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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 Midwinter Meeting in Seattle, Wash., January 19-24, 2007. The document covers initiatives undertaken at the Library of Congress since the ALA Annual Conference in New Orleans, La., in June 2006. Information in the printed document is valid as of January 2, 2007.

LC EXHIBIT BOOTH

The Library’s exhibit booth is no. 2254 at the Washington State Trade and Convention Center in Seattle. The exhibit booth coordinator is Robert Handloff. Exhibit hours are:

• Friday, January 19, 5:30-7:30 pm
• Saturday-Sunday, January 20-21, 9:00 am-5:00 pm
• Monday, January 22, 9:00 am-2:00 pm

Library of Congress staff who will work at the exhibit booth include:

• For the American Folklife Center: Maggie Kruesi
• For the Cataloging Distribution Service: Colleen Cahill, Cheryl Cook, Rebecca Guenther, Robert Handloff, Jan Herd
• For the Cataloging in Publication Division: Diane Barber, Patricia Hayward
• For the Center for the Book: Anne Boni, John Y. Cole
• For the U.S. Copyright Office: Melissa Crawford, David Fernandez-Barrial, George Thuronyi
• For the Digital Reference Team: Laura Gottesman, Marilyn Parr, Kris Pruzin
• For the Hispanic Division: Everette Larson
• For Information Technology Services: Carolyn Janiczek, Mike McClure
• For Library Services in general: Fred Augustyn, Judith Cannan, Jane Gilchrist, Jacqueline Radebaugh
• For the Music Division: Sue Vita
• For the NDIIPP/Office of Strategic Initiatives: Guy Lamolinara, Cheryl Lederle-Ensign, Gail Petri
• For the National Library Service for the Blind and Physically Handicapped: Lloyd Lewis, Ruth Nussbaum, Steve Prine
• For the Retail Marketing Office: Leslie Maron, Tred Parry

The American Folklife Center has supplied a videodisk with stories from the StoryCorps booths, which have criss-crossed the country collecting sometimes poignant, sometimes humorous, always entertaining stories about Americans. All LC staff are invited to the booth at the end of each day to relax and hear the StoryCorps interviews.

A complete schedule of booth theater presentations, including perennial favorites, is available at: <http://www.loc.gov/ala/mw-2007-boothschedule.html>. Incentive give-away items at the booth include, from the Cataloging Distribution Service, Class Web keyboard brushes; copies of Understanding MARC Bibliographic and Understanding MARC Authority Records; LC Classification Poster and Pocket Guide; the 2007 CDS Product Catalog; a revised Cataloger’s Learning Workshop brochure; and assorted brochures from other Library of Congress units.

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 || U.S. COPYRIGHT OFFICE || 

Orphan Works Legislation

In 2005, the Copyright Office conducted a study on the “orphan works” issue. The study was a response to concerns that uncertainty surrounding ownership of orphan works might needlessly discourage subsequent creators and users from using works in socially productive ways, such as by incorporating these works in new creative efforts, or by making them available to the public. The study involved written public comments (over 850 were received), four days of public roundtable discussions (two in Washington, D.C. and two in Berkeley, Calif.), and 17 informal meetings with interested parties to discuss issues in greater depth.

The Copyright Office then submitted its “Report on Orphan Works” to Congress in January of 2006. The Office’s conclusions were as follows: 1) The orphan works problem is real. 2) The orphan works problem is elusive to quantify and describe comprehensively. 3) Some orphan works situations may be addressed by existing copyright law, but many are not. 4) Legislation is necessary to provide a meaningful solution to the orphan works problem as we know it today.

The Office recommended that the orphan works issue be addressed by an amendment to the Copyright Act’s remedies section. This amendment would limit the liability of a user of a copyrighted work who performed a good faith, “reasonably diligent search” for the copyright owner but could not find that person, and provided attribution to the author and copyright owner if known, and in a manner reasonable under the circumstances.

The House and Senate Judiciary Committees held hearings on the Report in March 2006 and April 2006, respectively. The Office’s testimony is available at <http://www.copyright.gov/docs/regstat030806.html> and <http://judiciary.senate.gov/print_testimony.cfm?id=1847&wit_id=5219>. The Orphan Works Act of 2006, H.R. 5439, was introduced in the House of Representatives on May 22, 2006. In large part this bill follows the recommendation of the Copyright Office. The bill was reported out of the House Subcommittee on May 24, 2006 and is available at <http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/z?c109:H.R.5439:>. The version voted out of the Subcommittee modified the Copyright Office’s initial recommendation to some extent, mostly to address concerns raised by photographers and other visual artists. The Copyright Office supported these amendments, and sees them as improvements. For example, the version reported out of the Subcommittee would: define “reasonably diligent search” to exclude situations where little or no search is performed simply because a copyright notice or other information identifying the author or owner does not appear on the face of a work; direct the Copyright Office to maintain information on its Web site about best practices and industry guidelines for conducting a “reasonably diligent search”; allow a resurfacing copyright owner to recover court costs and attorney’s fees in the case of “bad faith” negotiations by the user; and direct the Copyright Office to conduct a study on “small claims” in copyright infringement cases.

Following the House Subcommittee’s vote, the Orphan Works Act was combined with the Section 115 Reform Act of 2006 (“S1RA”), H.R. 5553, and the two became the Copyright Modernization Act of 2006, H.R. 6052. The full House Judiciary Committee took no action on the Copyright Modernization Act, but the Copyright Office suspects that work on orphan works legislation will resume during in the 110th Congress.

Section 108 Study Group

The Section 108 Study Group, convened under the aegis of the National Digital Information Infrastructure and Preservation Program (NDIIPP), and co-sponsored by the U.S. Copyright Office, began its work in the spring of 2005. The goal of the group, named after the section of the U.S. Copyright Act that provides limited exceptions for libraries and archives, is to prepare findings and make recommendations to the Librarian of Congress and Register of Copyrights by mid-2007 on possible revisions of the law that reflect reasonable uses of copyrighted works by libraries and archives in the digital age. This effort will seek to strike the appropriate balance between copyright holders and libraries and archives in a manner that best serves the public interest.

The creation of the Study Group was prompted in part by the increasing use of digital media. Digital technologies are radically transforming how copyrighted works are created and disseminated, and also how libraries and archives preserve and make those works available. Cultural heritage institutions, in carrying forward their missions, have begun to acquire and incorporate large quantities of “born digital” works (those created in digital form) into their holdings to ensure the continuing availability of those works to future generations.

Section 108 of the Copyright Act permits libraries and archives to make certain uses of copyrighted materials in order to serve the public and ensure the availability of works over time. Among other things, section 108 provides limited exceptions for libraries and archives to make copies in specified instances for preservation, replacement and patron access. These provisions were drafted with analog materials in mind, and, as has been observed, do not adequately address many of the issues unique to digital media, either from the perspective of right holders or libraries and archives. The work of the Section 108 Study Group will be to review and document how section 108 should be revised in light of the changes wrought by digital technologies, while maintaining balance between the interests of rights holders and library and archive patrons.

The Section 108 Study Group is made up of copyright experts from various fields, including law, publishing, libraries, archives, film, music, software and photography. It is co-chaired by Laura Gasaway, associate dean for academic affairs and professor of law at the University of North Carolina, and Richard Rudick, former vice president and general counsel of John Wiley and Sons. The group meets for two days every other month; it has met ten times so far, and its next meeting will take place in Chicago, Illinois, on February 1-2, 2007. The Study Group hosted public roundtables in March 2006 in Los Angeles and Washington, D.C., where stakeholders from memory institutions and content providers met to discuss the following issues: institutional eligibility for the section 108 exceptions; offsite access to digital replacement copies; up-front preservation of published works; and Web site harvesting and preservation. In addition, the Study Group solicited written comments on these issues, which are available on the group's Web site (<http://www.loc.gov/section108>) along with complete roundtable transcripts.

Another roundtable will take place on January 31, 2007 in Chicago, concerning copies for users, interlibrary loan, and access to electronic works. Written comments on these issues are also being solicited. The Federal Register announcement of this roundtable and solicitation of comments is available at <http://www.copyright.gov/fedreg/2006/71fr70434.html>.

An interim report of the Study Group’s work to date is scheduled to be published in February 2007. The Study Group’s final report of its recommendations is scheduled to be delivered to the Librarian of Congress and the Register of Copyrights in mid-2007.

Triennial Anticircumvention Rulemaking

In 1998, Congress enacted the Digital Millennium Copyright Act. As part of that enactment, Congress created a triennial rulemaking process to be conducted by the Copyright Office, in consultation with the National Telecommunications and Information Administration, in order to determine whether the prohibition on circumvention of technological measures that protect access to copyrighted works does or is likely to adversely affect noninfringing uses of copyrighted works by users of those works. At the conclusion of the rulemaking process, the Register of Copyrights presents her recommendations to the Librarian of Congress for consideration of whether or not exemptions should issue for the next three-year period.

The Copyright Office initiated the third anticircumvention rulemaking on October 3, 2005, inviting commenters to propose exemptions to the prohibition on circumvention for the three-year period beginning on October 28, 2006. The 74 written comments and 35 reply comments are available for viewing on the Copyright Office’s Web site at <http://www.copyright.gov/1201/2006/comments/index.html>.

On March 23, 2006, the Copyright Office held a hearing in Palo Alto, Calif., and then conducted four days of hearings at the Library of Congress in late March and early April. The transcripts for these hearings have all been posted on the Copyright Office’s Web site at <http://www.copyright.gov/1201/2006/index.html>.

Library groups have been involved in this rulemaking process from its inception and have proposed exemptions to the prohibition for the next three-year period. The Librarian’s final decision was published in the Federal Register on November 27, 2006. Both that decision and the final recommendation of the Register of Copyrights to the Librarian of Congress upon which it is based are available on the Copyright Office’s Web site at <http://www.copyright.gov/1201/>.

