By GAIL FINEBERG
A fiscal 1999 budget of $391.7 million for the Library was included in a legislative branch appropriations bill (H.R. 4112) as recommended in a conference report that the House approved on Sept. 24 and the Senate passed on Sept. 25. The president signed the bill on Oct. 21.
The total budget includes authority to spend $28 million in receipts. The net appropriation of $363.6 million, not counting receipts, represents a net 4.8 percent increase from the $346.9 million net appropriation for FY 1998.
Congress's final action on the Library's budget of $391.7 million reflects a conference committee compromise between a House recommendation of $386.4 million and a Senate recommendation of $393.7 million.
The legislative branch appropriations bill totaled $2.5 billion for FY 1999. The Library's new budget includes appropriations for:
Automation
$2 million for additional workstations necessary to ensure year-2000 compliance, $675,136 for eight positions to meet the growing workload to implement the integrated library system and work on year-2000-compliant problems, and $616,635 for additional storage of electronic data.
Security
$355,331 for 13 security technicians to operate X-ray devices at building entrances, $270,000 for X-ray machines, and $993,500 for theft-detection devices and targets for materials coming into the Copyright Office for copyright registration. An additional appropriation of $16.97 million for security of Library buildings was approved as part of a $106.8 million package to improve the security of the Capitol complex.
Congressional Research Service
$67.1 million, including $435,585 to fill 10 of the 20 positions that CRS requested for succession planning as senior staff retire.
Copyright
A net of $13.7 million (plus $21.1 million in offsetting receipts), including $1 million in new receipts authority for six new positions to implement an electronic copyright system ($356,058) and the processing of copyright registrations ($643,942).
National Library Services
$46.8 million, including the realignment of $800,000 from rental savings to purchase additional talking books for the blind and physically handicapped.
Offsite Storage
$219,049 for the National Audio Visual Conservation Center in Culpeper, Va., and $550,000 for offsite storage at Fort Meade, Md. In addition, conferees included language authorizing the use of up to $2.5 million in gift funds by the Architect of the Capitol to make improvements to the Culpeper center.
Special Projects
$2 million for a four-year project to digitize materials from Library collections relating to "Meeting the Frontiers -- Russia and Alaska" and $250,000 to participate in 2003 in a bicentennial celebration of the Lewis and Clark expedition to the West.
Mandatory Increases
A net of $8.2 million for mandatory pay increases, which reflects expected savings of $2 million from filling positions vacated through attrition at lower grade levels. Congress ordered attrition savings throughout the legislative branch.
Congress appropriated $12.7 million to the Architect of the Capitol for structural and mechanical care of the Library's buildings and grounds.
American Folklife Center Authorized
The final bill passed by the House and Senate included permanent authorization for the American Folklife Center. Congress gave the Librarian the power to appoint four members to the American Folklife Center Board of Trustees in addition to appointments authorized by the current statute, which provides that the president may appoint four members, the president pro tempore of the Senate appoints four, and the Speaker of the House appoints four.
Congress added two new ex officio members -- the president of the American Folklore Society and the president of the Society for Ethnomusicology. The other five ex officio members are the Librarian, the AFC director, the secretary of the Smithsonian Institution, the chairman of the National Endowment for the Arts and the chairman of the National Endowment for the Humanities.
Ms. Fineberg is editor of The Gazette, the Library's staff newspaper.