tax Policy - Artists Contribution
Under current law, art and manuscript collectors who donate works receive a tax deduction based on the fair market value of the works, but the artists and writers who create works may not take such a deduction. Because of a 1969 tax law revision, the original artist or author may only deduct the material cost of a donated work, which is, in most cases, a nominal amount.

Several bills have been introduced again to revert to the previous tax treatment of such donations, allowing a deduction equal to fair market value for charitable contributions of literary, musical, artistic, or scholarly compositions created by the donor [H.R. 1126 , S. 394, and S. 405]. In his introductory remarks on S. 405, Sen. Patrick Leahy specifically cited the loss of Igor Stravinsky’s papers to the Library’s Manuscript Division as a direct result of the 1969 tax change.

The New Congress and the Library
New member orientation and swearing-in week, just before the ALA Midwinter Meeting in Denver last January, provided many opportunities for new Members of Congress to visit the Library and meet Library management and staff of the Congressional Relations Office. CRO has continued to conduct outreach to all new members, personally visiting their offices and briefing key staff on collections and services of interest to both congressional staff and constituents.

CRO has also worked with the Budget Office and service units to provide extensive briefings and tours for members of our oversight and appropriations committees, particularly those members who are new to Library of Congress programs and issues.

House Library of Congress Congressional Caucus. In January 2008, Rep. Earl Blumenauer (D-OR) and Rep. Ray LaHood (R-IL) formed the Library of Congress Congressional Caucus, to "draw Members' attention to the nation's library and its unparalleled collections and knowledgeable curators and to encourage further use of these extraordinary resources." With now-Secretary LaHood's departure from the Hill, Rep. Zach Wamp agreed to step in as co-chair of the caucus in the 111th Congress. Several freshman members of Congress joined the caucus. The Library of Congress Caucus consists of the following members:

• Neil Abercrombie (D-HI);
• Robert Aderholt (R-AL);
• Shelley Berkley (D-NV);
• Earl Blumenauer (D-OR; co-chair);
• Bruce Braley (D-IA);
• Michael Conaway (R-TX);
• Kathy Dahlkemper (D-PA);
• Vernon Ehlers (R-MI);
• Keith Ellison (D-MN);
• Mary Fallin (R-OK);
• Bob Filner (D-CA);
• Jeff Fortenberry (R-NE);
• Virginia Foxx (R-NC);
• Charles Gonzalez (D-TX);
• Bart Gordon (D-TN);
• Parker Griffith (D-AL);
• Raul Grijalva (D-AZ);
• Gregg Harper (R-MS);
• Stephanie Herseth Sandlin (D-SD);
• Rush Holt (D-NJ);
• Michael Honda (D-CA);
• Eddie Bernice Johnson (D-TX);
• Dale Kildee (D-MI);
• Ron Kind (D-WI);
• Leonard Lance (R-NJ);
• John Larson (D-CT);
• Bob Latta (R-OH);
• Barbara Lee (D-CA);
• John Lewis (D-GA);
• David Loebsack (D-IA);
• Donald Manzullo (R-IL);
• Betty McCollum (D-MN);
• Jim McDermott (D-WA);
• Jim McGovern (D-MA);
• Mike McIntyre (D-NC);
• Candace Miller (R-MI);
• Jim Moran (D-VA);
• Thomas Petri (R-WI);
• Bill Posey (R-FL);
• David Price (D-NC);
• Lamar Smith (R-TX);
• Vic Snyder (D-AR);
• Glenn Thompson (R-PA);
• Todd Tiahrt (R-KS);
• Edolphus Towns (D-NY);
• Chris Van Hollen (D-MD);
• Zach Wamp (R-TN; co-chair);
• Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D-FL);
• Henry Waxman (D-CA);
• Lynn Woolsey (D-CA).

Joint Committee on the Library. The Joint Committee on the Library held its organizational meeting on April 23, 2009 to establish membership for the 111th Congress:

• Rep. Robert Brady (D-PA), Chair
• Sen. Charles Schumer (D-NY) - Vice Chair
• Rep. Zoe Lofgren (D-CA)
• Sen. Christopher Dodd (D-CT)
• Rep. Daniel Lungren (R-CA)
• Sen. Richard Durbin (D-IL)
• Rep. Gregg Harper (R-MS)
• Sen. Robert Bennett (R-UT)
• Sen. Thad Cochran (R-MS)

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OFFICE OF SECURITY AND EMERGENCY PREPAREDNESS (OSEP)

The Office of Security and Emergency Preparedness (OSEP) continued developing the Library's security and emergency programs, with a focus on enhancing the Emergency Preparedness Program, updating Continuity of Operations plans, and expanding staff security awareness. 

OSEP's Office of Emergency Preparedness (OEP) procured a Mass Alert Notification System, which, when activated by police or emergency personnel, will allow Library staff members to receive critical information (e.g., severe weather warnings, incident updates) via personal handheld devices, such as mobile phones, BlackBerries, pagers, or computers.  Not only will the new alert system improve the speed and span of coverage, but it will provide a much-improved means for emergency personnel to alert the Library=s deaf and hard-of-hearing staff of building evacuations and shelter-in-place emergencies.  In response to the Influenza A (H1N1) global outbreak in June,  the OEP continued to review and update Continuity of Operations plans in preparation to continue the Library’s essential functions should a full pandemic be declared.  OEP staff, in concert with the Library’s Chief Medical Officer, remained in close communications with the Centers for Disease Control and the Capitol’s Office of the Attending Physician and other legislative branch agencies to ensure a coordinated response.

The Collections Security Oversight Committee (CSOC) continued working in close coordination with OSEP on a wide array of initiatives enhancing safeguarding controls protecting the Library's priceless collections.  Led by a staff member from the Conservation Division, CSOC’s Security Awareness Subcommittee completed the first round of focus group sessions in April, launching several innovative initiatives based on ideas advanced by participating staff members.  The subcommittee began a second round of sessions in a discussion with the Reference Roundtable in mid-April.  CSOC’s Operations Subcommittee continued conducting Staff Assistance Visits (SAVs) to all Library divisions and annex facilities over a two-year cycle.  Using a checklist of select minimum standards, a senior staff member from the Protective Services Office and one of several volunteer librarians conduct the SAVs and report their findings to the division chief. Over the past seven years, the SAV program has significantly improved staff security practices Library-wide.

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NATIONAL BOOK FESTIVAL

Planning has begun for the 2009 Library of Congress National Book Festival to be held September 26, 2009. The 2008 festival on September 27 on the National Mall attracted more than 120,000 people (see URL: <http://www.loc.gov/bookfest/>)

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LIBRARY OF CONGRESS EXPERIENCE/CAPITOL VISITORS CENTER

On May 26, the Library announced that President Barack Obama and First Lady Michelle Obama would serve as honorary chairs of the 2009 National Book Festival, to be held September 26, 2009.  The 2008 festival on September 27 on the National Mall attracted more than 120,000 people.

The 2009 National Book Festival poster will be available in the Library of Congress exhibit booth.  The well-known children’s illustrator, Charles Santore, created this year’s painting, which imaginatively depicts the book genres featured at the festival with images representing the icons of literature.  Santore’s paintings, with strong influences by N. C. Wyeth and Howard Pyle, are included in the permanent collections of The Brandywine Museum and The Museum of Modern Art.

Many authors are committed to appearing at the 2009 book festival, including fiction writers John Grisham, John Irving, Jodi Picoult, Nicholas Sparks and Colson Whitehead; mystery and thriller writers Michael Connelly, Walter Mosely and Lee Child; history writers (and, in some several instances, television celebrities) Ken Burns, Gwen Ifill, Jon Meacham and Annette Gordon-Reed.  For the first time, Judy Blume and Lois Lowry will be appearing at the festival, and Paula Deen, widely known from her television appearances on the Food Network, will be at the festival with her newest book--for children.

Roberta Stevens will officially become the 2009-2010 ALA President-elect at the inaugural event scheduled for the evening of July 14 in Chicago, Ill.  She will be inaugurated as President in June 2010 at the ALA Annual Conference in Washington, DC.

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LIBRARY OF CONGRESS EXPERIENCE/CAPITOL VISITORS CENTER

The U.S. Capitol Visitors Center opened on December 2, 2008.  An underground passageway now directly connects the Capitol to the Thomas Jefferson Building of the Library of Congress.  The historic Jefferson Building of the Library of Congress is now open to the public from 8:30 AM to 4:30 PM, Monday through Saturday. The Jefferson Building is also now open to the public on all federal holidays except Thanksgiving and Christmas Days.  Although reading room hours have not changed, the extended hours provide the public with an additional 400 hours each year for viewing the Great Hall and exhibition spaces.  Library curators and exhibition staff have prepared a number of new interactive features for the exhibits, keyed to a uniquely barcoded Passport to Knowledge that allows each visitor to the Jefferson Building to personalize the visit by linking intriguing exhibition items to the digital counterparts on the Library’s Website. This enhancement of the Library of Congress Experience, which was launched in April 2008, helps visitors to the Jefferson Building become lifelong users of the Library via its Website.  Since April 2008, the number of visitors to the Jefferson Building has increased by 25 percent.

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WORLD DIGITAL LIBRARY

The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) and 32 partner institutions on April 21 launched the World Digital Library, a Website (URL <www.wdl.org>) that provides unrestricted public access, free of charge, unique cultural materials from libraries and archives from around the world. The launch took place at UNESCO Headquarters in Paris at an event co-hosted by UNESCO Director-General Koïchiro Matsuura and Librarian of Congress James H. Billington. Billington first proposed the creation of a World Digital Library (WDL) to UNESCO in 2005.  Matsuura welcomed the proposal as a "great initiative that will help to bridge the knowledge divide, promote mutual understanding and foster cultural and linguistic diversity." In addition to promoting international understanding, the project aims to expand the volume and variety of cultural content on the Internet, provide resources for educators, scholars, and general audiences and narrow the digital divide within and between countries by building capacity in partner countries.

The World Digital Library functions in seven languages―Arabic, Chinese, English, French, Portuguese, Russian and Spanish―and includes content in more than 40 languages. Browse and search features facilitate cross-cultural and cross-temporal exploration on the site. Descriptions of each item and videos, with expert curators speaking about selected items, provide context for users.

The World Digital Library was developed by a team at the Library of Congress. Technical assistance was provided by the Bibliotheca Alexandrina of Alexandria, Egypt. Institutions contributing to the WDL include national libraries and cultural and educational institutions in Brazil, China, Egypt, France, Iraq, Israel, Japan, Mali, Mexico, Morocco, the Netherlands, Qatar, the Russian Federation, Saudi Arabia, Serbia, Slovakia, South Africa, Sweden, Uganda, the United Kingdom and the United States.

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LAW LIBRARY OF CONGRESS

Donna Scheeder is currently serving as acting Law Librarian of Congress.