Following the Register’s recommendation, the Librarian issued six exemptions; carrying over three from the previous rulemaking concerning access to ebooks for the vision impaired, access to software protected by malfunctioning and obsolete dongles, and access to software that has become obsolete and which requires original media or hardware for access. The three new exemptions address the use of DVDs in film or media studies classes, investigating and correcting security vulnerabilities created by technological measures, and access to firmware on mobile phones that prevents the use of that phone on other networks. In response to the last exemption, a wireless phone provider, TracFone, filed suit in federal court seeking to overturn the Librarian’s decision and arguing that the entire rulemaking process is unconstitutional.

Further information on the current rulemaking and the entire record for prior rulemakings is available on the Copyright Office’s 1201 page at URL <http://www.copyright.gov/1201/index.html>.

WIPO Proposed Treaty on the Protection of the Rights of Broadcasting Organizations

For the past eight years and since the first meeting of its Standing Committee on Copyright and Related Rights (SCCR) in November 1998, the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) has been addressing the topic of updating the protection of the rights of broadcasting organizations (including cablecasting organizations). Although broadcasters’ rights are protected under some existing international agreements, such as under the 1961 Convention for the Protection of Performers, Producers of Phonograms and Broadcasting Organizations (Rome Convention) and the World Trade Organization’s Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPs Agreement), there has been increasing concern that changes in technology and the opening up of much of the world to commercial broadcasting have made the protection provided in those agreements ineffective to protect broadcast signals against piracy. Any new treaty would be intended to protect the broadcaster’s signal, not the contents of the broadcast, which contents, if protected, are typically protected by copyright. The justification offered for this protection is the investment of financial and intellectual resources broadcasters make in arranging, scheduling, and airing broadcasts. At the September 2006 WIPO General Assembly, the decision was taken to convene two special sessions of the SCCR to clarify the outstanding issues. The first special session will be held on January 17 to 19, 2007, and the second one in June 2007 in conjunction with the meeting of the preparatory committee. It is understood that the special sessions of the SCCR should aim to agree and finalize, on a signal-based approach, the objectives, specific scope and object of protection with a view to submitting to the Diplomatic Conference a revised basic proposal. If such agreement is achieved, the Diplomatic Conference will be convened in November, 2007. If no such agreement is achieved, further discussions will resume.

The United States position on this proposed treaty is that generally an update for protection in this area may be warranted and any update to protection should be extended to cablecasters, satellitecasters and webcasters/netcasters (i.e., those who do broadcast-like activities over a computer network), as well as conventional broadcasters. In order to accommodate other member countries and reach consensus, the U.S. has recently agreed that any Treaty that moves to a Diplomatic Conference in 2007 will not cover webcasting/netcasting. The U.S. remains concerned about certain provisions contained within the draft basic proposal and will be working in 2007 to narrow the draft basic proposal to a supportable document before it will agree to move forward to a Diplomatic Conference.

In developing the U.S. proposal, the Copyright Office and the United States Patent and Trademark Office (PTO) conducted broad-based consultations with civil society groups interested in protecting consumers in the digital age, broadcasting and content industries. The Copyright Office has held or attended several meetings with groups such as ALA, CPTech (Consumer Project on Technology), EFF (Electronic Frontier Foundation), Public Knowledge, National Association of Broadcasters, Motion Picture Association, The Digital Media Association, Verizon, Intel, as well as with other groups that may have an interest in the discussions at WIPO, in order to better understand and address concerns about the impact of a possible treaty on copyright-protected works and works in the public domain. The Copyright Office and PTO have held two public roundtable discussions concerning the work at WIPO on this proposed Treaty on the Protection of the Rights of Broadcasting Organizations. The latest roundtable took place on January 3, 2007, in Alexandria, Va.

Reengineering of the Copyright Office

The Copyright Office is nearing the end of a multi-year effort to reengineer its principal public services. The objectives of the reengineering program are to improve the efficiency and timeliness of Copyright Office public services; to provide more services online; to ensure the prompt availability of new Copyright records; to provide better tracking of individual items in the workflow; and to increase the acquisition of digital works for the Library of Congress collections. The Office’s implementation efforts during 2006 continued to focus on the three fronts that support the reengineered processes: organization, information technology, and facilities. Since the three fronts are interconnected and the Office must provide uninterrupted customer service, full implementation will occur simultaneously when the new processes begin in mid-2007. Pilot projects are underway to test and improve the new processes and IT systems.

As part of the reengineering program, the Office will reorganize, and in some cases realign, its divisions so that they are organized around a process to promote accountability for end products and services. New job roles will include duties associated with the new processes. The reorganization encourages a team-based environment, with jobs that include a variety of duties to enhance existing skill sets of the current staff and enable the organization to deploy staff to respond quickly to fluctuations in workloads across the Office. An extensive cross-training program began in 2005 to prepare examiners and catalogers to perform the combined duties of the proposed registration specialist position, which will include both examining claims and creating registration records. A complete reorganization package was submitted to the Library for approval in November 2006.

In 2003 the Office selected SRA International, Inc., of Fairfax, Virginia, to design and develop a new systems infrastructure that integrates functions currently performed by several IT systems and applications. The integrated IT infrastructure, to be known as eCO (Electronic Copyright Office), uses Siebel customer relationship management and case management software, along with Captiva optical character recognition software. The Office is still exploring search engines such as Discovery Finder (formerly ENCompass) from Endeavor Information Systems.

In February 2005 the Office began a pilot project to process certain motion picture claims through eCO. Based on change requests submitted by staff working in the pilot, improvements were made to eCO through a number of software releases. A major IT development occurred later in the year with the implementation of the online web portal that allows users to submit electronic applications for preregistration and to pay fees with a credit card or ACH debit through a seamless link to the U.S. Treasury’s Pay.gov Web site. The portal, which serves as the model for providing full electronic registration service to the public, opened on November 15, 2005, and functioned successfully during its first year of use. In December 2006 the Office began a pilot project for electronic registration using several applicants who regularly submit claims through the Copyright Office Electronic Registration, Recordation, and Deposit System (CORDS), a prototype system in use for electronic registration since 1996.

Aapproximately 460 staff and contractors moved to temporary swing space in Crystal City (Arlington, Virginia) in July 2006; other staff moved to swing space within the Capitol Hill complex, and a few remained in place. Second, after years of planning, the Architect of the Capitol began the renovation of Copyright Office space. Three divisions moved to newly-renovated spaces in December and January. The remaining renovation is scheduled for completion by mid-2007 with the majority of staff moving back to the Madison Building in July 2007.

The Copyright Office has involved internal stakeholders throughout the reengineering process, including staff and management at all levels, on teams, task groups, and pilot projects. In addition, the Office identified stakeholders from the Library of Congress, including affected staff and managers from Library Services and the various infrastructure groups. A variety of media and methods are used to share reengineering-related news with stakeholders, including ReNews (the reengineering newsletter), Renews Lite (an email version used for quick updates), articles in Copyright Notices, a Reengineering Intranet Web site, “All Hands” staff meetings, and meetings with Library of Congress staff and managers.

The next seven months will see the Office accelerating its training schedule for the new system, adding more types of registration claims to its pilot projects, staffing its new organization, and preparing for the move back to the Madison Building at which time the full implementation of the reengineering program will occur.

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 || OFFICE OF THE LIBRARIAN || 

CONGRESSIONAL RELATIONS OFFICE (CRO)

110th Congress: Changes for the Library

Leadership. Sen. Harry Reid (D-NV) is the Senate Majority Leader, and Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-KY) is Senate Minority Leader. In the House, Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) was elected by roll call vote in that chamber; Democrats appointed Rep. Steny Hoyer (D-MD) as Majority Leader, and Republicans chose Rep. John Boehner (R-OH) as Minority Leader.

A few days after the November 2006 elections, the prospective new leaders (and other members seeking leadership positions) held several receptions and orientation events for the newly-elected members of the House of Representatives (42 new Democratic and 13 new Republican members). Many of these events were held in the Library of Congress, and new members had a chance to see the Main Reading Room and learn about how the Library serves Congress and the public.

Rep. Keith Ellison (D-Minn.), the first Muslim elected to Congress, took his individual ceremonial oath of office on Jan. 4 using Thomas Jefferson's copy of the Koran, found in LC’s Rare Book and Special Collections Division. Jefferson's personal copy of George Sale’s 1734 translation of the Koran, commonly called the “Alcoran of Mohammed” (London: Hawes, Clarke, Collins and Wilcox, 1764), was one of nearly 6,500 titles sold to Congress by Jefferson in 1815 to replace the Congressional Library that had been destroyed when the British burned the Capitol during the War of 1812.

Reps. Sander Levin (D-Mich.) and Brad Sherman (D-Calif.) took their oaths of office on the first Hebrew Bible printed in the U.S.

Oversight. The Library’s oversight committees, which consider any legislation relating to the Library’s operations and programs, will be chaired by Democratic members in the 110th Congress, and there will likely be new staff handling Library issues in both the House and Senate.

The Committee on House Administration will be chaired by Rep. Juanita Millender-McDonald of California. Chairman Millender-McDonald served in the 109th Congress as ranking Democrat on the committee, and has become familiar with the Library over the last two years. She was actively engaged in issues relating to commemorative events and employee job security. Other House Committee assignments had not been completed as of January 4.

The full roster of the Library’s Senate oversight committee, Rules and Administration, has been announced. The new Chairman will be Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) and Sen. Robert Bennett (R-UT) will be ranking member.

Senate Committee on Rules and Administration

Democrats (10)

• Dianne Feinstein, Calif. (Chairwoman)
• Christopher J. Dodd, Conn.
• Robert C. Byrd, W.Va.
• Daniel K. Inouye, Hawaii
• Charles E. Schumer, N.Y.
• Richard J. Durbin, Ill.
• Ben Nelson, Neb.
• Byron L. Dorgan, N.D.
• Patty Murray, Wash.
• Mark Pryor, Ark.

