A Library without Walls
| Pages | 34-37 |
| DOI | https://doi.org/10.1108/01435129410055505 |
| Published date | 01 May 1994 |
| Date | 01 May 1994 |
| Author | Hazel K. Bell |
| Subject Matter | Library & information science |
I am grateful to Hazel Bell for allowing me to use
extracts from the account of her visit to the
Library of Congress in May 1993, which was
published in Learned Publishing, Vol. 7 No. 1,
January 1994, pp. 39-44.
The Library of Congress (LC) in Washington is a
very real example of a dual use library. As its
name implies, it is a research and reference
library for the US Congress, but it is also one of
a number of national libraries for the United
States. In addition, it is responsible for
administering US copyright law and receiving
legal deposit copies. The Library is run by a
Council of Scholars comprising 22 distinguished
individuals representing a wide spectrum of
academic fields and disciplines, who examine
the state of knowledge in their subject fields and
explore the extent to which the Library’s
collections support active research in these
areas.
The Library complex on Capitol Hill
comprises three buildings. The Thomas Jefferson
Building, hailed as the biggest and costliest
library structure in the world when it was
completed in 1897, includes the Main Reading
Room with a collection of 45,000 reference
books, desks for 250 readers and the Computer
Catalogue Center. The adjacent James Madison
Memorial Building now claims to be the world’s
largest library building, containing reading
rooms, offices and storage areas for LC’s
special-format collections of more than 70
million items.
Today, the Library of Congress holds more
than 101 million items on all subjects and in all
languages. These volumes occupy more than 575
miles of bookshelves on floor space covering
64.6 acres. The Library’s computer system holds
12.5 million records in its databases and serves
some 3,000 terminals in the Library and
government offices on Capitol Hill, with more
than 3,500 terminals available in the various LC
offices and reading rooms.
Collection Policy
Anna Keller, of LC’s Collections Policy Office,
states that the Library “does not move quickly
[and] has not kept pace with the swift
developments of the academic world”. It has not
yet dealt with the issues of copyright and
technical standards raised by the latest
developments in information technology. Unlike
university libraries, it is not affiliated to research
departments with R&D projects of its own. Ms
Keller told Hazel Bell that, while her office was
aware of these issues, the Library was only
beginning to deal with them, having set up an
Electronic Working Group to devise strategies.
The first electronic journal printout, The
Arcadian, had been received by the Library in
1992, but LC was still uncertain how to treat
such publications and whether to try to provide
archival preservation files for them. Access to
most electronic journals was available via
Internet, for which LC pays $35,000 to use the
computer of the nearby University of Maryland.
There are financial constraints on transcription
to electronic form. The Library can currently
afford to convert only 2,000 new books and
1,000 new periodicals per year and only 30,000
of its 20 million books are carried in alternate
forms[1].
The Collections Policy Office was assaying a
“shoestring, midnight oil” pilot scheme to apply
selection criteria to Internet-accessible electronic
journals and develop and test automated
processing systems for acquiring, indexing and
accessing them. The types of electronic serials
thought likely to be of greatest interest to the LC
community were scholarly journals, new
services and newsletters. The staff were finding
this project of great interest since it could,
LIBRARY MANAGEMENT
34
A Library without Walls
Hazel K. Bell visits the Library of Congress
Library Management, Vol. 15 No. 3, 1994, pp. 34-37
© MCB University Press, 0143-5124
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