The Global Legal Information Network (GLIN), a database administered by the Law Library of Congress, was among the “Top Five” projects to receive a 2009 excellence in government award from the Industry Advisory Council (IAC). GLIN was recognized for “excellence in transparency,” i.e., openness and accountability.

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LIBRARY SERVICES

Personnel Changes

• William “Jake” Jacobs was appointed Interpretive Programs Officer (chief of the Interpretive Programs Office) on Feb. 2.
• Eugene Flanagan was appointed Business Enterprises Officer on March 1.
• James Gentner, chief of the Overseas Operations Division (OVOP), retired from the Library on April 3.  Beacher Wiggins, director for Acquisitions and Bibliographic Access, is also acting as chief of OVOP, assisted by senior overseas operations officer Zbigniew Kantorosinski.
• Linda Miller, assistant program coordinator in the ILS Program Office and a former president of the Library and Information Technology Association (LITA, a division of ALA), retired on March 27.
• Charles Stanhope was appointed senior advisor to the Associate Librarian for Library Services on April 8 to explore best approaches to collection development for the Library.
• Robert Dizard, Jr., deputy associate librarian for Library Services, accepted a position in the Office of the Librarian on May 11.  A vacancy announcement, no. 090130, for the position of Deputy Associate Librarian for Library Services has been posted on USAJOBS and will close on July 15.
• The new team leader for the Cataloging Team in the Geography and Map Division is Mrs. Min Zhang, who has been in G&M since 1998 and began her new position on May 24.
• Maureen Landry, chief of the US and Publisher Liaison Division (USPL), retired on May 29.  Karl Debus-López, chief of the US General Division, is also serving as acting chief of USPL.
• Bruce Knarr, leader of the Electronic Resources Management System (ERMS) Pilot Team, US/Anglo Division, has announced plans to retire on June 30.  He will continue to co-chair the internal working group charged by Associate Librarian for Library Services Deanna Marcum with identifying projects that can be undertaken in the near future in response to the recommendations in On the Record, the report of the LC Working Group on the Future of Bibliographic Control.  Allene Hayes, digital projects coordinator for the Acquisitions and Bibliographic Access Directorate, will serve as ERMS Pilot Team leader.
• Dr. Ann Brener is the new Hebraic area specialist in the Hebraic Section, African and Middle Eastern Division. 
• The Humanities and Social Sciences Divison hired two new reference librarians, Helena “Kristie” Conkle and Steven Davenport, this spring.
• The Preservation Directorate’s Binding and Collections Care Division welcomed Holly Robertson as the Section Head for Collections Care within BCCD and Emma Lincoln as the preservation education and training specialist for the Directorate.

Library of Congress Working Group on the Future of Bibliographic Control

The Library is pursuing several projects in response to the recommendations of the LC Working Group on the Future of Bibliographic Control.  Library Services is working with representatives of the National Library of Medicine and National Agricultural Library to test the proposed cataloging standard, Resource Description and Access, for feasibility, compatibility with existing metadata, cost-effectiveness, and user satisfaction before decisions are made regarding implementation of the new standard.  An invitational meeting at the ALA Midwinter Meeting in Denver invited the participation of potential test partners in the larger community.  More than 90 applications from potential test partners were received.  The U.S. National Libraries RDA Test Steering Committee, co-chaired by Christopher Cole (National Agricultural Library), Dianne McCutcheon (National Library of Medicine), and Beacher Wiggins (Library of Congress), selected 24 to participate formally in the test.  The Steering Committee will design the test this summer and autumn with a view to beginning the formal testing in January 2010.   
As the next phase of its investigation into the creation and distribution of bibliographic data in U.S. and Canadian libraries, Library Services has contracted with R2 Consulting LLC of Contoocook, N.H. to research and describe the current marketplace for cataloging records in the MARC format, with primary focus on the economics of current practices, including existing incentives and barriers to both contribution and availability. 

In its report On the Record, Section 1.1, Eliminate Redundancies, the Working Group made several recommendations for using externally available bibliographic data and for further automating the Cataloging in Publication (CIP) process.  The Library has followed up by piloting a method to generate MARC 21 records from publishers’ ONIX data, as described under Acquisitions and Bibliographic Access Directorate in this document. 

Associate Librarian for Library Services Deanna Marcum convened the Working Group in November 2006 to address how the Library of Congress and the library community should address the popularity of the Internet, advances in search-engine technology, and the influx of electronic information resources. The Working Group's final report and recommendations, published in January 2008 as On the Record, are available at URL <www.loc.gov/bibliographic-future/>. Also available on the Websiteis Dr. Marcum’s response, dated June 1, 2008, to the Working Group.

ACQUISITIONS AND BIBLIOGRAPHIC ACCESS DIRECTORATE (ABA)

ABA Reorganization

The Acquisitions and Bibliographic Access Directorate continues to fine-tune a new organizational structure implemented in October 2008.  The new structure streamlines workflows, deploys staff with unusual language skills more effectively, and fully merges acquisitions and cataloging functions, based on the regional origin of materials selected for addition to the Library’s collections—more than 2.5 million items each year.  Approximately 600 ABA staff members, formerly working in 14 divisions, are now assigned to nine new divisions.  Additionally, approximately twenty staff who catalog music and sound recordings were reassigned from the ABA Directorate to the Music Division, Collections and Services Directorate, on October 1.

ABA now has six production divisions and three support divisions.  Four production divisions have fiscal responsibilities and acquire and catalog materials from all parts of the world using methods of purchase, exchange, and gift.  These are the African, Latin American, and Western European Division; Asian and Middle Eastern Division; Germanic and Slavic Division; and US/Anglo Division.  The remaining two production divisions, the US and Publisher Liaison Division and the US General Division, catalog materials forwarded from the U.S. Copyright Office or received in the Cataloging in Publication, Electronic Preassigned Card Number, and International Standard Serial Number programs. The US General Division also houses the Library of Congress’s Dewey classifiers and works closely with the owner of the Dewey Decimal Classification, OCLC, Inc., and its editors.

In addition, the Overseas Operations Division continues to administer the Library’s six overseas offices in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil; Cairo, Egypt; New Delhi, India; Jakarta, Indonesia; Nairobi, Kenya; and Islamabad, Pakistan.  The reorganization established an Acquisitions Fiscal and Support Office, within the Office of the Director, that is responsible for acquisitions fiscal operations, the Duplicate Materials Exchange Program, the Surplus Books Program, and oversight of materials handling contractors.  The Cooperative and Instructional Programs Division combines the former Cooperative Cataloging Team, CONSER operations, the National Union Catalog of Manuscript Collections staff, and the directorate’s internal training staff.  This merger will facilitate efficiencies in ABA’s provision of training both to Library staff and to practitioners in other institutions.  It also groups together all ABA staff who support cooperative cataloging programs, in order to improve communications and achieve greater efficiency.

The Policy and Standards Division performs all the functions of the former Cataloging Policy and Support Office. In recognition of the growing importance of policy and standards for acquisitions as well as cataloging, the division has gained a fulltime policy specialist focusing on acquisitions. The product development functions of the Library of Congress Cataloging Distribution Service (CDS) have also become the responsibility of Policy and Standards, while the CDS cost-recovery functions moved to the new Business Enterprises organization in the Partnerships and Outreach Programs Directorate.

Automated MARC 21 Records from ONIX

The report of the Library of Congress Working Group on the Future of Bibliographic Control, On the Record,, section 1.1, Eliminate Redundancies, has several recommendations for using externally available bibliographic data and for further automating the Cataloging in Publication (CIP) process.  With this in mind, ABA began a pilot project in June 2009 designed to make available ONIX data being received from publishers to the Electronic CIP (ECIP) program.  A test involving ONIX data from two publishers, Cambridge University Press and Wiley, tests several aspects:

• The availability of ONIX data for items in the CIP stream,
• The usefulness of the data in cataloging,
• Any problems or unexpected results from converting the data from ONIX to MARC 21,  
• Changes that would be needed to the CIP workflow,
• What additional information can be extracted from the ONIX data that would not normally be provided in MARC 21records.

A virtual test section is established in the ECIP Traffic Manager and all incoming CIP applications from the two publishers will be diverted to this virtual section for descriptive cataloging processing.  If an ONIX record is found (based on matching the ISBN of the forthcoming book with ISBNs in the ONIX data), the data are converted immediately and a MARC 21 record created.  From that point, the catalogers involved compare the resulting record to the publisher-supplied information from the electronic galley to look for differences or any missing/incorrect elements.  Should there not be an ONIX record for the forthcoming book, the CIP application is forwarded to its original destination for normal processing.

In addition to the basic bibliographic record, the table of contents, if provided in the ONIX record, will be provided in the 505 field of the MARC 21 record with first indicator value ‘8’ (no display constant) and the legend “Machine generated contents note:”  No attempt will be made to convert the field into a “perfect” contents note, so elements not normally found in a regular AACR2 contents note will be in the 505, such as the words “Chapter,” “Part,” etc., as well as sections of the table of contents like the introduction, bibliography, etc. that are not normally mentioned.

Additionally, ONIX records frequently contain summaries (called descriptions in ONIX) and the ECIP application has a space for the publisher to provide summary information.  If either of these is present, the conversion program will include them in separate 520 fields, quoted to indicate that LC did not create the summary and with “Provided by publisher.” at the end of the field to indicate the source.  The catalogers involved will read any summaries and if they fit guidelines for including summaries in ECIP records, the summaries may be left in the record.  There is thus a potential for duplicate summaries to be created.  If the summaries are very similar or identical, the cataloger should delete one of them.

Once the rest of the descriptive cataloging process is completed, the catalogers involved create a report on the results, provide any impressions they wish to relate, and then forward the ECIP to the original destination for completion of subject cataloging and end-stage processing.  It is anticipated that this diversion and conversion will not add significant processing time to the ECIP.

As the pilot proceeds, any needed changes in the conversion application will be made as will any needed changes to the pilot workflow.  Reports will be gathered weekly so that the pilot committee can be kept up to date on all of the issues.

Questions may be directed to David Williamson, Cataloging Automation Specialist, ABA (<dawi@loc.gov>).

Bibliographic Enrichment Activities Team (BEAT) – see Automated MARC 21 Records from ONIX

Cataloging Distribution Service (CDS) – see under PARTNERSHIPS AND OUTREACH PROGRAMS DIRECTORATE

Cataloging in Publication (CIP) – see Automated MARC 21 Records from ONIX

There will be no CIP Advisory Group meeting at ALA Annual Conference.

Karl Debus-López, chief of the US General Division and acting chief of the US and Publisher Liaison Division, is currently responsible for the Cataloging in Publication program.