Republicans (9)

• Robert F. Bennett, Utah
• Ted Stevens, Alaska
• Mitch McConnell, Ky.
• Thad Cochran, Miss.
• Trent Lott, Miss.
• Saxby Chambliss, Ga.
• Kay Bailey Hutchison, Texas
• Chuck Hagel, Neb.
• Lamar Alexander, Tenn.

Appropriations. The Library is in the process of finalizing its fiscal year 2008 budget submission with the Appropriations Committees.

The House has re-constituted the Legislative Branch subcommittee of the Appropriations Committee; a new committee member, Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D-FL), will chair the subcommittee in the 110th Congress. Sen. Mary Landrieu (D-LA) will chair the subcommittee in the Senate.

Legislation. Last year, Ms. Millender-McDonald, as ranking Democrat on the Committee on House Administration, introduced the Library of Congress Employee Transition Assistance Act, H.R. 5328. As chair of the committee, she will likely re-introduce this bill in the next few weeks. This bill treats Library employees as “competitive service” federal employees for purposes of eligibility for jobs in the executive branch, and gives the same priority to Library employees under a reduction-in-force for executive branch jobs as similarly situated employees in the executive branch.

The Library will be seeking reauthorization for the National Sound Recording Preservation Program during the 110th Congress; current authorization expires in 2008.

Congressional focus on the Library. The Library will invite Members to the upcoming Kissinger lecture on February 27th, featuring former Secretary of State James Baker. The Law Library’s events this year commemorating its 175th anniversary will be highlighted, particularly for members of the House and Senate Judiciary Committees. With new oversight and appropriations staff coming on board, CRO will likely conduct additional tours of the National Audio-Visual Conservation Center at Culpeper, Va., as construction nears completion.

CRO has also prepared a new information brochure for wide distribution in Members’ offices, focusing on Library services to members, staff and constituents. We will continue to update and add features to our members/staff-only web gateway, LCNet.

Orphan Works - see U.S. Copyright Office

Section 108 - see U.S. Copyright Office

NATIONAL BOOK FESTIVAL

The sixth annual National Book Festival, co-sponsored by the Library and First Lady Laura Bush, took place on the National Mall Saturday, September 30, 2006. Renowned authors of fiction, mystery, history, biography, home and family non-fiction, children’s and young adult literature, and poetry were on hand to speak, answer questions and sign books.

OFFICE OF SECURITY AND EMERGENCY PREPAREDNESS

The Office of Security and Emergency Preparedness (OSEP) continued developing the Library’s security program, focusing especially on building the Emergency Preparedness Program. The office has hired two emergency management specialists for OSEP’s Office of Emergency Preparedness to coordinate the program. OSEP coordinated distribution of shelter-in-place supplies for key locations and distribution of new escape hoods approved by the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health. The Library’s enhanced public address system is being installed in the Library’s Capitol Hill buildings and is expected to be operational by mid-2007. OSEP initiated and is coordinating development of a Continuity of Operations Plan for a pandemic health emergency at the Library, working in collaboration with Health Services, Human Resources Services, Information Technology Services, and the Library’s service and support units.

OSEP and the Collections Security Oversight Committee continued strengthening the Library’s collections security program through the Strategic Plan for Safeguarding the Collections, which integrates physical security, preservation, and inventory management controls protecting the Library’s collections; the Site Assistance Visit program; and the staff and patron security Web sites. OSEP staff members collaborate with counterparts in national and international organizations concerning security and emergency preparedness.

OSEP coordinated completion of additional major security enhancements at the Library’s three main buildings on Capitol Hill under the Library’s 1999 Security Enhancement Implementation Plan, which consisted of three components: law enforcement enhancements; command and control; and entry and perimeter security. In preparation for the connection of the Library of Congress with the new Capitol Visitor Center, police facilities in the Thomas Jefferson Building were upgraded and relocated in 2006 to accommodate construction of the passageway connecting the Jefferson Building and the Capitol Visitor Center. OSEP is effecting security coordination for the new passageway and the impending New Visitors Experience in the Jefferson Building.

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 || LIBRARY SERVICES || 

Working Group on the Future of Bibliographic Control

Associate Librarian for Library Services Deanna Marcum has convened a Working Group on the Future of Bibliographic Control to examine the future of bibliographic description in the 21st century. Composed of leading managers of libraries, library organizations, OCLC, Inc., Google, Inc., and Microsoft, Inc., the working group is chaired by José-Marie Griffiths, dean of the School of Information and Library Science at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Building on the work and results of the Library's Bicentennial Conference on Bibliographic Control for the New Millennium (2000), the new group will present findings on how bibliographic control and other descriptive practices can effectively support management of and access to library materials in the evolving information and technology environment; recommend ways in which the library community can collectively move toward achieving this vision; and advise the Library of Congress on its role and priorities.

The working group met for the first time on November 2-3 at LC. The group has decided to hold three invitational regional meetings during 2007. The venues will be in or near large airports in different regions of the U.S. to make it easier for a broad range of participants to travel to the meetings. Each regional meeting will focus on one of three themes: Uses and Users, Structures and Standards, and Economics and Organization. The meetings will be preceded by distribution of a background paper that gives an overview of the current environment in which bibliographic control operates.

In July or August, after the three meetings have taken place, the Working Group will meet again to draft a report and recommendations by September 1 for public comments, which will be taken into account in the group’s final report, to be issued by November 1, 2007. More information on the Library of Congress Working Group on the Future of Bibliographic Control is available at a special public Web site, <http://www.loc.gov/bibliographic-future>.

AMERICAN FOLKLIFE CENTER

The American Folklife Center (AFC) was created by Congress in 1976 to preserve and present American Folklife. The AFC’s archive was established in the Library of Congress in 1928 and is now one of the largest collections of ethnographic material from the U.S. and around the world. One of AFC’s major initiatives is the Veterans History Project (VHP), which was established by Congress in 2000 to preserve the reminiscences of the nation’s war veterans. AFC administers research, documentation, national programs and collaborative partnerships with public and private organizations.

AFC continued to work in partnership with the American Folklore Society (AFS) to complete the development of an Ethnographic Thesaurus for the benefit of ethnographic archives worldwide. The project is funded by a $484,000 grant from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.

AFC continued to work with the Institute for Cultural Partnerships, the American Society of Human Genetics and the Genetic Alliance on the "Healthy Choices Through Family History Awareness Project." The project uses ethnographic fieldwork to elicit health-related narratives, assisting health professionals and families in the identification of risk factors to help determine best medical care. Funding in the amount of $400,000 comes from the Health Resources and Services Administration of the Department of Health and Human Services.

Maggie Kruesi, cataloger and folklorist, will represent the American Folklife Center in the Library of Congress Exhibit Booth in Seattle.

Veterans History Project (VHP)

Completing its sixth year in 2006, the Veterans History Project (VHP) of the American Folklife Center continues its success in collecting and preserving the wartime remembrances of America’s wartime veterans from World War I up to the current conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan. Through the current receipt of 250 submissions per week, the Veterans History Project has grown into the largest oral history collection in the U.S. with over 45,000 collections that include recorded interviews, written memoirs, and tens of thousands of photographs and personal documents.

The Veterans History Project reaches out nationwide to individual volunteers and organizations asking them to serve as interviewers of veterans. Important participants in the project have been over 60 public and institutional libraries located nation-wide. Libraries have proven to be natural locations for the promotion of the VHP as well as excellent venues where interviews can be conducted to project guidelines. The VHP staff has consistently promoted libraries in this manner for those seeking to implement the project in their community.

For additional information about the VHP or to search the veterans’ collection database, go to the Web site, <http://www.loc.gov/vets>, or call the toll-free number 1-888-371-5848.

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ACQUISITIONS AND BIBLIOGRAPHIC ACCESS DIRECTORATE (ABA)

In fiscal year 2006, ABA cataloged a total of 346,182 bibliographic volumes (new works, added volumes, and items added to collection-level records), the highest total in its history, representing an increase of more than ten per cent over the 312,818 bibliographic volumes cataloged in fiscal 2005. This was the second year in a row that the ABA divisions achieved all-time production highs. Production of full or core original cataloging, the most expensive category of cataloging for the general collections, increased significantly to 199,223 records compared to 185,531 the previous year. These records have complete description, subject analysis, and Library of Congress Classification numbers, as well as full authority records for all descriptive and subject access points, which are drawn from controlled vocabularies.

ABA Web Site Redesign

The Library's new Cataloging and Acquisitions Web site was launched on January 4, 2007. The Office of Strategic Initiatives worked with ABA to redesign the entire top level of the site, the better to meet the needs of catalogers and other individuals who use the Library's cataloging and related resources. The feedback from six focus groups held at ALA 2006 Midwinter Meeting in San Antonio was very helpful. The redesigned Web site has a new URL, <http://www.loc.gov/aba/>.

African/Asian Acquisitions and Overseas Operations Division

Michael Albin, former field director of the Cairo Office and former chief of the Anglo-American Acquisitions Division (at the time of his retirement) has agreed to come back to the Library for 120 days as acting field director of the Cairo Office, beginning in October 2006. Linda Stubbs, acting chief of the Special Materials Cataloging Division, began a detail for 120 days as acting field director in Rio de Janeiro at the end of November.

