From: "William Z Schenck" <wsch_at_loc.gov>
LIBRARY OF CONGRESS
June, 1999
Report on collection development activities at the Library of
Congress prepared for the Collection Development Officers of Large Research
Libraries Discussion Group for its summer, ALA meeting.
Budget: The Library has requested a 3% increase in its materials
budget (an increase of $266,000), and a 3.9% increase in the Law materials
budget (an increase of $53,000) for FY2000. Congress has not yet approved
the Library's budget for FY2000, which begins October 1. These increases
represent what we believe necessary to cover increased inflationary costs
and are based on a fifteen year history of LC's spending patterns. As the
Library receives most books and serials published or distributed in the
U.S. through copyright, the Library's estimated inflationary increases are
not transferable to other situations.
Acquisitions Travel: Acquisitions trips taken since the first of
the year include travel to Vietnam, Thailand, and Manila (taken in
cooperation with the Jakarta Office), to Austria (to work with the
Library's approval plan vendor), and to Nicaragua. Trips planned for the
remainder of the fiscal year include Israel, Algeria and Cairo (by the
Library's new Arab specialist), Cambodia and Laos, Romania, and Martinique,
Barbados, and several other Caribbean islands.
Policies: After much discussion and many drafts, a new policy on
collecting electronic resources is in the final review stage. We are
planning to review the policy on collecting foreign government
publications, with special emphasis on publications at the subnational and
city level. This policy was last revised in 1994.
Collections: We are working on several initiatives relating to the
collections. We are examining our collection of information produced by
local, state, and regional governments and organizations to insure we are
acquiring all appropriate materials (in all formats). This may result in
accelerated visitation to state libraries*currently two to three state
libraries are visited by our state documents specialist every year. We have
initiated an approval plan with our British vendor. Currently we just
receive slips notifying us of new British publications. Acquisitions and
selection of British books has always been somewhat problematical due to
the large number of British titles either published or distributed in the
U.S. and thus obtained through copyright. In mid-June staff from the Area
Studies, Acquisitions and the Cataloging directorates met with Deborah
Jakubs, director of ARL's Global Resources Program, to share information
and to discuss additional ways for the Library to participate with ARL and
other research libraries in this program.
The Library is representing the U.S. in a project to digitize the
archives of the Soviet Union's COMINTERN for the period from 1919-1941.
The COMINTERN (an abbreviation for the Communist International) was the
organization of Communist parties throughout the world controlled by the
Soviet Communist Party. This is a joint project with the Russian State
Archives, LC, and four European libraries to provide electronic access to
these archives.
As part of the Library's ambitious Bicentennial celebration , the
Library is sponsoring the Local Legacies Project, in which Americans across
the nation are working with their members of Congress to document unique
traditions for the collections of the American Folklife Center. Additional
information on this project appears in an article in the June/July issue of
American Libraries. Under the Gifts to the Nation project, the Library is
raising funds to acquire major collections, and individual items, of
importance to the nation. An important piece of this is the Jefferson
Library reconstruction project*the restoration of items >from Thomas
Jefferson's library which were lost in the 1851 fire. The Jefferson
project has been helped by a major gift from Jerry Jones of Dallas. Gifts
received to date are listed on the LC web site.
Preservation/Deacidification: The Library is now in the second
year of a four-year project to deacidify materials. Books and serials
selected for deacidification come from those collections relating to
American history, literature, and culture. So far, about 225,000 books
have been deacidified.. About one-third of the titles in a subject area are
selected for deacidification. Books which are too brittle, those already
on acid-free paper, or multiple copies (only one copy is treated) are not
selected for deacidification. If at the end of the first phase additional
money is available, tentative plans are to include manuscripts, music
scores, as well as in-coming materials on acidic paper.
Electronic Resources: More than fifty collections are now available
online through the American Memory Web site and others will be added in the
coming months. Planning is proceeding with a committee called the Digital
Futures Group to consider the implications of integrating digital resources
into the Library's core activities. The Library plans to submit a major
budget initiative as part of its 2001 budget to build the infrastructure
needed to acquire, use, and preserve digital resources, whether "born"
digital or retrospectively converted.
In January the Library signed an agreement with the UMI Company on
U.S. dissertations. Under this agreement, UMI submits copyright claims
and dissertation copies in digital format through CORDS (Copyright Office
Electronic Registration, Recordation, and Deposit System). The electronic
copyright deposits will remain in the Copyright Office repository and LC
will have access to all dissertations in digital form (all dissertations
beginning in January, 1997) through UMI's digital repository ProQuest
Digital Dissertations. The Library will, for the foreseeable future,
continue to receive and retain microfiche copies of the dissertations.
ILS: Staff continue to work on all aspects of the ILS, with
implementation to take place on October 1. To provide time for training
for all staff in the Acquisitions Directorate on the new system, all
recommending officers have been asked to submit their requests by August
16th, although orders for essential materials which would otherwise not be
acquired will continue to be ordered during the August 16-October 1 period.
Books received on approval plans will continue to be processed.
Miscellaneous: The complete LC ALA report is available at
http://lcweb.loc.gov/library/
William Schenck
Library Services
wsch_at_loc.gov
Received on Tue Jun 22 1999 - 10:15:09 EDT