Cataloging Policy – see Policy and Standards

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Cooperative Cataloging Programs

David Banush (Brown University) took over as Chair from Rebecca L. Mugridge (Pennsylvania State University) who is now chair emerita.
Recent activities of the Program for Cooperative Cataloging PCC) include official participation in CC:DA (ALA Association for Library Collections and Technical Services/Cataloging and Classification Section/Committee on Cataloging: Description and Access) and the ALCTS Task Force on Implementation and Training for RDA.
Most of the public PCC meetings at ALA Annual Conference will take place Sunday, July 12. The CONSER/BIBCO/SACO at Large meetings will be held consecutively from 8:00 a.m. to 12:00 p.m. at the Palmer House, Chicago Room; the BIBCO/CONSER joint issues discussion begins at 9:30 am. The PCC Participants Meeting will be 4:00 to 5:30 at the Intercontinental Hotel, Renaissance Room.
The National Union Catalog of Manuscript Collections (NUCMC), a cooperative cataloging program of the Library of Congress and eligible archival and manuscript repositories located throughout the United States and its territories, celebrated its 50th anniversary in May 2009.  In its first half-century, the NUCMC program has worked with almost 1,500 repositories and produced more than 114,000 catalog records to describe archival and manuscript collections held by those repositories. The program provides and promotes bibliographic access to the nation’s vital historical resources.  Cooperating repositories provide information about their collections to NUCMC catalogers, who produce standardized cataloging to describe those collections. The cooperative effort has resulted in more effective security of collections, wider use of a repository’s collections, fuller access by researchers, and new donation of related materials. The NUCMC may be searched freely via a gateway at URL <www.loc.gov/coll/nucmc/>.

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ISSN

Implementation of an "Automated ISSN Register" is expected in summer 2009. This database system automates the process of managing blocks of ISSN allocated to the U.S. ISSN Center and assigning the next available number. The register system also includes sophisticated searching and reporting functions. 

Planning has begun for implementation of "ISSN-L," (the linking ISSN), by the U.S. ISSN Center. ISSN-L is a new function of the ISSN that enables collocation or linking among the different media versions of a continuing resource (serial or integrating resource). U.S. ISSN Center designation of ISSN-L will follow implementation in the WorldCat database.

Law Blog Archive

The Law Section, USPL, is working with the Law Library and the Network Development Office to create a Webarchive of legal blogs (or "blawgs") using MODS records as the infrastructure. This archive can be viewed at <http://lcweb2.loc.gov/diglib/lcwa/html/lawlb/>.  We have just processed records for 35 additional blogs, which will raise the total from the original 90 to 125.  With the Acquisitions and Bibliographic Access Directorate (ABA) reorganization, the Cataloging Policy and Support Office became the Policy and Standards Division (PSD).  Its email address has been changed to <policy@loc.gov>. The email addresses of individual staff members in the division are unchanged.

Policy and Standards

In February, 2009, the Policy and Standards Division (PSD) announced the beginning of the genre/form project for cartographic materials. As with previous projects, PSD is reexamining current subject headings and subdivisions to determine whether any changes should be made to their structure and/or to the ways that they are assigned. PSD is requesting input regarding a possible change to the structure of most of the form subdivisions in the area of cartography.  A discussion paper, "Proposed Changes to the Structure of LCSH Subdivisions Used for Cartographic Materials," that provides an analysis of the current subdivision structure, the impact that the genre/form project will have on cataloging and resource discovery, and a solution to ameliorate the negative impacts, has been posted on PSD’s genre/form Webpage, URL <http://www.loc.gov/catdir/cpso/genreformgeneral.html>.

Interested parties are invited to send their thoughts on the proposal to Janis L. Young, genre/form coordinator, at jayo@loc.gov, or to PSD’s general e-mail account, policy@loc.gov.  Comments will be accepted through August 10, 2009.

LC Authorities and Vocabularies service. The Library of Congress has opened its id.loc.gov Webservice, “Authorities and Vocabularies”, with the Library of Congress Subject Headings (LCSH) as the initial offering.  The primary goal of this service is to enable machines to programmatically access data at the Library of Congress, but the Webinterface also provides simple access for human users.  This service is a step toward exposing and interconnecting vocabulary and thesaurus data at no cost via URLs.   For LCSH, terms have been linked to a similar service provided in Europe for RAMEAU, a French subject heading vocabulary closely coordinated with LCSH.  The Library is interested in feedback on the uses and usefulness of the service to inform ways that we might enhance it.  (There is a comment form at the site.)  Over the next few months the service will be expanding to include other vocabularies commonly found in standards that the Library supports such as the Thesaurus of Graphic Materials; geographic area, language, and relator codes; and preservation events and roles.  The site is accessible at URL <http://id.loc.gov>.

Library of Congress Subject Headings (LCSH) 31st edition.  Library of Congress Subject Headings (LCSH) 31st edition is available at the end of June 2009.  Because there has been no edition of LCSH published since 2007, this edition will include approximately 17,000 new and 16,000 changed subject headings made since January 2007.  LCSH 31st edition will be enlarged to six volumes. The new, sixth volume, LCSH Supplementary Vocabularies, will include free-floating subdivisions, genre/form headings, and children's subject headings. LCSH 31 is available for $295 in North America and $345 outside North America.  Copies may be ordered at URL <www.loc.gov/cds/contact.html>.  Additional information is available at URL <www.loc.gov/cds/lcsh.html#lcsh20>.  LCSH is available in Cataloger’s Desktop and Classification Web.  A limited number of LCSH, 30th edition (2007) are still available, at reduced prices: $195 in North America (33% off full price) and $245 (29% off full price) outside North America.

Subject Headings Manual.  Formerly known as the Subject Cataloging Manual: Subject Headings, the 2008 edition of the manual was published under the title Subject Headings Manual.  This new edition consolidates the previous updates and complements the Classification and Shelflisting Manual, published in May 2008.

LCSH Genre/Form Headings.  For general information about genre/form headings and LCSH at the Library of Congress, including a Genre/Form Frequently Asked Questions PDF document as well as a full timeline, visit URL <http://www.loc.gov/catdir/cpso/genreformgeneral.html>.  The following announcements and documents have been added to the site since ALA Midwinter Meeting:  Genre/Form Headings for Musical Works; SACO Proposals for Moving Image and Radio Program Genre/Form Headings); Genre/Form Headings for Cartographic Materials; Proposed Change to the Structure of LCSH Subdivisions Used for Cartographic Materials Discussion Paper; and Disposition of Video Recording Headings in the New Genre/Form Environment Discussion Paper.

Geographic Coordinate Data in Name Authority Records.  Beginning in August of 2009, NACO participants may supply geographic coordinates in the 034 field (Coded Cartographic Mathematical Data) of name authority records for geographic name headings (tagged 151).  The Library of Congress is investigating sources of coordinate data that may be used to pre-populate existing records in the authority file.  Documentation on the use of the 034 fields in authority records will be available in the August update to Cataloger’s Desktop.

Authority File Comparison Rules.  A new user-friendly guide to the “NACO Normalization” rules has been prepared and placed on the NACO page, URL <http://www.loc.gov/catdir/pcc/naco/normrule-2.html>.  The guide reflects changes to the rules proposed by a PCC task force and approved in 2007.

Library of Congress Classification.  Available from the Cataloging Distribution Service are new print 2009 editions of K (Law in General. Comparative and Uniform Law. Jurisprudence), T (Technology), and Z (Bibliography. Library Science. Information Resources).

Drafts of KBS and KBT.  Drafts of the newly developed subclasses KBS (Canon Law of Eastern Churches) and KBT (Canon Law of Eastern Rite Churches in Communion with the Holy See of Rome), have been posted for an extended trial period for cataloging and collection staff at the Library of Congress and at other institutions.  Users of these drafts should note the substantial revisions and restructuring in overlap areas with the older classes KBR and KBU, as well as with subclasses BR (Christianity) and BX (Christian Denominations), in the Religion schedule.  The drafts are available in the form of PDF files at URL <http://www.loc.gov/catdir/cpso/KBS-KBT.html>.
 
Cyrillic forms in LCC subclass PG. Cyrillic forms are in the process of being added to captions in subclass PG for individual literary authors and titles of belletristic works written in Cyrillic script.  In addition, authors’ death dates are being added to many of these captions.

Korean transliteration and word division guidelines.  LC began implementation of the new revised draft guidelines (URL <http://www.loc.gov/catdir/cpso/Korean.pdf> [PDF, 796K]) on all bibliographic records and authority records newly created as of March 15, 2009.  LC will begin to perform bibliographic file maintenance (BFM) on August 1, 2009.  With the close of the draft guidelines comment period on June 1, 2009, LC will finalize the guidelines in preparation for outside implementation on October 1, 2009. 

Spacing in Korean serials.   LC began implementation of the new practice of providing spaces in non-Latin fields for all newly created bibliographic records for Korean serials as of October 2007.  This change provides spaces for non-Latin fields to reflect the parallel transliterated fields for all Korean serials, even when a field consists solely of Chinese characters.  Appendix O in the CONSER Editing Guide is being revised to reflect this change and will be issued this August.

Transliteration tools.  As noted in the Cataloging Service Bulletin, no. 123 (spring 2009), some additional guidance is being provided for the transliteration of Persian in various scripts and a new table was proposed for Judeo-Arabic.  Comments were due June 1, 2009 to the Policy and Standards Division, and final versions of these instructions will be posted on the PSD Websitefor the ALA-LC Romanization Tables, URL <http://www.loc.gov/catdir/cpso/roman.html>.

Cataloger’s Desktop.  The 2009, Issue 2 of Cataloger’s Desktop is now available.  This issue includes the following new resources:  Cataloger’s Desktop Discussion List Archive;  Declaração dos Principios Internacionais de Catalogação (IFLA); Dichiarazione de Principi Internazionali de Catalogazione (IFLA); Guide to Cataloging DCD and Blu-ray Discs Using AACR2r and MARC 21 (OLAC); Internationella katalogiseringsprinciper (IFLA) and revisions to the following:  Declaración de Principios Internacionales de Catalogación (IFLA); Erklärung zu den internationalen Katalogisierungsprinzipien (IFLA); Free-Floating Subdivisions, 21st edition; Music and Sound Recordings Online Manual, Update February 2009; Principes internationaux de Catalogage (IFLA); Statement of International Cataloguing Principles (IFLA); and Subject Headings Manual, Update 1, February 2009.   The 2009, Issue 3 of Cataloger’s Desktop available August 1, 2009, will feature a Spanish language version of Free-floating Subdivisions: an alphabetical index, entitled Subdivisiones Flotantes: temáticas y de forma, translated by Ageo García (Tulane University).

Cataloging Service Bulletin Back Issues.  All issues (1-123, summer 1978-spring 2009) of Cataloging Service Bulletin (CSB) are now available at no cost at  URL <http://www.loc.gov/cds/PDFdownloads/csb>.  CSB is a quarterly bulletin that includes current, new, and revised information about LC cataloging and classification practices and policies. CSB lists revised AACR2 rules, LC Rule Interpretations, changes to the ALA/LC Romanization tables, changes to the LC Subject Headings, and includes “Cataloging Publication News” and “News of Cataloging Projects,” and more.  The entire 31 years of CSB are made available by LC as a free service to the worldwide library community. The issues are also available and searchable in Cataloger’s Desktop.