Bibliographic Enrichment Activities Team (BEAT)

Staff in ABA lead the Library’s inter-divisional Bibliographic Enrichment Advisory Team (BEAT), which initiates research and development projects to increase the value of cataloging products to library users. The team’s best-known project is the enrichment of online catalog records by providing electronic table of contents data (TOC). In fiscal 2006, BEAT-developed software supported the inclusion of TOC in more than 28,488 records for Electronic Cataloging in Publication titles and enabled links to and from another 21,044 catalog records to D-TOC, or digital tables of contents, which resided on a server. The BEAT ONIX projects linked LC catalog records to tables of contents, publisher descriptions, sample text, book jacket illustrations, author information, and reading group guides provided by publishers in ONIX (Online Information Exchange), the standard for communicating book industry product information in electronic form. At year’s end there were 636,415 links from LC catalog records to ONIX-derived enhancements, including links to 33,510 sample texts and more than 272,000 publisher descriptions of their publications.

The BEAT team originated the project to reclassify and provide significantly improved access to tens of thousands of pre-1970 Congressional hearings and move them to the custody of the Law Library of Congress, resulting in improved service to the Congress, centralized availability of information that was widely dispersed throughout the Library's collections, modernization and uniformity of catalog formats for the hearings, and addition or inclusion of other information, such as the existence and location of alternate data sources. In July 2006, Google, Inc., began to digitize the reclassified hearings for the Law Library, a project that builds on the successful BEAT project.

Cataloging in Publication (CIP)

CIP staff will meet with members of the CIP Advisory Group to discuss a draft of Poised for Change: Survey Findings and Recommendations of the CIP Review Group. The CAG meeting is Saturday, January 20, 2006 from 10:30 a.m. to 12:00 p.m, Washington State Trade and Convention Center, Room 302. The meeting will obtain CAG member input regarding any aspect of the draft document and its recommendations during this formative stage of its development.

Since 1971, the CIP program has provided libraries, publishers, book sellers, and the information community over a million catalog records--all conforming to the Anglo-American Cataloguing Rules and MARC standards. While the CIP program has grown significantly over the years, the resources that support it have not. Given limited resources and dramatic changes in information technology, it is essential to appraise the program to determine its future. To do this the CIP Division designed three separate surveys to gather input from customers of the Library’s MARC Distribution Services, the publisher community, and the American library community. All surveys were complete by August 18. Data analysis from the surveys informed the draft of Poised for Change.

CAG members who have confirmed that they will attend the meeting received paper copies of the lengthy draft via US Postal Service mail, with a request that they annotate their copies to indicate any issues or questions they may have. As time permits these issues will be discussed at the CAG meeting. The copies will be collected at the end of the meeting so CIP staff can review them methodically at LC to ensure that all CAG concerns are addressed.

ECIP Replaces Conventional CIP Program. Effective January 2007, the conventional (paper) program ceased to be a standard mode for obtaining Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication (CIP) data. The electronic CIP (ECIP) program became the standard. Paper applications are now restricted to the following:

• Books in non-English languages (other than modern Western European languages)
• Books with diacritics (other than those occurring in modern Western European languages) appearing anywhere on the title page
• Books consisting chiefly of graphic images, tables, charts or mathematical or chemical formulas, etc.

Paper applications that do not meet these criteria will be returned to the publisher. The CIP publisher liaison staff will assist publishers in making the transition to the electronic mode (<http://cip.loc.gov/>). Publishers unable to participate in the ECIP program should consider the Electronic Preassigned Control Number program (<http://pcn.loc.gov/>) as an alternative.

Cataloging Policy: Cataloging Policy and Support Office (CPSO)

CPSO Web site. The Library's new Cataloging and Acquisitions Web site was launched on January 4, 2007. The former Cataloging Policy and Support Office Web site has been incorporated into the new Web site. All of the material formerly available on the CPSO Web site, including the subject headings and classification weekly lists, is now accessible via the Cataloging and Acquisitions Web site. Users who attempt to access the old CPSO Web site will be automatically redirected to the new site, but are advised to update their bookmarks to the new URL: <http://www.loc.gov/aba/>

Descriptive cataloging

CONSER standard record. The Policy Committee of the Program for Cooperative Cataloging (PCC) has endorsed the recommendations of the final reports submitted by the Access Level Record for Serials Working Group and the Working Group on Authentication Codes and Encoding Levels for Serials and Integrating Resources. The implementation of the CONSER standard record will occur in two stages. The date for the first stage has been set for February 1, 2007. Implemented at that time will be changes from AACR2 supported by policy decisions recorded in the drafts of Library of Congress Rule Interpretations, posted at URL <http://www.loc.gov/catdir/cpso/conser.html>; also implemented then will be a change in LC/PCC policy to supply conflict-breaking uniform titles in only some situations. (The second stage of the implementation is scheduled for May or June of 2007.) The goal is to provide in an effective and timely manner a record that consistently ensures identification of and access to a serial title. To that end, the Working Group defined the set of required elements needed in every CONSER standard record. All other elements are optional, but not precluded, and can be added as needed based on cataloger's judgment. The new CONSER documentation posted at <http://www.loc.gov/catdir/cpso/conser.html> supports the CONSER standard record. The new and revised LCRIs support the policy decisions allowing different practices from earlier interpretations of AACR2 rules. The deadline for comments on the draft versions of the CONSER documentation and of the LCRIs is January 29, 2007. Send comments on the CONSER documentation to Diane Boehr (boehrd@mail.nlm.nih.gov) and Regina Reynolds (rrey@loc.gov); send comments on the LCRIs to <cpso@loc.gov>. The comments to CPSO should relate to the clarity of the wording of the documents, not to decisions related to the adoption of the CONSER standard record. The final version of the CONSER documentation and the LCRIs will be available at URL <http://www.loc.gov/catdir/cpso/conser.html> until the 2007 Update 2 of Cataloger's Desktop.

Non-roman data in authority records. The Library of Congress has initiated discussions with major authority record exchange partners (OCLC, British Library, National Library of Medicine, Library and Archives Canada) to outline the steps necessary to provide non-roman data in authority records issued as part of the LC/NAF (Name Authority File). An early agreement has been reached to use the “regular” MARC 21 tags for including non-roman data (e.g., 4XX, 7XX) in authority records, rather than paired “regular” and 880 fields, which is the current model for bibliographic record exchange. A proposed model for when and how to record non-roman forms of established headings, and a timeline for including the data in NACO distributions are currently under discussion. LC and the NACO partners will release information on this timeline as it becomes available.

PCC series training. CPSO senior cataloging policy specialist Judith Kuhagen and senior cataloger Melanie Polutta were invited by Duke University Libraries, Durham, North Carolina, to provide series training on November 15-17, 2006, for catalogers from Duke and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Series training will be offered for PCC participants at LC in May 2007.

RDA meetings with U.S. national libraries. Barbara Tillett, chief of CPSO, met with cataloging managers from the National Agricultural Library and the National Library of Medicine to update them on developments related to the draft of Resource Description and Access (RDA, the cataloging rules that will replace AACR2), after the Joint Steering Committee for Revision of AACR met at LC in October. Future meetings will be held to keep all informed about RDA developments and to plan the implementation of RDA at the national libraries.

Subject cataloging

Changes to subject headings for God. Recognizing the increased diversity in religious backgrounds of Americans and other populations that use LCSH, CPSO revised the headings for God to provide a distinction in access between general and comparative works (under the unqualified heading God) and works from a Christian perspective (under the heading God (Christianity)). These revisions provide a uniform treatment for the concept in all religions, since the headings for other religions were already established as God (Islam); God (Judaism); etc.

Library of Congress Classification. Available in 2007 will be new editions of E-F (History: American (Western Hemisphere)), H (Social Sciences), M (Music and Books on Music), N (Fine Arts), PN (Literature (General)), Q (Science), and T (Technology).

CPSO has recently completed a project to add Chinese characters to the names of individual authors listed in PL2661-2979 in the Library of Congress Classification. For most authors, both the traditional and simplified Chinese characters are provided in addition to the romanized name. As new authors are added in the future, both the romanized and Chinese forms will be supplied. CPSO gratefully acknowledges the generous assistance of James K. Lin, Liang-yuh Tang, and Chiun Kwan Chau, of the staff of the Harvard-Yenching Library, in completing this project. CPSO has started a project to include Greek characters in PA3818-PA4505 (Greek literature–Individual authors to 600 A.D.)

A new automated system for submitting classification proposals and producing the Library of Congress Classification Weekly Lists was implemented on November 13, 2006. This new classification proposal system is being used by LC catalogers and PCC SACO participants who subscribe to Classification Web. Users of LC Classification Weekly Lists will have noticed a change in the appearance of the weekly lists beginning with List 49 (December 6, 2006), with the implementation of this new automated system for producing the lists. The most noticeable change is the absence of italicized "anchor" numbers and lines, which formerly served to indicate the location of new numbers and captions. New captions are now accompanied by their full hierarchy, which show the location of the caption in context.

Form/genre headings: moving images and music. CPSO continues to work with cataloging staff in the Moving Image Section of the Motion Picture, Broadcast & Recorded Sound Division to analyze the genre/form terms for moving image materials. Although it was hoped that draft proposals would be ready for review prior to ALA Midwinter, more time will be necessary to reach this step. Work on implementing genre/forms terms for LCSH terms in the discipline of music has been postponed to allow for the completion of a new edition of Class M (Music and Books on Music). CPSO will resume work on the project later this year.

Database improvement unit. Tthe database improvement unit in CPSO has updated approximately 875,000 records since the unit was formed on June 28, 2004. The team corrected obsolete subject headings and descriptive access points in bibliographic records as well as name authority records. The team is keeping current with subject heading updates to bibliographic records prompted by the weekly lists of subject headings. Approximately 1,000 name headings with open dates have been updated to include the death date of the individual.

Cataloging Policy and Tools: Cataloging Distribution Service (CDS)

Product pricing. There are no price changes in 2007.

Cataloger’s Desktop. This CDS web-based service starts the new year with close to 1,000 subscribers (and 5,300 concurrent users). The product now includes 147 resources. For a free 30-day trial subscription visit <http://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. A new brochure about the product is available at the booth.

Classification Web. This is CDS’s best selling web-based product with close to 1,780 subscribers. In Fall 2006 CDS automated the process of submitting new classification proposals and automated the production of weekly lists. For a free 30-day trial subscription visit <http://www.loc.gov/cds/classweb/application.html> . Product demonstrations can be seen throughout the day at the LC exhibit booth and at scheduled LC booth theater presentations. A new brochure about the product is available at the booth.

Cataloger training products. During 2007 four new courses will be introduced: Metadata Standards and Applications, Principles of Controlled Vocabulary and Thesaurus Design, Metadata and Digital Library Development, and Digital Project Management for the 21st Century. A brochure is available at the booth that describes the courses in some detail. Visit <http://www.loc.gov/catworkshop> for updates on course development status and <http://www.loc.gov/cds/training.html> for updates in course materials availability status.

Classification schedules. Two new editions of LC Classification Schedules were published since the 2006 ALA Annual Conference: P-PZ Tables (2006 edition) and PL-PM: Languages of Eastern Asia, Oceania; Hyperborean, Indian and Artificial Languages (2006 edition). Available late January 2007 are new editions of H: Social Sciences (2007 edition) and E-F: History, America (available late January 2007). During 2007, the following classification schedules will be published in new editions: M: Music and Books on Music, N: Fine Arts, PN: Literature (General), Q: Science, and T: Technology. Visit <http://www.loc.gov/cds/classif.html> for the latest information on LC Classification.

MARC 21 documentation. The 2006 Updates to the MARC21 formats will be available in the first half of 2007. New editions of Concise Formats and MARC Code List for Languages will also be published in 2007.

MARC Distribution Service (MDS). As of January 1, 2007, the following MDS subscription services are no longer available as separate services: Books Arabic, Books CJK, Books Hebrew, Copyright Serials, and NUCMC and LC Manuscripts. The current-year subscription records to Books Arabic, Books CJK, Books Hebrew, and LC Manuscripts are now included at no extra charge in Books All. As a result, Books All now contains more records than ever before. The retrospective files of each of the above services are still available. The current-year subscription records to Copyright Serials are now included in Copyright Monographs, Documents, and Serials. The current-year subscription and retrospective file services for Handbook of Latin American Studies are now discontinued. However, the database remains available on the LC Web site at <http://memory.loc.gov/hlas/> in English, Spanish, and Portuguese. GPO retrospective file service is now discontinued (the subscription service was discontinued in 2006).

FREE PDF versions of selected publications. The latest issues of the following publications are available at <http://www.loc.gov/cds/freepdf.html> as they are published: Cataloging Service Bulletin, updates to Library of Congress Rule Interpretations, updates to Subject Cataloging Manual: Subject Headings, updates to CONSER Cataloging Manual, and updates to Descriptive Cataloging Manual. MARC 21 format documentation updates and CONSER Editing Guide updates are expected to be available as they are published during 2007.

Descriptive Cataloging of Rare Materials. Descriptive Cataloging of Rare Materials (Books), 2007 edition, will be published in late January 2007. The publication is a collaboration between LC and the Rare Books and Manuscripts Section of ACRL (Association of College and Research Libraries, an ALA division). In preparation now, Descriptive Cataloging of Rare Materials (Serials) will be published later in 2007. Other publications in this series are being planned for future publication.

CONSER publications. CONSER Cataloging Manual, cumulated 2007 edition will be published early- to mid-2007.

CDS division administration. The following staff will continue to manage CDS in 2007: Barbara Tillett, acting chief; Tom Yee, assistant chief of CPSO, who will continue to assist Barbara in her CDS responsibilities; Bruce Johnson and Loche McLean, rotating acting assistant chiefs.

CDS continues to experience slower than desirable service to customers, attributed to retirements of more than 40 percent of its staff on January 3, 2006 [sic]. CDS appreciates customers’ continued patience during this difficult time of reduced staffing.

Chinese Collections

The ABA Directorate increased its acquisitions of Chinese materials for the LC collections and greatly improved bibliographic access to these materials. When funds became available for overtime work in August and September, Chinese materials were targeted as a special project. In Chinese, 56,058 items were acquired for the LC collections, including 39,080 serial pieces and 16,129 books; of these, 49,388 were actually published in China. The bibliographic access teams completed the cataloging of 481 new serial titles and 3,999 monographs, compared to 8,579 Chinese books cataloged in fiscal year 2005. Staff in ABA also assisted the Geography and Map Division in cataloging maps for more than 200 Chinese geographic places.

With the termination of the Luce Contemporary China program, the Library of Congress continued the project by contracting with four regional bibliographic service representatives in China and Tibet.

Cooperative Cataloging Programs

In fiscal year 2006, Program for Cooperative Cataloging members (numbering over 500 institutions around the world) created 175,328 new name authorities and 9,865 new series authorities through NACO, the program’s name authority component. In SACO, the subject authority component of the PCC, member institutions contributed 3,619 new Library of Congress subject headings as well as 2,089 new Library of Congress Classification numbers. Members of CONSER, the serials cataloging component of the program, contributed 25,796 new bibliographic records, while in BIBCO, the PCC’s monograph arm, members contributed 73,830 new bibliographic records, ten percent more than in fiscal 2005. The Cooperative Cataloging Team, RCCD, with the CONSER coordinator and CONSER specialist in SRD, provided the secretariat for the PCC. The chief of the Serial Record Division provided oversight of the Library of Congress’s participation for most of the year.

A large part of the PCC secretariat’s energies was absorbed over the past year by “PCC 2010,” the PCC initiative to compose new strategic directions for the program. The five strategic directions are: 1) Be a forward thinking, influential leader in the global metadata community; 2) Redefine the common enterprise; 3) Build on, and expand, partnerships and collaborations in support of the common enterprise; 4) Pursue globalization; and 5) Lead in the education and training of catalogers. The merger of the Research Libraries Group (RLG) and OCLC, Inc., and resulting changes in the workflow environment led to a broad re-evaluation of the PCC program’s goals and activities. This required extensive re-writing of documentation; liaison work with CDS and OCLC to ensure uninterrupted data flow as former RLG members began to switch to OCLC as their contributor platform; and large-scale editing of the PCC Web site, which is maintained by the Library of Congress.

The University of Hawaii at Manoa joined BIBCO this year, bringing total membership to 47 institutions. The number of SACO-Only Institutions continued to grow, both domestically and internationally. The SACO Program expanded to include the Judaica Subject Authority Funnel Project, the Northern New England Subject Authority Funnel Project, the Northern Michigan University Subject Funnel Project, and the Arabic Subject Funnel Project

International participants now number 72 members on all continents, in funnels or as independent participants, in NACO, SACO, and in CONSER. The South Africa funnels have seen reorganization, renaming, and the technical problems of new MARC21 codes and contribution workflows, but continue as active participants with expansion training. Outreach efforts to Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCU) had a side benefit in producing a Canada NACO funnel and a Caribbean Funnel based in the University of the West Indies. This year, international PCC members created 27.74 percent of all new NACO name authorities. International CONSER member institutions contributed 3,210 new records, or 12.44 percent of all new CONSER records.

Staff at several University of California (UC) campuses developed a CONSER bibliographic funnel, assisted by the University of California, Los Angeles and the University of California, San Diego. Other new CONSER members included Serials Solutions, Inc., and Saint Louis University Pius XII Memorial Library. Connecticut State Library and New York University Law Library were declared independent Associate level members during 2006.

CONSER (Cooperative Online Serials) - see also Cataloging Policy and Support Office

Shelf-Ready Projects

The ABA Directorate continued to make use of selected external sources of data for cataloging. The Casalini Shelf-Ready Project, which began as a pilot in fiscal 2004, was in full production and proceeded smoothly throughout the year. For payments totaling $350,000, the Library’s Italian book dealer, Casalini Libri, provided core-level cataloging and digital tables of contents for 4,140 books that the Library purchased from Casalini. When the books arrived, they could be processed on receipt by acquisitions staff and sent directly to the Collections Access, Loan, and Management Division or to Binding and Collections Care, as needed.

Staff of RCCD, AFAOVOP, and the Asian Division planned and coordinated a successful dealer selection and cataloging experiment with the Japanese vendor Kinokuniya. The experiment may lead to continued provision of material and bibliographic data by Kinokuniya in the future.

To address concerns from the larger community about new uses of commercial data, the director for ABA formed a Vendor Cataloging Task Force consisting of representatives from large research libraries. The task force was to consider pricing and distribution models and the potential for repurposing of cataloging produced by foreign national libraries.

Special Materials Cataloging: Electronic Resources, Music, National Union Catalog of Manuscript Collections

The Computer Files & Microforms Team, Special Materials Cataloging Division (SMCD), contributed catalog records for the following LC collections reproduced on microfilm: retrospective telephone directories from Poland, 1939-1945 and the Lucille Ball/Desi Arnaz scrapbook collection. The team also cataloged a collection of microfilm on the Brazilian Labor Party, Partido dos Trabalhadores. Team members continued working with the Humanities and Social Sciences Division to refine a draft acquisitions working document for direct access electronic resources.

During the first three months of fiscal 2007, popular music CDs were processed by the Music and Sound Recordings teams in SMCD via a combination of technician copy cataloging and brief record creation. Utilizing the CD Pop Interface developed by the Motion Picture, Broadcasting, and Recorded Sound Division, MSR3 produced brief bibliographic records with full contents notes. This enabled MSR3 to recapture currency. The license agreement for the use of AMG (All-Music Guide) metadata to populate LC sound recording bibliographic records was completed and signed late in 2006. An MSR cataloger continued processing the Nijinska manuscript collection devoted to the famous Russian dancer and choreographer. The sorting and identification of correspondence is 90 percent complete; the Music Division continues to work with photographs and clippings in the collection.