Virtual International Authority File (VIAF).  At the end of 2008, the Library of Congress, the Deutsche Nationalbibliothek, the Bibliothèque nationale de France, and OCLC signed a new agreement to add the National Library of Sweden as the next partner to the VIAF.  Since then, the National Library of the Czech Republic, the National Library of Israel, the Bibliotheca Alexandrina (Egypt), the Vatican Library, the National Library of Portugal, and the National Library of Spain have formally been added.  An additional 10 institutions have submitted applications and are expected to be added during 2009.  VIAF is a service that matches and links the world’s large personal name authority files.  The beta version currently includes more than 10.4 million personal name authority records, accessible at URL <www.viaf.org >.  During 2008 VIAF expanded to include non-Latin characters.  Future plans are to expand to geographic names, corporate names, and uniform titles.

International Cataloguing Principles (IFLA – International Federation of Library Associations and Institutions).  The Policy and Standards Division (and its predecessor, Cataloging Policy and Support Office) has been engaged for eight years in the work towards a new “Statement of International Cataloguing Principles” to replace IFLA’s Paris Principles of 1961.  The final draft underwent worldwide review that produced excellent suggestions for improvements, most of which were incorporated in the final version of the Statement and the accompanying Glossary.  The Statement was approved by all the worldwide participants and by IFLA in January 2009 and was posted (freely available) in February 2009 at URL <http://www.ifla.org/en/publications/statement-of-international-cataloguing-principles>.  Work on the print publication of the text was completed in June, enlisting the help of colleagues worldwide to provide the Statement, Glossary, and Resolution in 20 languages. The final volume will also feature a background analysis written by Laurence S. Creider (New Mexico State University).  The printed text will be available before the next IFLA conference in Milan, Italy, in August 2009.

Program for Cooperative Cataloging – see Cooperative Cataloging Programs

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COLLECTIONS AND SERVICES DIRECTORATE

American Folklife Center/Veterans History Project (AFC/VHP)

AFC director Peggy Bulger serves on the U.S. delegation to the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) subcommittee on "Genetic Resources, Traditional Knowledge and Traditional Cultural Expressions" and will attend the June 2009 meeting. She also serves on the Authorities of the Inter-American Committee on Culture, convened by the Organization of American States (OAS).

The American Folklife Center initiated the Inauguration 2009 Sermons and Orations Project to solicit and archive sound and video recordings of sermons and speeches from across the country that were recorded during the week of the 2009 presidential inauguration.  This collection comprises about 300 submissions from over 30 states.  In February, AFC held the symposium Robert Burns at 250: Poetry, Politics, and Performance, in cooperation with Scottish government, the Library’s Center for the Book and the Library’s Poetry and Literature Center.  The event was opened by the First Minister of Scotland, the Right Honourable Alex Salmond, and included the U.S. Poet Laureate, Kay Ryan, and Cate Newton, Director of Collections and Research at the National Library of Scotland, among the participants. The symposium is available online at URL <http://www.loc.gov/folklife/Symposia/Burns/index.html>.

AFC produced the podcast, “Voices from the Days of Slavery,” available at URL <http://www.loc.gov/podcasts/>.  AFC’s Homegrown 2009 concert series commenced on May 28 with Brendan Carey, of New Hampshire, playing Cape Breton-style fiddle music. AFC’s concerts and lectures are available as Webcasts at URL <http://www.loc.gov/folklife/events/pasteventsmenu.html>.

The Center continues to produce a monthly feature about its archival collections for the Bob Edwards program on Sirius XM Radio.  Excerpts of interviews from the StoryCorps project, which are archived at AFC, are broadcast each Friday morning on National Public Radio.  We are seeing increasing researcher interest in the StoryCorps collection of more than 20,000 oral interviews, which was begun in 2003 and now includes the StoryCorp Griot collection of narratives from African Americans and stories from residents of nearly every state in the nation.

AFC conducted a field school about cultural documentation techniques at the University of Mississippi, in May.  Participants learned how to do ethnographic field research and then conducted a survey of local music traditions.  The Center’s recent acquisitions include the Documentary Arts National Heritage Fellows Collection comprising over 200 audio interviews with recipients of the National Endowment for the Arts National Heritage Fellows award. 

AFC’s digitized card catalog of its early field recordings, the Traditional Music and Spoken Word Catalog, has recently added digital audio for 639 titles, with more to come.  Please see URL  <http://memory.loc.gov/diglib/ihas/html/afccards/afccards-home.html>.  This online resource is being integrated into the Library’s Voyager integrated library system online catalog. For information contact AFC staff at 202-707-5510 or folklife@loc.gov, and visit the AFC Website at URL <http://www.loc.gov/folklife/>.

Veterans History Project of the American Folklife Center (VHP)
This congressionally mandated public outreach/collection development project is now in its ninth year and continues to expand. In 2008, over 7,500 additional collections were donated.  Organizations nationwide, including many libraries, have joined the effort to help gather and submit oral histories and supporting items for the VHP collection.  Descriptions of the over 65,000 collections can be searched at the VHP’s Website, URL <www.loc.gov/vets>.  Over 6,000 selected narratives are digitized, of which 20 percent offer transcripts on the project’s Website, along with a series of themed presentations under the title “Experiencing War.”  All collections can be served to researchers in LC’s American Folklife Center Reading Room.

The Veterans History Project continues to rely on a nationwide network of volunteers and organizations to collect veterans’ interviews.  Libraries are a valued resource in this effort, distributing information, coordinating VHP interviewing events, and making their facilities available to local VHP volunteers.  For additional information, see the project Website, www.loc.gov/vets, or call 202-707-4916.

Asian Division

The Asian American Pacific Islander collection (AAPI) Primary Holdings Initiative began in 2007 with the acquisition of materials on Carlos Bulosan, Filipino migrant worker/ author who dominated the literary scene in the mid 1930s through 1946,and Betty Lee Sung Collection from the noted author and leading East Coast researcher on Chinese American immigrants. The Primary Holdings Initiative to date totals seven collections, including: The James Miho Conceptual Diaries, The Royal Morales Papers, the Jade Snow Wong Collection, the Vietnamese American Archives, the Sikh Collection Initiative, and selected single-item donations from individuals.  Asian Division librarians Mari Nakahara and Reme Grefalda will introduce the AAPI Collection at the LC Exhibit Booth at ALA Annual Conference.

Collections Access, Loan, and Management Division

Off-Site Collections Storage at Ft. Meade. The Library continues to occupy existing available space at Ft. Meade, Md., and to construct additional modules at Ft. Meade.  Modules 1 and 2, opened in November 2002 and November 2005 respectively, were designed to house books and bound periodicals.  To date, approximately 2.8 million items have been transferred from Capitol Hill and the Landover Center Annex to these two modules. The Library has now received a certificate of occupancy for Modules 3 and 4.  Like Modules 1 and 2, these two modules are environmentally controlled at 50° F, 30 percent relative humidity, and will house primarily paper-based special format collections, such as sheet music, maps, bound newspaper volumes and manuscripts.  Four cold storage rooms are also being constructed as part of this project.  These rooms will house primarily color photographs and microfilm masters.  Three of the vaults will be maintained at 35° F, 30 percent relative humidity; one at 25° F, 30 percent relative humidity.

Federal Research Division (FRD)

FRD Military Legal Resources Website. Continued funding from the Army Judge Advocate General's Legal Center and School has allowed FRD to significantly increased the size of the Military Legal Resources Website <http://www.loc.gov/rr/frd/Military_Law/military-legal-resources-home.html>. It now has 1,344 documents (239,676 full-text, searchable document pages) relevant to U.S. military law (including rare historical documents). Among the significant additions to the site since December 2008 are the 889-page document: "The Trial of Henry Wirz: Letter from the Secretary of War ad Interim in answer to a resolution of the House of April 16, 1866, transmitting a summary of the trial of Henry Wirz " (United States. 40th Congress, 2d Session. 1867-1868. House Executive Document No. 23) (Captain Henry Wirz was the commandant of the Confederate Prison at Andersonville, Georgia); the individually published Indictments from the series of 12 trials known as the “Subsequent Nuremberg Proceedings” (Nuremberg Military Tribunals); and the “Report of War Department Advisory Committee on Military Justice (13 December 1946)” [commonly known as the Vanderbilt Report] and the two appendices to the committee report. These documents were previously unavailable to a wide audience.

FRD Country Studies. One book, North Korea, was published in January 2009. Three books are underway (Colombia, Indonesia, and Sudan), in various stages of completion. We expect Colombia to be published in September. Funded by the Department of Defense, the new books are no longer Army publications but publications of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

FRD Country Profiles. Funded by the Department of Defense, the FRD Country Profiles Website at URL <http://lcweb2.loc.gov/frd/cs/profiles.html> has 49 profiles.  Some were updated during 2008.

FRD POW/MIA Database. This congressionally mandated effort, ongoing since 1993, is current with the most recently released documents on unaccounted-for Americans from the War in Southeast Asia. Previously microfilmed documents are almost all linked to image files for online retrieval. The complete linking to all 153,867 documents is expected by September 2009.

Geography and Map Division

The Library of Congress has received a Cataloging Hidden Special Collections and Archives grant from the Council on Library and Information Resources (CLIR) to support a project that will catalog 125,000 sheet maps of Africa. The catalog records to be produced under the $240,240 grant will include geographic coordinates for each map that will permit geographic searching of the catalog records. The enhanced catalog data will make it possible to view the coverage area of individual sheet maps using geographical browsers such as Google Earth. The Cataloging Hidden Special Collections and Archives grant program is made possible by funding from The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.

Grushnikov Collection

The Oleg Pavlovich Grushnikov Collection of Russian Children’s Books contains approximately 5,500 volumes, i.e. approximately 125 linear feet. Most of the items in this collection are less than 50 pages and were published during the Soviet period. Some are translations of items originally in English or other western European languages. The items are housed in 253 acid-free document storage boxes and are available on-site via the Main Reading Room in the Thomas Jefferson Building or the reading rooms on the fifth floor of the John Adams Building. Individual titles can be identified by keyword searching of collection-level bibliographic records created for each box.  The collection will be of interest not only for its content for juvenile readers but also for the illustrations which will be valuable to historians.

Humanities and Social Sciences Division (HSS)

Only a Driver’s License (photo identification) is required to register to use Library’s Reading Rooms!

Web Archiving

Iraq War 2003 and Election 2004 Webarchives were released in 2009.  Election 2008 Webarchive selection was completed in December 2008 and will be available at a future date.