The National Union Catalog of Manuscript Collections Team (NUCMC) worked with ninety-six repositories. Thirty-six of the repositories were new participants to the NUCMC program. The team provided new or improved access to papers of the following Members of Congress: Charles Andrews (Maine Historical Society), Chester Ashley (Arkansas History Commission), Owen Brewster (Maine Historical Society), John Chandler (Maine Historical Society), Joshua Coit (New London County Historical Society), Edwin Bell Forsythe (Historical Society of Moorestown), John P. Hale (Maine Historical Society), Hannibal Hamlin (Maine Historical Society), Orval Howard Hansen (Idaho Oral History Center), Ron Marlenee (Montana State University-Bozeman), Jim McClure (Idaho Oral History Center), Norman Y. Mineta (Japanese American National Museum), Edmund S. Muskie (Maine Historical Society), Isaac Parker (Maine Historical Society), Elias Perkins (New London County Historical Society), Thomas B. Reed (Maine Historical Society), James Sullivan (Maine Historical Society), Peleg Wadsworth (Maine Historical Society), Wallace H. White (Maine Historical Society), William D. Williamson (Maine Historical Society), and Robert C. Winthrop (Maine Historical Society).

The Rare Book Team, SMCD, completed the cataloging of the Benjamin Franklin Collection and Franklin-related titles, the 19th-century newspaper clippings portion of the James Meredith Toner Collection, Third Reich monographs, American and European almanacs, and American and English Trials (Law Library collection of roughly 2,000 accounts of judicial proceedings). New projects include the cataloging of Kislak Collection rare books (about 600 pre-1801 titles concerning pre-Columbian America) and Kislak serials (pre- and post-1800 titles on Latin America). Ongoing projects include Kislak Collection reference books (20th century titles on Latin America that support the Kislak rare collection), Blackstone commentary on English law, and Third Reich graphic materials from Nazi Germany.

Bibliographic Access Divisions and Serial Record Division Production

Bibliographic Records Completed	FY06	FY05
Full/Core Original	199,223	185,531
Collection-Level Cataloging	4,134	4,441
Copy cataloging	71,312	55,925
Minimal level cataloging	53,618	28,993
Total records completed	328,287	277,453
Total volumes cataloged	346,182	312,818

Authority Work	FY06	FY05
New name authority records	97,392	88,828
New series authority records	6,969*	9,056
New LC Classification numbers	1,534	1,742
New Library of Congress Subject Headings	6,692	6,678
Total authority records created	112,587	106,304

*Production of series authority records ceased on June 1.

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COLLECTIONS AND SERVICES DIRECTORATE

Jeremy Adamson became acting director for Collections and Services on February 1. His appointment became permanent on October 10. Dr. Adamson joined the Library in 2001 as chief of the Prints and Photographs Division after serving as senior curator at the Renwick Gallery of the Smithsonian American Art Museum, where he had worked since 1988. He holds a bachelor’s degree in fine art, a master’s degree in the history of art from the University of Toronto, and a doctorate in the history of art from the University of Michigan. He taught art history at The Johns Hopkins University and the University of Toronto and served as a collections curator at several museums, including the National Gallery of Canada.

Collections Access, Loan, and Management Division (CALM)

The Special Search staff in CALM completed a highly successful transition from accepting paper special search requests to an online Web form available to Library staff and researchers. The Web form allows for complete tracking of the request from the original request to completion and closing of the request. Researchers who prefer not to submit an email address can continue to receive the response by surface mail. The Special Search Section responded to 2,880 inquiries through the online special search request form in fiscal 2006.

Advance reserve service continued its steady growth. Through this program, researchers from outside the metropolitan Washington, D.C., area can request books that they will need for their research. In fiscal 2006, CALM pulled 2,704 books for researchers and had them waiting when the researchers arrived. During the fiscal year, 30,925 readers were registered in the Library’s Reader Registration Station. The Information Technology Services Directorate funded a contract with SAIC, Inc., to assess the reader registration system, as a step in the Library’s goal of replacing this fifteen-year-old system with one that is integrated with other Library applications and will ensure a continuity of the reader registration program given the age and compatibility problems of the existing system.

As staffing levels continued to decline with the retirements of sixteen CALM staff last January, CALM management increased its outsourcing of behind-the-scenes tasks, awarding the stack maintenance contract to LSSI in September 2006.

Progress continues in the Library’s remote storage facility at Fort Meade, Md. The Library dedicated and began to occupy Module 1 of the facility on November 18, 2002. This module houses monographs and bound periodicals from the general, Asian, African and Middle Eastern and Law Library collections. It is now completely full, and houses 1.6 million items.

The Library began to occupy Module 2 on November 4, 2005. Collections are being transferred from Capitol Hill to Module 2 at the rate of approximately 4,000 items per day. As with Module 1, the majority of Module 2 will contain monographs and bound periodicals from the general, Asian, African and Middle Eastern, and Law Library collections. A small number of special collections items will also be included. A total of 414,986 items were accessioned and transferred to the Fort Meade facility during fiscal 2006, bringing the total to 1,991,889 items stored at the facility by the close of fiscal 2006. We anticipate that, when full, Module 2 will contain approximately 2.2 million items. At the current rate of transfer, Module 2 will be full by May 2008.

As more and more items are stored at the facility, the number of items requested daily from the facility also increased. A total of 12,469 requests were received and responded to during fiscal 2006. The response success rate remained at 100 percent.

CALM served on a Library group working with an outside contractor hired by the Architect of the Capitol (AOC) to assess the current status of the book conveyor systems in the three Library buildings on Capitol Hill and to develop options on the future of these aging and often inoperable systems.

Digital Reference Team (DRT)

The Digital Reference Team, serving as the public interface for the Library’s digital collections, presented 208 video conferences to 1,790 participants and 26 web conferences that served 171 participants. Onsite presentations and workshops totaled 56, to more than 1,005 participants in fiscal year 2006. The Digital Reference Team (DRT) answered a total of 19,428 Ask-A-Librarian webform inquiries during the year and held 1,379 chat sessions.

Ten Web conference workshop opportunities are published on the web at <http://www.cilc.org/search_program/aspx -- select "Library of Congress" from the Content Provider: drop-down menu>. These web conferences form part of a monthly schedule for web conferences hosted by The Center for Interactive Learning and Collaboration. The web conferences are: Sleuthing with Maps; Interest Fact or Fiction: Web Site Evaluation Strategies; To Light Us To Freedom, and Glory Again! Civil War Poetry with a Purpose; Analyzing Primary Sources; Congress Present: Using THOMAS; Gathering Community Stories; Library of Congress ONLINE!; Make It & Take It; and Treasure Hunting. Web conference workshops and presentations were offered through Online Programing for All Libraries at <http://www.opal-online.org/progschrono.htm>. The Online Programing for All Libraries organization targets the audience using screen readers and other accommodations. The list of OPAL Web conferences and discussions includes Recipes & Cookbooks: A (Tasty?) Window Into Our Past; Family Reunions: Exploring Your Roots; Poetry On High: A History of U.S. Poets Laureate; The Civil Rights Movement in America: A Tribute to Rosa Parks; and From Telephone to Ice Cream Cone: Inventions and Their Inventors. A complete listing of current and archived web discussions is found on the OPAL Web site at <http://www.opal-online.org/archivegenealogy.htm>.

The DRT has created webguides to complement new LC exhibits, the appointment of the Poet Laureate, and the Web conferences. Examples include Finding Franklin: A Resource Guide, Guide to the American Revolution, 1763-1783, Guide to Materials for Rosa Parks, Guide to Harlem Renaissance Materials, and Donald Hall: Online Resources; a complete list is at <http://www.loc.gov/rr/program/bib/bibguide.html>.

Two members of the Digital Reference Team began participating in the Second Life virtual world exercise this fall in order to bring LC resources to the participants.

European Division

Georgette Dorn, chief of the Hispanic Division, has also been Acting Chief of the European Division since December 2005. Ronald Bachman, Polish Specialist, and Grant Harris, Romanian and East European Specialist, were Acting Heads of the European Reading Room during 2006.

The European Division’s staff mounted on its home page a listing of Bulgarian newspapers.

The Embassy of Norway and the European Division organized a symposium to commemorate the 100th anniversary of Henrik Ibsen’s death.

Federal Research Division (FRD)

FRD Military Legal Resources Web site. With generous funding from the Army Judge Advocate General’s Legal Center and School, the Military Legal Resources Web site <http://www.loc.gov/rr/frd/Military_Law/military-legal-resources-home.html> continues to increase in size. It now has 708 full-text, searchable documents relevant to U.S. military law. In the queue is an important and major collection, Trial of the Major War Criminals Before the International Military Tribunal, Nuremberg, 14 November 1945–1 October 1946, Nuremberg, Germany, 1947–1949, 42 volumes. This collection includes official documents, proceedings, various indexes, other documents and materials in evidence, in English and German. The FRD effort will make available in digital form a complete set made up of LC and Army JAG copies.

FRD Country Profiles. Funded by the Department of Defense, the FRD Country Profiles Web site <http://lcweb2.loc.gov/frd/cs/profiles.html> has grown to 49 profiles, many of which were updated during 2006.

Geography and Map Division (G&M)

The Geography and Map Division, Library of Congress engages in a wide variety of programs, from acquisition to cataloging, inventory, scanning, reference, cartography for Congress, and outreach. The G&M program is directed toward a continuing desire to create access increasingly to our unparalleled collections for a whole new body of users and to improve access to our collections among traditional users. With increased use and dependence in research on collection content on the Internet, it is apparent that therein lies a whole new community of casual and serious researchers who will benefit from knowledge about maps, map holdings, and reproduction of maps for a whole range of uses.

Acquisitions

Waldseemüller map. The Library acquired the 1507 world map by Martin Waldseemüller in May 2003. Since that time, efforts to place the map on permanent display have proceeded, and currently LC is working with the National Institute of Standards (NIST) to have an encasement constructed which will allow us to display the map in the Library’s Thomas Jefferson Building for a long period of time. The NIST group developed the Documents of Freedom encasement at the National Archives several years ago; the Waldseemuller encasement being constructed is the most ambitious of such projects to date. The encasement is expected to be ready in the fall of 2007. Following testing to ensure that the original document is indeed protected, there will be a formal opening of the world treasure. In October 2007 G&M will host a two-day conference on the Waldseemüller map at the Library.

Heezen-Tharp. After several years of work, G&M has completed the inventory, a register, and filing information on the rich Bruce Heezen-Marie Tharp collection on their 1940s-1970s work to map the ocean floor. With emphasis primarily on the Atlantic Ocean, their papers cover all of the earth’s oceans. A wide and rich variety of primary source data collected by the team over 30 years of research are found in that collection; as a result of their work, the actual shape of the mid-Atlantic ridge and the concept of continental drift were confirmed. Marie Tharp died in August 2006, at the age of 84.

Cataloging

During the past few years G&M developed a new position description that is applicable to all new staff and existing catalogers in the division. That position description calls for wide responsibility for individual catalogers, from cataloging maps and atlases to maps on compact disk and Web sites.

An effort is underway to ensure that our rarest atlases and maps are under full cataloging control. The project for a new vault is moving forward, with increasing materials under control and more readily available descriptively to the public.

Inventory/preservation

Rehousing of U.S. maps. For the past four years a G&M team has worked on rehousing/relabeling our title collection of U.S. maps, pre-1970. At present over 130,000 maps have been rehoused, and an assessment of preservation concerns made. That project has systematically worked on the individual state holdings in the Division and as of this date only a handful of states remain for work. The largest of those remaining is California. Approximately another 30,000 maps remain to be handled and rehoused.

Academia Sinica Project. For the past four years G&M has been engaged in a number of projects, related to retrospective materials for Asia, from the major efforts of Professor Li Xiaocong, Beijing University, to identify and to assist us in assessing preservation concerns for our Chinese maps collection pre 1900, to the work of Academia Sinica, Taipei, Taiwan, in the past two years to scan, to catalog, maps in our China collection–maps, atlases, set maps. Professor Li issued a cartobibliography, in Chinese, A Descriptive Catalogue of the Traditional Chinese Maps Collected in the Library of Congress (Beijing: Cultural Relic Publishing House, 2004). That publication has appeared on the Internet, thus further enhancing knowledge of G&M’s holdings on China.

Scanning

The scanning program in G&M is now more than 10 years old. To date, more than 10,000 maps have been added to the online data base. These items include many historical materials, much Americana, and, increasingly, materials from throughout the world. The scanning program is driven by long range scanning proposals and reader demand for reproductions of Division materials in digital format. G&M celebrated the posting of its 10,000th map online in September 2006. In the beginning of the program 10 years ago, the division set out to scan popular items in the collections based on the use of established cartobibliographies as the framing device. Since the beginning we have placed the panoramic maps, railroad bibliography, U.S. Civil War, and American Revolutionary War items online. Today the first three mentioned groups of materials are practically completed, with new panoramic maps added routinely and with all Civil War materials except the Sherman Collection being online. In 2006 the Jedediah Hotchkiss Civil War map collection was added online, and a year ago G&M entered into an agreement with the Virginia Historical Society and the Library of Virginia to post Civil War maps in their collections on the LC Web site.

In the matter of the U.S. Revolutionary War materials, much progress has been made, yet much remains to be done. G&M added the Rochambeau Collection online, but yet to be scanned are several items, including nearly 1,800 Atlantic Neptune sheets in the G&M collection. In the meanwhile the division continues to receive requests for county landownership maps, set map segments, World War II and other conflict data, increasingly maps from the Luso-Hispanic world, cartobibliography, and so on. The project with Readex has made progress in scanning the US Serial Set maps, those that contain any coloration. Also, G&M has considered proposals from the University of Texas and the University System of California and Stanford University to scan, with their support, pre-1923 Sanborn fire insurance map sheets for their respective states.

The G&M collections now contain approximately 5.5 million map sheets, 80,000 atlases, 500 globes and globe gores, 3,000 raised relief images, and over 18,000 CDs containing maps. Since the institution of machine readable cataloging in the early 1970s, approximately 500,000 bibliographic records have been created; that number is strongly represented by contemporary maps, i.e., those acquired since 1970.

Reference

The G&M Reading Room Team has continued to build its Web site, listing finding aids of use to the researcher. In addition to works on Afghanistan and genealogical materials for Central and Eastern Europe, the 9 volume Phillips-LeGear’s A List of Geographical Atlases in the Library of Congress has been scanned and will be mounted shortly. Work continues in editing an online version of Insurance Maps in the Library of Congress (1981). Also, a work by Mike Kline of the Reading Room on the Louisiana Purchase will be forthcoming shortly.

Cartography for Congress

The Division’s main entry into the GIS field has been through our Congressional Cartography Program. The two cartographer positions (one became vacant in January 2006) are actively engaged with individual Congressional requests, committee requests, and those long term research projects received through the Library’s Congressional Research Service. The program has effectively met congressional demand for timely maps depicting every imaginable topic, from the impact of hurricanes Katrina and Rita on the Gulf Coast, to the long term impact of the reduction of AMTRAK Service.

Ginny Mason and the Congressional Cartography Program were honored as a top governmental GIS program at the mapping software company ESRI’s annual Users Conference in San Diego, Calif., in July.

Outreach

The Division has tied much of its outreach programming to association with the Phillips Society in which an annual meeting is held. In the past 5 years we have held meetings of content at the Miami Map Fair, the International Map Collectors Society meeting in Washington (October 2006), Denver (2005), with the Texas Map Society (In Texas and in Washington in September 2005), in Chicago during the IMCoS meeting in 2001, and in Washington in a separate program on mapping Latin America. The G&M Division hosts the monthly meeting of the Washington Map Society. In September 2005 we opened the cosponsored exhibition Maps in Our Lives with support from the American Congress on Surveying and Mapping; the exhibition will remain onsite in the basement of the Madison Building until October 2007 and then will travel to Omaha, Neb., to be mounted in the Western History Museum. The exhibition is now available online on the Library’s Web site.

Hispanic Division

Georgette Dorn, Chief of the Hispanic Division, received the knighthood of Queen Isabella from King Juan Carlos I of Spain for her contributions to Spanish and Latin American culture. She also received the 2006 Distinguished Service Award from the Conference on Latin American History of the American Historical Association.

Volume 61 of the Handbook of Latin American Studies, an annual multi-lingual and multi-discipline annotated scholarly guide, prepared by the Hispanic Division, was published in March by the University of Texas Press. The annual volumes alternate between the humanities and social sciences. Volume 61 includes the social sciences. In addition, the Handbook is available in a searchable database, free to the public: HLAS Online at <http://www.loc.gov/rr/hispanic>. It has an OpenURL Resolver. Some of the entries link full text articles.

Humanities and Social Sciences Division

Electronic reference

The Election 2006 Web Archive was a joint project of Library Services and the Office of Strategic Initiatives and was led by the Humanities and Social Sciences Division. Approximately 1,200 Web sites produced by congressional and gubernatorial candidates were archived between May and December, 2006.

Doing Research at the Library of Congress is available on the LC Web site at <http://www.loc.gov/rr/main/research/>. The U.S. Civil War Regimental Histories in the Library of Congress bibliography was converted from static Web pages to scripted OPAC searches.

Collection development and acquisitions

Growth of the microform custodial collections. After the receipt of 96,039 items in 2006, the Microform Reading Room custodial collections contained approximately 7,878,169 items at the end of 2006.

Growth of the machine-readable custodial collections. After the receipt of 4,220 items in 2006, and the removal of 138 items from the collections, the machine-readable custodial collections contained approximately 69,006 items. Machine-readable materials are served in the Microform Reading Room.

Manuscript Division

The Library acquired the papers of government astronomer and gay rights activist Frank Kameny on October 6. The collection of more than 70,000 items is perhaps the most complete record of the gay rights movement in America, as Kameny was the central figure in overturning the ban on employment of gay and lesbian employees in the federal government. Kameny was dismissed from a federal position in 1957 and was finally vindicated when the government changed its policy in 1975.

Motion Picture, Broadcasting, and Recorded Sound Division (MBRS)

National Audio-Visual Conservation Center (NAVCC)

The Library’s new National Audio-Visual Conservation Center, located near Culpeper, Va., is scheduled for completion in March 2007. Staff of the MBRS Division currently working in Washington and Dayton, Ohio, will begin relocating to the center in late April, with all collections processing and preservation activities ramping up during the summer months. The center has been built for the Library by the Packard Humanities Institute, and when the Institute donates the finished 45-acre property to the government this spring, it will be the largest private-sector gift in the history of the Library of Congress. The facility is opening in two phases. Phase 1, comprised of the Collections Building and Central Plant, opened in January 2006. To date, nearly 4 million film, video and sound collection items have been moved into the 140,000 square foot storage building, and nearly 30 Library and facilities operations staff and contractors are already working onsite. Phase 2 of the project includes newly constructed nitrate film vaults, comprised of 124 individual vaults within two storage pods, as well as the new Conservation Building that will house the MBRS Division’s administrative, curatorial, and processing staffs and the preservation laboratories for film, sound and video.

MBRS continued to develop the new workflow, production and archiving systems that will be implemented at the NAVCC and that will integrate and automate all of the center’s business processes. In September, a contract to procure, integrate and install the facility’s “front-end” preservation production and data capture systems, as well as all audiovisual viewing and projection equipment, was awarded to Communications Engineering Inc. On a parallel track, the Library’s IT department awarded a contract to build the “back-end” digital storage archive to the firm GMRI. This petabyte-level archive will store the digital preservation files produced at NAVCC in a secured environment with a mirrored offsite back up. By the end of the summer this archive had been built in the Library’s IT center on Capitol Hill, where it is being tested prior to relocation to Culpeper.