Digitizing Projects – see Sloan Digitization Project under TECHNOLOGY POLICY DIRECTORATE

Collection Development and Acquisitions

Growth of the Microform Custodial Collections. After the receipt of 86,506 items in fiscal 2008, the Microform Reading Room custodial collection grew to 8,110,477 items.

Growth of the Machine Readable Custodial Collections. During fiscal 2008, the Machine-Readable custodial collections received 2,776 items. The total MRC collection at the end of fiscal 2008 (Sept. 30, 2008) consisted of 83,057 items which includes: 42,707 Books and Serials with disks; 33,437 CD‑ROMs, 7,690 Software packages, and 223 video disks.

Key acquisitions.  ECCO  (Eighteenth Century Collections Online), Part II, was acquired by the Library in early June and added almost 50,000 titles or almost seven million pages of new content.

Music Division

The Music Division has acquired archival materials from the American Society of Composers, Authors, and Publisher (ASCAP) Foundation, the not-for-profit arm of the world's largest performing-rights organization, representing more than 275,000 creators.  Materials already received include music manuscripts, printed music, published and unpublished lyrics, scrapbooks, correspondence and other personal, business, legal and financial documents, scrapbooks, and film, video and sound recordings. Large, complete archives already received include those of ASCAP founding member Irving Caesar—writer of such memorable songs as "Swanee," "Tea For Two," and "Just A Gigolo"—and Harold Adamson, lyricist of "Around the World in 80 Days, "I Couldn’t Sleep a Wink Last Night," "An Affair to Remember" and the "I Love Lucy" theme. Materials will continue to arrive indefinitely, and those already received are currently being prepared for researchers. Those interested in using the archive are encouraged to submit their requests to the Music Division through Ask-A-Librarian at www.loc.gov/rr/askalib/ask-perform.html. Requests for materials should be made in advance of visits to the Performing Arts Reading Room, as ASCAP materials are currently stored offsite.

National Audio-Visual Center

The Library opened a 200-seat theater in the state-of-the-art Packard Campus of the National Audio-Visual Conservation Center on Mount Pony, near Culpeper, Va., on Sept. 4, 2008.  The theater is one of only five in the U.S. equipped to show original classic film prints on nitrate film stock as they would have been screened in theaters prior to 1950.  The Mount Pony theater also features a custom-made organ that can rise from a pit in the stage. In autumn 2008 the new theater showcased selected short subjects and feature film classics such as The Maltese Falcon, The Wizard of Oz, 42nd Street, and Gone With the Wind. The film series resumed on April 3, featuring new installments of ongoing series devoted to film adaptations of literary works and a special screening of the MGM classic Dinner at Eight, exactly 75 years after it originally premiered in the local Culpeper theater.  Of special note was an evening of silent film shorts from 1908, with live musical accompaniment.  A motion picture expert provided historical context for these rare films.

The series will resume July 9 with showings on Thursday, Friday, and Saturday evenings throughout the month of July.

All Packard Campus programs are free and open to the public. For reservation information, call (540) 827-1079 extension 79994 or (202) 707-9994 during business hours beginning one week before any given screening. For further information on the theater and film series, visit www.loc.gov/avconservation/theater/.

The theater is located on the ground floor of the Packard Campus of the National Audio-Visual Conservation Center, 19053 Mount Pony Rd., Culpeper, Va.

Prints and Photographs Division (P&P)

The Prints and Photographs Division offers a Web homepage at URL <http://www.loc.gov/rr/print/>. For ongoing information about newly available collections and recent and upcoming activities, see the "What's New" page at URL <http://www.loc.gov/rr/print/whatsnew.html>. An RSS feed is available for “Visual Resources: News from the Prints & Photographs Division.” Noteworthy online collections, acquisitions, research aids, and public programs, at URL <http://www.loc.gov/rss/>

Flickr Commons Pilot Project. The Flickr project page is at URL <http://www.loc.gov/rr/print/flickr_pilot_faq.html>. A comprehensive report on the first nine months of the Library’s Flickr pilot is at URL <http://www.loc.gov/rr/print/flickr_report_final.pdf> [PDF, 1.3 MB].
New sets of images feature:  Abraham Lincoln, International Women’s Day, Color travel views from Norway and Scotland, FSA/OWI favorites (“Migrant Mother”) at URL <http://www.flickr.com/photos/library_of_congress/sets/>  A new collection of Historic Newspapers from Chronicling America is also available at URL <http://www.flickr.com/photos/library_of_congress/collections/72157619370519453/>

Graphic Materials 2nd Edition with RBMS sponsorship. The editorial team for the "Descriptive Cataloging of Rare Materials (Graphics)," or DCRM(G), will meet for 2 days at ALA Annual Conference, July 13-14. The work-in-progress can be seen at URL <http://dcrmg.pbwiki.com>.

Collections Recently Processed and Made Available Online
Korab Collection.  800 interior and exterior views by master architectural photographer Balthazar Korab document nineteen sites by renowned architect Eero Saarinen. View online at URL <http://lcweb2.loc.gov/pp/krbhtml/krbabt.html>.

Japanese prints and drawings. All images now have titles (Japanese and English translation) and subjects, enhancing searching and identification of these woodblock prints and drawings, which date from the seventeenth to the twentieth centuries. View online at URL <http://lcweb2.loc.gov/pp/jpdhtml/jpdabt.html>.

Postcards. The Library's Junior Fellows selected more than 60 cards to indicate the wide variety of subjects and styles available in this visual format. View online.

Online Reference Aids
National Photo Company Collection Image Sampler.  Some staff favorites provide a sampling of the flavors to be savored in the National Photo Company Collection. Available as a slide show. URL <http://lcweb2.loc.gov/pp/npcohtml/npcosamp.html>.
Marjory Collins-Photojournalist biography.  An overview of the life and work of Marjory Collins has been added to the Women Photojournalists Webpages, URL <http://www.loc.gov/rr/print/coll/womphotoj/collinsintro.html>.

Pembroke Album. An overview and checklist of the 90 prints and 1 drawing English collectors Philip and Thomas Herbert, the 5th and 8th Earls of Pembroke, assembled between ca. 1683 and 1733. The prints are primarily chiaroscuro woodcuts by Italian printmakers active in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. URL <http://www.loc.gov/rr/print/coll/611_pembroke.html>

Also Rans: Losing Presidential Candidates of the United States. A selection of portraits of candidates who ran unsuccessfully for U.S. president in each election (but who sometimes succeeded in other election years!) is at URL <http://www.loc.gov/rr/print/list/060_ran_intr.html>

Acquisitions
Charles Randall Dean Collection. This exceptional collection of 125 Abstract Expressionist prints from the 1940s to the 1960s includes work by such noted American artists as James Budd Dixon, Sonia Gechtoff, Philip Guston, Grace Hartigan, James Kelly, Lee Krasner, Frank Lobdell, and Hedda Sterne. The collection is a purchase and gift from Charles Randall Dean in 2009. Press release: URL <http://www.loc.gov/today/pr/2009/09-056.html>

Serial and Government Publications Division (SER)

The Serial and Government Publications Division continues to work with the Center for Research Libraries (CRL) for cooperative microfilming under the NEH funded International Coalition on Newspapers (ICON), most recently providing our collection of volumes for the newspaper Universo of Guayaquil, Ecuador. 

Under a contract that began September, 2008, the division is nearing completion of an item-level inventory of its deacidified comic book collection (approximately 76,000 issues). Summary holding statements for comic book titles have started to be available via the Library’s integrated library system.

A Print Newspaper Inventory was completed after a year-long effort which ended in October 2008.  It resulted in publicly available summary holdings statements in the Library’s integrated library system (ILS) for all print newspaper volumes held in remote storage, totaling over 37,000 volumes.    This inventory was necessary for eventual collection transfer to a specially designed high-density storage module at F. Meade Maryland.  The effort identified some 2,000 newspaper titles that had never been cataloged by the Library.

This fiscal year (2009) the division began a concerted effort to create publicly available holdings statements in the ILS for all United States newspaper microfilm held in the division, converting a manual card file dating back to the division’s first newspaper filming efforts of the mid-twentieth century.  We expect to complete this effort in late 2010.

National Digital Newspaper Program (NDNP – Chronicling America):

The National Digital Newspaper Program (NDNP), a partnership between the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) and the Library of Congress (LC), is a long-term effort to develop an Internet-based, searchable database of all U.S. newspapers with descriptive information and select digitization of historic pages through the Website Chronicling America (URL <http://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/>).  This resource is hosted by the Library of Congress and made freely available to the general public. Supported by NEH, this rich digital resource will be developed and permanently maintained at the Library of Congress and eventually include content contributed by, all U.S. states and territories.

Chronicling America (URL <http://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/>) currently provides access to 1.24 million newspaper pages, digitized by 11 states and the Library of Congress. These historic newspapers include over 130 titles published between 1880 and 1922 in California, the District of Columbia, Florida, Hawaii, Kentucky, Minnesota, Missouri, Nebraska, New York, Texas, Utah, and Virginia. The site also includes an extensive Newspaper Directory of US newspaper titles published between 1690 and the present (approximately 140,000 bibliographic records) as well as associated library holdings information, and linked to digitized pages, when available. Features of the site include full-text search across all historic newspaper pages, the ability to view, magnify and manipulate newspaper pages with highlighted keyword search results, navigation between pages and issues, a quick calendar view of all digitized issues for a particular title, links to descriptive records for each digitized titles, a downloadable "See All" list of available digitized page content, as well as more than 60 contextual essays regarding the historical significance of each digitized newspaper. The next update (early September) will include more newspaper content from current states and new contributions from 2008 awardees Arizona, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Washington.

Additional information about the program is available from the NDNP Website at URL <http://www.loc.gov/ndnp> which describes the scope of the program, current awardees, selection guidelines, technical conversion specifications for historic newspapers, and sustainable development plans. In addition, the site provides access to the program and technical guidelines for the annual NEH program competition currently underway. In June, NEH announced new 2009 awardees in Illinois, Kentucky, Louisiana, Montana, Oklahoma, Oregon, and South Carolina, converting content published between 1860 and 1922. In August, NEH will announce new program guidelines (deadline November 2009) for NDNP awards up to $400,000 which will be made in June 2010.

Also in June 2009, the Library began contributing illustrated newspaper content to the Library’s Flickr pilot collections. These pages, selected from Illustrated Newspaper Supplements printed in the New-York Tribune in the early 1900s, cover diverse subjects and figures of historical interest.

Chronicling America provides a weekly notification service, via RSS or Email subscription, that highlights interesting content in the site, when new newspapers are added and program updates. Users can use the icons at the lower-left side of the Chronicling America Webpage to subscribe to the RSS (Real Simple Syndication) feed or sign up to receive the same information directly to their email in-box.

Veterans History Project - see American Folklife Center (AFC)/Veterans History Project

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PARTNERSHIPS AND OUTREACH PROGRAMS DIRECTORATE

Cataloging Distribution Service

Cataloger’s Desktop. “Desktop 3.0” – A major modernization of the product to enhance searching and navigation will be completed after the ALA annual meeting. Visit URL <www.loc.gov/cds/desktop> for the latest news. This online cataloging and metadata documentation service now features more than 280 resources, as well as Spanish-, French-, and German-language interfaces. For a free 30-day trial subscription visit <www.loc.gov/cds/desktop/OrderForm.html>. Product demonstrations can be seen throughout the day at the LC exhibit booth and at scheduled LC booth theater presentations (check Cognotes for theater times). A brochure about the product is available at the booth.

Classification Web. CDS’s best selling web-based product features LC classification schedules and tables that are updated daily. Records display non-Roman captions where applicable. For a free 30-day trial subscription visit URL <www.loc.gov/cds/classweb/application.html>. Product demonstrations can be seen throughout the day at the booth and at scheduled LC booth theater presentations (check Cognotes for theater times). A brochure about the product is available at the booth.

Classification Schedules. New schedules now available: PT: German, Dutch, and Scandinavian Literatures (2009 edition) and Q: Science (2009 edition). Coming in July: K, Law in General (2009 edition);  T, Technology (2009 edition); and Z, Bibliography, Library Science, Information Resources (2009 edition). Coming in Fall 2009: PB-PH: Modern European Languages (2009 edition). Visit <www.loc.gov/cds/classif.html> for the latest information.

FREE PDF Versions of Selected Publications. All back issues of Cataloging Service Bulletin (Nos. 1-123) are now available at URL <http://www.loc.gov/cds/freepdf.html>. Also available at the same site, the latest issues of the following publications as they are published: updates to Library of Congress Rule Interpretations, updates to Subject Headings Manual, updates to CONSER Cataloging Manual, updates to CONSER Cataloging Manual, updates to Descriptive Cataloging Manual, and updates to MARC 21 format documentation.

Library of Congress Subject Headings, 31st edition (2009). Features a new sixth volume at no extra cost: Supplementary Vocabularies, which includes free-floating subdivisions, genre/form headings, and children’s subject headings. Supplementary Vocabularies is also sold as a stand-alone item, which may interest school and special librarians.

MARC 21 Format for Bibliographic Data. This 2009 cumulation is a reprint of the base text with Updates Nos. 1-9 interfiled.

MARC 21 Concise Formats. The 2008 edition (published 2009) is now available.

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Center for the Book

Young Readers Center. As part of the Library’s increased interest in sharing its resources with young people, the Center for the Book will oversee and operate the new Young Readers Center in the Thomas Jefferson Building, set to open this fall. The YRC will play a leading role in the Library’s promotion of books, reading, literacy and learning to a K-12 audience. Young people, as well as their parents, care-givers, teachers and librarians will participate in the YRC’s programs and activities. 

National Ambassador for Young People’s Literature. In January 2009, noted children’s author Jon Scieszka began his second and final year as the National Ambassador for Young People's Literature, a project co-sponsored by the Center for the Book and the Children's Book Council, one of the center’s national reading promotion partners. Scieszka has been an extraordinary advocate for the importance of reading in young people’s lives, traveling the nation on behalf of the National Ambassador program and spreading the word about the Library’s outreach programs for young readers. He will appear at this year’s National Book Festival on Sept. 26.

Letters About Literature. The Center is once again co-sponsoring with Target the Letters About Literature contest for children in grades 4 though 12, encouraging them to write a letter to an author (living or dead) explaining how that writer’s work affected them. Winners and their schools receive cash awards at the state and national levels. More than 54,000 letters were entered in last year’s contest. For more information, go to URL <www.lettersaboutliterature.org/>.

Other Activities. In conjunction with the National Book Festival, on Sept. 26 the Center for the Book will launch a new Website at URL <www.read.gov>.  It will be the Library’s reading promotion and literacy site. Audience pages will be designed especially for children, young adults, adults, and teachers and librarians.
A highlight of the site will be a 26-installment serialized story, with new installments appearing every two weeks. The first chapter of the story will be written by Jon Scieszka, the Library’s National Ambassador for Young People’s Literature, and the last chapter will be written by the new Ambassador, who will assume the role in January 2010. Well-known children’s book authors will write the intervening chapters and top artists will illustrate the story. The serialized story is being developed with the National Children’s Book and Literacy Alliance (URL <http://www.thencbla.org/>), a Center for the Book partner.

On June 9, the Library of Congress and the government of the U.S. Virgin Islands announced the creation of the Virgin Islands Center for the Book, the first center affiliate in the United States territories.

Federal Library and Information Center Commttee (FLICC)/FEDLINK

For the third year in a row, FLICC and FAFLRT are co-sponsoring an ALA pre-conference workshop, “Careers in Federal Libraries.” Roberta Shaffer, Executive Director of FLICC/FEDLINK, will serve as the convener for the day-long workshop to be held at the Harold Washington Center of the Chicago Public Library on Friday, July 10, from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m.  Other sponsors include the Louisiana State University School of Library and Information Science, Dominican University Graduate School of Library & Information Science, and the Library Associates Companies. 

Interpretive Programs Office

With Malice Toward None: The Abraham Lincoln Bicentennial Exhibition was open in the Library’s Thomas Jefferson Building from February 12 through May 10, 2009.  Featuring dozens of items from the LC collections, the exhibition will now travel to the California Museum, Sacramento; the Newberry Library, Chicago, Ill.; the Indiana State Museum, Indianapolis; the Atlanta History Center, Atlanta, Ga.; and the Durham Western Heritage Museum, Omaha, Neb., from 2009 through 2011.

           

With Bantam Dell, the Library co-published a companion volume to the exhibition, In Lincoln’s Hand: His Original Manuscripts with Commentary by Distinguished Americans.

The Library further marked the bicentennial of Lincoln’s birth with a full-day symposium on March 4, 2009, and teacher institutes on February 27-28; March 3-5; March 27-29; and April 6-8, 2009.

Kluge Center/Office of Scholarly Programs

Librarian of Congress James H. Billington announced on April 13 that he has appointed Kay Ryan of California to a second year-long term as the nation’s 16th Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry.

Jeffrey C. Alexander, the Lillian Chavenson Saden Professor of Sociology at Yale University, was a Distinguished Visiting Scholar at the Library’s John W. Kluge Center from January through June 2009. His research focused on the performative aspects of U.S. presidential campaigns, especially the 2008 campaign.

Marie Arana was named a distinguished visiting scholar on June 16.  She is pursuing research on Simón Bolívar, famed as the liberator of Latin America from Spain. From 1999 to 2008, Arana was editor-in-chief of Book World, the literary review section of the Washington Post, and is currently a writer-at-large for the Post.

National Library Service for the Blind and Physically Handicapped (NLS)

The National Library Service for the Blind and Physically Handicapped (NLS) on June 19 presented awards to the Perkins Library for the Blind of Watertown, Mass., and to the Miami-Dade Public Library System’s Talking Books Library Service of Florida. The Watertown library received the Network Library of the Year Award for outstanding accomplishments in 2008. The annual award, in its fifth year, carries a $1,000 cash prize. The Miami-Dade Public Library System received the third annual Network Subregional Library of the Year Award, which also carries a $1,000 cash prize.

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PRESERVATION DIRECTORATE

Outreach and Leadership

New RSS feed. The Preservation Directorate launched its first RSS feed, Preservation News, to deliver announcements on research updates, presentations, publications, public programs, training initiatives, Webpages, etc. directly to subscribers’ email or RSS readers.  Those interested in subscribing should go to URL <http://www.loc.gov/rss/> and click, under Topics, on Collections Preservation.

Staff presentations. For the American Institute for Conservation’s Annual Meeting, 6 presentations covered effects of sizing and watercolor pigments, longevity of CDs and DVDs, use of x-ray fluorescence and hyperspectral imaging to reveal “hidden” information, design of eco-friendly science labs, and the transfer of technology from industry to conservation.  LC scientists spoke at 3 other US venues on hyperspectral imaging of the Library’s collections: for ALA Midwinter Meeting; the San Jose SPIE symposium; and the Imaging Science and Technology Archiving Conference at Crystal City, introducing a proposed standard for the customization of the Resource Description Framework (RDF) for the semantic description and interchange of preservation reference materials.  In addition, scientists reported on LC’s 2008 Summit of Research Scientists (SORS) symposium at a Mellon-funded meeting focused on addressing collaborative research between cultural and academic institutions. (URL <http://www.loc.gov/preserv/symposia/SORSarticle.html>).

Preservation scientists also presented papers at 5 international venues: on the use of anoxic cases to reduce harmful oxidation of collections, for the Bibliothèque nationale de France’s IFLA program “In and Out of Air Strategies”; on collaborations among cultural, academic and other institutions, for the British Library’s “Advances in Paper Conservation Research” conference; on joint advances, at the University of Otago’s 2009 Patricia Coleman Alumni lecture; on natural fibers, at an International Textile Institute Australasian conference; and on prioritization of research, policies, and methods balancing preservation of collections with requirements to reduce energy consumption and develop international materials science-based standards for cultural collections, for a UK meeting entitled “Environmental Guidelines, Opportunities and Risks (EGOR).” 

Public programs. Seven talks in the “Topics in Preservation Series” (TOPS) are now viewable online (URL <http://www.loc.gov/today/cyberlc/results.php?mode=s&cat=50>). These include a presentation by Frank Abagnale (of Catch Me if You Can movie fame) on consulting with the FBI on forgeries; haptic virtual reality simulation for conservation training; digitizing the Archimedes palimpsest; preservation of intangible cultural heritage; daguerreotypes; collaborative conservation; and CAMEO, a free conservation and art materials encyclopedia online.

Publications. Staff contributed to a dozen publications, including the second edition of “Foundation Grants for Preservation in Libraries, Archives, and Museums,” which lists 1,944 grants of $5,000 or more awarded by 488 foundations since 2004 to archives, museums and special, public, academic, research, and school libraries for preservation activities. It includes hotlinks to free online grant writing tutorials, a statistical analysis of grant funding, state-by-state descriptions of projects funded in preservation, indexes of recipients, and a list of all foundations that have donated to preservation (URL <http://www.loc.gov/preserv/foundtn-grants.pdf> [PDF: 2.3 MB]).

Website Outreach. Staff updated dozens of Websites, including alerts on emergency preparedness, who to contact for guidance, where to go for supplies, and how to protect and salvage collections from earthquakes, fire, floods, hurricanes, mudslides, and tornados (http://www.loc.gov/preserv/emergprep/prepare.html). 

MayDay Website. In commemoration of MayDay, the Preservation Directorate developed a disaster preparedness tool that diagrams escalating emergency scenarios (for collections repositories) ranging from presence of water and contaminants to lack of staff, electricity and other building infrastructure, in order to aid libraries, archives, and museums in evaluating their emergency planning.  The scenarios can serve as the basis of 'table top', 'talk-through' or ‘walk-through’ rehearsals to help identify response challenges (URL <http://www.loc.gov/preserv/emergprep/scenarios.html>).

Customers. To serve internal and external partners, staff contributed to more than three dozen tours (of Preservation’s conservation, binding and collections care, mass deacidification, reformatting, and research and testing operations) to over 100 visitors, many from overseas, as well as a half dozen long and short-term collaborations with internal and external partners (on recent trends and developments in preservation). Particularly notable is a collaboration with ALA for a National Preservation Week, to be held in March 2010.

Science Publications

Preservation Directorate scientists authored 11 publications (see  URL <http://www.loc.gov/preserv/Current-pubs.html>) on topics including anoxic encasements; trace element fingerprinting with laser ablation-inductively coupled mass spectrometry; creating a composite cultural heritage artifact as a digital object; convergence of information technology, data and management (in Library Quarterly); best practice/standards in environmental preservation; and testing for volatile organic compounds in books, papers and cellulose acetate laminated documents. 

Training Initiatives and Special Collaborative Programs

Funding Webinar. Staff developed several programs in honor of MayDay, a day devoted to protecting cultural heritage from disasters (URL <http://www.heritagepreservation.org/PROGRAMS/TFlessons/MayDay.html>). The Conservation Division Chief gave a free Webinar on “Finding Funds to Conserve and Preserve Your Collections,” through OCLC to 60 international librarians and archivists.  The Webinar is archived at URL: <http://www.webjunction.org/processing-and-preservation/-/articles/content/58677385>.

Safety Net III Workshop. Co-hosted with FLICC, this June 24 emergency mitigation workshop for federal and other local libraries on “Getting Your Feet Wet: Recovering Water-Damaged Collections” enhanced the network of regional responders to provide mutual assistance in salvage of collections in the event of a local disaster (URL <http://www.loc.gov/preserv/symposia/schedule.html>). A follow-up meeting invited salvage vendors to outline their services and products for Library and FLICC members.

Preservation Summer Institute. Co-hosted by FLICC, this cooperative program focuses on introducing participants to the theory of preservation through online classes developed by the Northeast Document Conservation Center, reinforced by weeklong direct observation of practice by preservation staff at the Library, and followed by tailored online courses produced by Lyrasis.   Please see URL <http://www.loc.gov/flicc/education/PresEd/index_presed.html>.

Summit on Research Technology Transfer. Planning began for a fall meeting of approximately two dozen scientists from federal and other public laboratories (including the FBI, DHS, NIH and New York Public Library) to discuss advances in forensic, analytical, and polymer science research; industrial, earth resource, and aerospace technology; and cultural heritage preservation.  The focus will be micro, non-destructive, and lifetime predictive testing, including advanced spectral imaging, global positioning, navigation and timing systems, and open source software for data mining and reference collections, all within collaborative frameworks (URL <http://www.loc.gov/preserv/symposia/schedule.html>).

Archival and Special Collections Building Standard. In collaboration with the Society of American Archivists a 123 page facility standard “Archival and Special Collections Facilities Guidelines for Archivists, Librarians, Architects, and Engineers,” was drafted for electronic publication later in 2009. The publication covers building site selection, construction, facility environment, fire protection, security, lighting, materials and finishes, storage equipment, functional spaces, prohibited materials, and definitions.

My Conservation Space. The Conservation Division chief met with representatives from the Mellon Foundation and conservators from across the nation to draft a set of functional requirements enabling conservation laboratories to manage digital conservation documentation in an open source environment.  The proposed requirements cover acquisitions, analysis, condition check, damage and incident response, donor development, education and outreach, environmental monitoring, exhibition, in-situ work, inter-institutional collaboration, lab management, loans, managing and preserving documentation, packing and transport, photography, repatriation, research, survey, and treatment (URL <http://www.conservationspace.org/Blog/>).

Content

Statistics indicate that by mid-year, almost 160,000 items were assessed, over 200,000 were rehoused, and over 650,000 books, serials, and other works were treated, mass deacidified, reformatted or bound.

Binding and Collections Care Division

Staff continued to work closely with custodial units to provide binding and collections conservation for general collections and reference materials.  Special projects have included binding of music scores and rebinding of county atlases held in the Geography and Maps Division.

Conservation Division

The Conservation Division underwent renovations improving the functionality of the book, paper and photo conservation spaces, consisting of new countertops, flooring, fume hood and other equipment enhancements, and the addition of a light bleaching system and extraction trunk.  Highlight treatments focused on the Engineering Society Library and the Peggy Clark Theatrical Design collections, as well as the Geography and Maps globe collection.  Over 2,000 oversized maps, photographs, drawings, and special format materials from the Engineering Society Library Collection were assessed, treated, and/or rehoused, including a large album of panoramic photographs of the legendary Klondike region, hand-bound in caribou leather and featuring genuine flakes of gold from the region on the cover.  Other special treatments included brittle blueprints that previously crumpled in the hands of researchers, now made usable for reference use. Preventive conservators continued rehousing 320 twentieth century globes, in preparation for offsite storage, encapsulating bibliographic information and a photo of each globe, affixed to the front of each globe’s box.  Team members are currently outfitting the interior of each box with foam to protect the globes during handling and transport.  Staff also rehoused personal papers documenting the life work of Peggy Clark, the foremost designer of American theater lighting. 

Environmental improvements. Staff continued their ongoing investigative partnership with the Image Permanence Institute (IPI), Herzog Wheeler, the Architect of the Capitol, and LC Facilities Services to analyze and improve the environment for collection storage and exhibition on Capitol Hill and offsite campuses.  Staff continued work with IPI and Zaks.com to develop “MyClimateData” custom software for organizing, analyzing, and sharing collections storage data.  The system also has the ability to link information on other preventive concerns.

Preservation Reformatting Division

Staff are establishing and updating several programs: preservation facsimile photocopying (starting a new contract), master negative inventory to prepare the first items to be transferred to Ft. Meade's Module 3, and working with Library Services’ Business Enterprises operation to determine responsibility for microfilming operations under more rigorous safety and environmental concerns.

Preservation Research and Testing Division

Staff moved into the new, highly functional Optical Properties science lab, which includes a new environmental electron scanning microscope, as well as a hyperspectral integrated imaging system, with a low heat light emitting diode (LED) lighting system that allows very low light, high resolution imaging with a 39MPixel camera from the ultra-violet, visible and infrared spectral regions. Imaging throughout visible and non-visible spectrums with narrow wavebands allows the capture of lost or hidden text on documents and manuscripts, mapping and spectral characterization of substrates and media, and assessment of previous treatments.

Hyperspectral Imaging Projects.  Over a half-dozen Top Ttreasures and other items were imaged using the full range of spectral regions allowed by the new system, revealing, on the L’Enfant Plan of Washington D.C. (1791), details obscured by varnish (including streets, the presidential “palace” and landscape) and on the First Draft of the Gettysburg Address, previously unseen details (such as fingerprints and hidden pencil marks).  Other items imaged included a rare Korean pre-metal type catalog, a Chinese atlas with possible hidden tax documents in the backing paper, and the Novorank Gospel illuminated pages. A project to assess the technique’s efficacy for capturing watermarks focused on the James Madison papers.  Another project used hyperspectral imaging to detect subtle changes that might result from exhibition of fragile items such as daguerreotypes, before, during and after the Lincoln Bicentennial exhibit.  Because of the particularly fragile surfaces of un-gilded daguerreotypes, tests determined that imaging was effective even when the surfaces were protected by ultra clear quartz glass. Conservators from George Eastman House made a trip to DC to observe this test imaging of daguerreotypes.

Anoxic Case Projects. Several of the most valuable or at-risk treasures of LC are stored and displayed in cases containing inert gases and sealed to prevent the intrusion of degradative oxygen.  LC has developed an ongoing program to test, monitor and improve these cases as necessary. In particular, a year of monitoring of the newly encased Waldseemüller 1507 World Map revealed that the hermetic seal for the new case may block significant oxygen seepage up to 150 years, rather than the stipulated 25-30 year requirement (depending on the long-term aging of the viton gasket). The older, original anoxic case for the First Draft of the Gettysburg Address was retrofitted prior to installation in the new Capitol Visitor Center exhibit, following collaboration with the National Institute of Standards and Technology’s fabrication division to enhance welds. The older cases for the Rough Draft of the Declaration of Independence and the Virginia Declaration of Rights are currently undergoing assessments for performance and leak rates.

Mass Deacidification

Special projects this year have focused on prospective processing of (newly-acquired) monographs and serials inspected and determined to be printed on acidic paper in Preservation or in the ABA cataloging divisions.  Other collections include Congressional Hearings and Reports, legal publications and reference materials from the Law Library; historical files of the NAACP from the Manuscript Divison; and retrospective language and other monographs and/or serials from the Asian Division, AMED and CALM.

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TECHNOLOGY POLICY DIRECTORATE

The Technology Policy Directorate consists of the Automation Planning and Liaison Office (APLO), the Network Development and MARC Standards Office (NSMDO), and the Integrated Library System Program Office (ILSPO).  The three offices work closely together and with the staff of the Information Technology Services Directorate in the Office of Strategic Initiatives.
 
Standards Projects

NDMSO maintains international standards for search, Z39.50 and SRU; data formats such as MARC, MODS, and EAD; technical metadata standards such as METS, MIX, and textMD; and PREMIS, the data element set for preservation of digital library resources.    A tutorial that introduces practitioners to PREMIS and a guideline for using PREMIS with METS were both recently completed and Webpublished.  The Office organized an international Editorial Committee for the ongoing maintenance of MODS, a standard LC developed with the community that is heavily used for the description of digital resources.   The Office is in the process of assuming a maintenance role for ALTO, an XML schema standard that assists with the translation of scanned text into character text for better searching.  An abstract protocol definition for SRU was completed for an international standards committee, OASIS, and sent for public review.

Work with an international committee to propose changes to the MARC 21 format to better accommodate RDA resulted in another group of Proposals and Discussion Papers to be taken to MARBI in Chicago (July 2009).  The January 2009 changes previously passed but not yet published were described in a Web document for use by testers of RDA.

XML Data Store

The XML Data Store Pilot Project is aimed at providing "seamless access" across all of the types of metadata for LC collections, including ILS, American Memory, electronic archival descriptions, Performing Arts Encyclopedia, HLAS, and other large and small databases, which contain records formatted using MARC, non-MARC XML, EAD, MODS, etc.  A successful pilot, completed in the fall of 2008 by staff in NDMSO, demonstrated simultaneous search and retrieval across both MARC and EAD records for the first time at LC.  It has been followed by development of an RFP for procurement of "native XML" database software.  Following installation of the database software in July 2009, the ILS records, EAD records, and several smaller files will be loaded to test management and integrated search.  Analysis of the metadata in the ILS and the EAD systems was begun.

ID.LOC.GOV Project

Staff of NDMSO implemented a publicly-available alpha version of a Webservice.   It is a portal for developers – whether local or external to LC – to enable them to programmatically interact with vocabularies commonly found in standards promulgated by LC.   The system stores the vocabularies as SKOS data to enable querying and accessibility for semantic Webprojects that occur at the Library or in the community.  In April, 2009 the Beta version of ID.LOC.GOV with the LCSH vocabulary went live.  This will be followed by other value standards, ranging in content and size from the Thesaurus for Graphic Materials, to MARC language and other code lists, to PREMIS Preservation Events.  Users have the option to have data presented back to them in several formats. 

Digital Portal Projects

The Performing Arts Encyclopedia (PAE), Veterans History, and other portal projects implemented by NDMSO staff enable the investigation of new approaches to digital site creation and delivery to end users.  Recent work on a collection of Coptic material instigated the development of new types of sorting, and the growing size of the various sites provided a test bed for increasing auto-generation and optimization of browse options.  Another issue tackled recently is the coordination of digital page content, transcription of content, and audio files for content.

Recent releases have included a site celebrating the 200th anniversary of the birth of Felix Mendelssohn and another featuring the rare musical instruments in the Library’s collection.  A special collection of newly digitized material was made available for the 100th birthday of composer Elliot Carter.  The Veteran’s History Project added new content on the helicopters and other multi-mission aircraft and on the 92nd Division in Italy, a black unit in WWII that used the “buffalo soldier” symbol.

NDMSO staff have recently completed an initial release of a processing tool for the Music Division that enables their digital project team to add material to the PAE sites independently and efficiently.  After scanning of an item takes place, music staff can view the digital image online, make adjustments, call for generation of the MODS and METS records, and finally see the presentation in a test environment before going live.  Part of this process is the machine harvesting of MARC records from Voyager for the MODS records needed by the PAE site followed by ongoing synchronization of the MARC master record and the MODS record.

Music Treasures Consortium

For the Music Division, NDMSO staff are building a resource sharing system with several other institutions that have special and rare musical manuscripts, is a valuable experiment for sharing metadata while leaving the resources at the original site.  While some of the participating libraries follow the same standards as LC, others are more archival in their approach to metadata, making integration of metadata to form a coherent set challenging.  NDMSO staff are currently loading record sets from the partners in test.

Library of Congress WebArchive

This project is for a system to make the Web archives being collected by curatorial staff accessible to the public.  It is a multi unit collaboration with Collections and Services staff selecting the topics and sites to be harvested; OSI and ITS supplying the software to carry out the crawls and storage for the voluminous files; ABA creating MODS records for the sites largely with data derived from the sites by OSI or automatically supplied by NDMSO; and NDMSO developing a access system and loading the metadata into it for end user search and view.  Over the last year OSI has made major enhancements to the crawling part of the operation by installing the Internet Archive crawling software at LC.  NDMSO is also currently optimizing the browse capability of the access system, enabling popup expansions for searching, and investigating new search facets.   Four topical collections have recently been added for public access, 2 more are almost ready, and several are being processed.

Website Enhancement

Some recently completed projects were the reworking of the Photoduplication Service site, the redesign of the Librarians page off the LC home page, a consolidation of maps pages, the Automated Call Slip user interface, the EAD database project interface, and the ERMS staff interface.

Standards Agencies

NDMSO staff members also represented the Library in important standards organizations such as the W3C (World Wide Web Consortium), SKOS (Simple Knowledge Organization System), NISO (National Information Standards Organization) ISO (International Organization for Standardization), ICADS (IFLA-Conference of Directors of National Libraries Alliance for Digital Strategies), and OASIS (Organization for the Advancement of Structured Information Standards).  Ballots and issues from these groups are maintained on an ongoing basis for LC staff participation via internal Webpages.

Metaproxy Project

NDMSO staff are spearheading a project that obtains enhancements from the Metaproxy source to enable the provision of a single Z39.50/SRU gateway to several Library Services databases.  That gateway has been highly successful as a front end to the ILS main file, where over half of the searches come in via Z or SRU.  The enhanced software will also help protect LC databases from abusive external clients.  The contractor has obtained requirements from NDMSO staff and is close to beginning to require user testing.

Metadata for Digital Content

Over the years, LC's digital projects have generated many digital objects such as converted or scanned historical content in multiple formats, Webpages, captured Webcontent from other sites, legislative information, Webcasts of LC events, and historical newspapers. Because these objects have various levels and types of descriptive metadata associated with them, in February, staff in Library Services and the Office of Strategic Initiatives undertook a project to:

1) recommend a common set of metadata elements that can be used to support access to content across different sources for current and future expected uses.

2) focus on selecting and creating consistent metadata for access and use of the digital objects.

3) recommend how to develop manual and automated processes to accomplish this.

The team has compiled, thus far, 14 profiles from such diverse sets of metadata as American Memory, World digital Library, ITunes, LC exhibits, and Korean serials, to name a few.  The target is that following the development of a set of projects aimed at metadata remediation, LC will be able to access these materials in a more consistent manner and will have guidelines and a process for going forward with new projects.  MODS is the target format for the data, with reference to the DLF/Aquifer guidelines for sharable MODS records.  The unified guidelines and best practices for these data sets and any remediation tools developed by LC that could be used by others will be made available from the LC Website.

LC EAD (Encoded Archival Description) Archival Finding Aids

In 2009, LS Collections and Services divisions created over 125 new EAD archival finding aids, bringing the total number of LC EAD finding aids to 675.  Users are now able to access more than 24 million archival items in LC’s collections through these documents, an increase of over 1 million archival items in the last year.  LC collection-level MARC data is extracted from the LC Online Catalog using SRU/MARCXML to incorporate collection summaries and controlled names and subjects into each EAD.  Browse lists are automatically generated for names, subjects, collection titles, collection dates, and LC repository.  The PDF versions of these LC XML documents are prominently indexed by Google and Yahoo, providing  increased visibility to LC’s archival collections.

NDMSO staff has created an updated processing stream for transforming Finding Aids that were put into a word processor in the past into XML EADs.

The Library’s EAD Website (URL <http://www.loc.gov/rr/ead/>) has been revised and now contains a searchable Webversion of EAD Best Practices at the Library of Congress. Work is also underway to move the Library’ two EAD InQuery-based search applications to a single native XML datastore platform using METS and the EAD XML schema. This project will provide a testbed for keyword searching, browsing, and display generation using XQuery and XPath. A native XML datastore will be Unicode-compliant and will offer tools that hopefully resolve indexing and display problems for the Library’s very large EAD finding aids.

Metasearch  Project 

On June 2, 2009, the Library deployed a new release of LC Metasearch. This application offers users a single search interface across multiple Library databases and digital collections. It currently serves as the default search from the Library of Congress home page and several Library Webpages.   Major revisions from the earlier application include: 

• Every search defaults to all targets.
• Search results are displayed in a single merged, relevancy-ranked results list.
• Searches may be narrowed by limits.

This project is led by Information Technology Services and the Office of Strategic Initiatives, with participation from ILS and NDMSO staff in Library Services.

LC Persistent Identifiers

To persistently identify LC-managed e-resources, Library staff registered more than 700,000 handles in 2009.  As of June 2009, the Library’s handle server contained 2,506,857 handles. Over the past year, ILS staff oversaw the assignment of LC handles to, for example, materials digitized in a number of LC cooperative projects, World Digital Library items, U.S. legislation searchable in Thomas, and  digital books created by National Library Service for the Blind and Physically Handicapped.
LCCN Permalink (http://lccn.loc.gov/), a Webservice that allows users to create permanent URL links to records in the Library's Online Catalog (http://catalog.loc.gov/), continues to be popular.  Nearly 10,000 daily requests enable researchers to reference materials from the Library's collection in their blogs, reference guides, Webpages, emails, bibliographies, databases, and more.  LCCN Permalink is completely standards-based, leveraging widely used XML technologies, Z39.50/SRU, and metadata schemas.       

Integrated Library System Increased Access

Usage of the LC Online Catalog (http://catalog.loc.gov/) continues to rise.  Last year the Library upgraded its hardware and software, which enabled the Library to increase the number of simultaneous external sessions in the LC Online Catalog.  As a result the number of simultaneous external sessions increased 60% in the past 12 months and in LC Authorities by 75%.  Denials of service were reduced from thousands per day during the North American academic year to only a handful on a few peak days.  ILS staff continue to monitor activity and the number of simultaneous sessions in order to eliminate the number of denials of service altogether.

Automated Call Slip and Reader Registration upgrades

In April the Library upgraded its Reader Registration System, which enables public users to be established as patrons in the Library’s ILS.  In May, the Library implemented a completely new Automated Call Slip (ACS) service in the LC Online Catalog, which enables patrons to request materials from the General Collections online.  Patrons are now able to view their accounts in the LC Online Catalog to get real-time information on their ACS requests and charged items.

Electronic Resource Management System

ILS staff continued development of the Library’s ERMS, a software application from Innovative Interfaces (III), to improve Internet access to electronic resources, including bibliographic data, holdings data, and licensing information.  System users are advised not only of the means to connect directly with desired content, but also of any permissions and restrictions associated with that access.  System development in fiscal 2009 focused on the ERMS OPAC.  Scoped searching was added to better focus searches on specific types of resources and customized record elements were added to increase searching options.  Library staff were introduced to the system in April 2009.  After completion of the OPAC development, efforts will turn to additional enhancements to support public access.  Currently, records in the system include 43,080 bibliographic, 75,710 holdings, 556 resource, 558 license, 226 order, and 145 contact records.

Usage statistics based on the standard protocol, SUSHI (Standardized Usage Statistics Harvesting Initiative), were systematically loaded into the ERMS in fiscal 2009.  Voyager acquisitions data was periodically loaded to the ERMS in fiscal 2009.  The combination of usage statistics and cost data in the ERMS enables cost-per-use analysis, which is a new feature of the current system.

Sloan Digitization Project

The Library of Congress will digitally scan "The Heroic Life of Abraham Lincoln: The Great Emancipator" as the 25,000th book in its "Digitizing American Imprints" program, which scans aging "brittle" books often too fragile to serve to researchers. The Library’s first mass-digitization effort focusing on general collection materials, the program is sponsored by a $2 million grant from the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation. The Library, which has contracted with the Internet Archive for digitization services, is combining its efforts with other libraries as part of the open content movement. The movement, which includes over 100 libraries, universities and cultural institutions, aims to digitize and make freely available public-domain books in a wide variety of subject areas.

Books scanned in this pilot project come primarily from the Library’s local history and genealogy sections of the General Collections. For many of these titles, only a few copies exist anywhere in the world, and a reader would need to travel to Washington to view the Library’s copy. Now, the works can be accessed freely online or downloaded for closer inspection or printing. Readers can search the text for individual words, making the digital copy an even more valuable research tool than the original.

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