National Preservation Boards

The first-ever joint meeting of the Library’s National Film Preservation Board (NFPB) and National Recording Preservation Board (NRPB) was held in Washington on November 1. The two boards took the opportunity to discuss issues and priorities of common concern in the continued development of national preservation plans for both moving images and recorded sounds.

In consultation with the Recording Board, work continued on the effort to conduct a study of the state of recorded sound preservation in the U.S. Public hearings sponsored by the NRPB for the purpose of gathering information for the study were held in Los Angeles on November 29 and in New York on December 19. Over 40 witnesses delivered testimony during the hearings, including recording artists, executives, educators, students, critics, foundation representatives, and archivists from both the major record labels and public libraries and archives.

In December, the Librarian of Congress announced the annual selection of 25 films named to the National Film Registry. Selected for preservation following the receipt of public nominations and in consultation with the Library’s National Film Preservation Board, the total number of titles on the registry now stands at 450. Films named in 2006 were: Traffic in Souls (1913), Tess of the Storm Country (1914), The Curse of Quon Gwon (1916-17), Flesh and the Devil (1927), The Last Command (1928), Applause (1929), St. Louis Blues (1929), The Big Trail (1930), Red Dust (1932), Daughter of Shanghai (1937), Early Abstractions #1-5,7,10 (1939-56), Siege (1940), Notorious (1946), In the Street (1948/52), A Time Out of War (1954), Think of Me First as a Person (1960-75), The T.A.M.I. Show (1964), Reminiscences of a Journey to Lithuania (1971-72), Blazing Saddles (1974), Rocky (1976), Halloween (1978), Drums of Winter (1988), Sex, Lies and Videotape (1989), Groundhog Day (1993), and Fargo (1996).

Acquisitions

John E. Allen, Inc. Collection. Donated to the Library in December 2006, the John E. Allen Collection was the most historically significant collection of nitrate film still held in private sector hands, containing many unique and best-surviving 35mm negatives and copies of American fiction and documentary films. Comprising 10,000 items and more than 10 million feet of film, it contains WWI- and WWII-era actualities, sound-era dramatic features, unique early silent films from New York area studios (e.g., Kalem, Solax, and Thanhouser), and “all-black newsreels” from the 1940s.

Julien Bryan Collection. This collection consists of 500 reels of 35mm nitrate film and accompanying documentation from the estate of Julien Bryan, who was by far the most prominent of the traveling documentary film makers working from the 1920s to the 1960s. These reels were shot in Soviet Russia, South America, China, and the U.S. during World War II.

Additions to the Rick Prelinger Collection. Approximately 40,000 cans of 16 and 35mm film have been added to the Prelinger Archives previously acquired by the Library in 2002. Though there are a considerable number of fiction features and theatrical shorts, this is primarily a collection of independent, industrial, educational, government, commercial, travel, science, documentary, student and amateur productions. It includes the Mogulls Camera and Film Exchange Collection, which contains a good number of Kodascopes (an early home format) and films from dozens of other distributors of the time.

Additions to the Bob Hope Collection. Approximately 15,000 film cans and videotapes from Bob Hope television specials have been added, from the 1950s through his last appearance in 1996. Included are outtakes and raw footage from his trips to China and the Soviet Union, and his USO appearances in Vietnam and Kuwait. With this addition, the Library has now acquired all production elements from every television special starring the beloved comedian: 284 shows, or more than 450 hours of programming.

David G. Hummel American Musical Theatre Collection. This gift includes unique, unpublished live recordings of entire shows with accompanying dialog, playbills, reference books, as well as 10,000 published recordings – nearly every professional production of American musicals from 1950-2000. Stephen Sondheim called this collection “… the most complete and accurate catalog of the American musical theater currently (or perhaps ever) in existence.”

Other recorded sound collections. Recent sound acquisitions included live jazz and blues from WWOZ, a New Orleans radio station that almost was lost to Hurricane Katrina; The Coca Cola Radio Advertising Collection, digital files of over 2,500 radio spots dating from 1927 from the Coca Cola Archives; and, the Still Unheard Voices Oral History Collection of interviews with Irish residents dating from 1994 to 2000 and conducted by author Pamela Clark for her forthcoming book, Still Unheard Voices.

Prints and Photographs Division (P&P)

The Prints and Photographs Division maintains a Web home page at <http://www.loc.gov/rr/print/>. For ongoing information about newly online collections and recent and upcoming activities in the Prints and Photographs Division, see the "What's New" page at <http://www.loc.gov/rr/print/whatsnew.html>.

Recently cataloged / digitized collections or groups of pictures

Lamb Studios Archive. About 2,500 preparatory and study sketches for stained glass windows, murals, mosaics, furnishings, metalwork, and interior architecture designed by J. & R. Lamb Studios, 1860s-1990s. Visit the images and collection profile at <http://lcweb2.loc.gov/pp/lambhtml/lambabt.html>.

Prints and Photographs from Copyright Deposit Collections. During the summer of 2006, Junior Fellows assisted staff in sorting and inventorying more than 2,000 nineteenth century prints and more than 3,000 photographs dating 1880-1920. They also helped organize and describe more than thirty-five groups of stereographs (about 600 stereographs in all). Selected items are being individually cataloged and digitized.

Selected Images of President Jimmy Carter. U.S. News & World Report staff selected about 100 images of President Carter to be scanned from the U.S. News & World Report Magazine Photograph Collection.

Stereographs of the Western United States. More than 1,500 stereograph cards of Western scenery have recently been scanned. Subjects include the Hayden, Powell, and Wheeler geological survey expeditions; building the transcontinental railroad; and views of the Rocky Mountains, Yosemite and Yellowstone. Photographers include John Carbutt, Alexander Gardner, Alfred Hart, Jack Hillers, William Henry Jackson, James Thurlow, and Carleton Watkins.

Lester Glassner Collection of Movie Posters. More than 400 film posters, most dating from the 1930's to the 1950's, now have online descriptions, many accompanied by digital images. The collection features many posters of foreign releases of American movies.

New reference aids

The Dry Years: Selected Images Relating to Prohibition. A new illustrated reference aid, with links leading to additional images on the topic is at <http://www.loc.gov/rr/print/list/073_dry.html>.

Frank and Frances Carpenter Collection Information. “About the Collection” information now discusses the background and scope of this body of photographs produced and gathered by Frank and Frances Carpenter, ca. 1860-1934, to illustrate popular writings on world geography. Other features include a bibliography and list of related resources. Available at <http://lcweb2.loc.gov/pp/ffcarphtml/ffcarpabt.html>.

Publications and exhibitions

Cartoon America: Comic Art in the Library of Congress has been published by the Library in association with Harry N. Abrams, Inc. Edited by Harry Katz, former head curator of the Library's Prints and Photographs Division, the book celebrates 250 years of American cartooning with 275 full-color illustrations and numerous essays. “Cartoon America: Highlights from the Art Wood Collection of Cartoon and Caricature” opened in the Great Hall of the Library of Congress’s Thomas Jefferson Building on November 2 and will remain on view through February 24, 2007, and online at <http://www.loc.gov/exhibits/cartoonamerica/>.

The Enduring Outrage exhibition features original work by the Pulitzer Prize winning political cartoonist Herblock and draws from the generous gift of 14,000 original drawings and more than 50,000 preparatory sketches donated to the Library of Congress by the Herb Block Foundation in 2002. The online exhibit is at <http://www.loc.gov/exhibits/treasures/herblock-home.html>.

Lighthouses, by Sarah Wermiel, is the fourth publication in the Norton/Library of Congress Visual Sourcebooks in Architecture, Design, and Engineering series. This 336-page hardcover book features nearly 600 images from the Library's collections--all on an accompanying CD-ROM. The publisher’s description is at <http://www2.wwnorton.com/npb/nparch/073166.html>.

Serial and Government Publications Division Collections

The division has acquired more than one dozen original 18th century newspapers, including rare issues of The Vergennes Gazette (Vergennes, Vermont ) and the Republican Watch-Tower (New York).

Organizing and preserving the Library’s collections

The division participates as a curatorial contributor to the National Digital Newspaper Program, a joint Library of Congress and National Endowment for the Humanities program to digitize the nation’s newspapers. The division continues cooperative newspaper microfilming projects with the Center for Research Libraries and several Research Libraries Group members.

Deacidification of the Serial and Government Publications Division’s gold collection of comic books continues. The issues are also getting greater bibliographic accessibility, since online item records are created for all deacidified issues.

Serving scholars and researchers

The Division hosted two Muskie Fellows from Ukraine who worked with the Russian newspaper collections to identify important events coverage and propose a digitization strategy. The Division hosted Tracy Smith of CBS Sunday Morning who researched “good news” across the nation by using small town newspapers. The Division provided a briefing and display of historic and unique materials for Leonel Fernandez, president of the Dominican Republic.

The division’s Newspaper and Current Periodical Room homepage was accessed approximately 2,000,000 times in 2006. Division staff added or updated approximately 1099 links to the Newspaper and Current Periodical Reading Room suite of 247 pages. In addition, staff checked and corrected about 600 “dead links.”

The Division was the public beta test site for the National Digital Newspaper Program project, American Chronicle.

A serials inventory contract has been awarded to Library Associates of Maryland.

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PARTNERSHIPS AND OUTREACH PROGRAMS DIRECTORATE

Kathryn Mendenhall is the interim director for Partnerships and Outreach Programs.

Center for the Book

The Center for the Book is the reading, literacy and library promotion arm of the Library of Congress; it also encourages the scholarly study of books and print culture. The center frequently hosts public programs at the Library of Congress and has stimulated the creation of two national reading promotion networks: affiliated centers in 50 states and the District of Columbia, and a coalition of more than 80 non-profit organizations. It plays a major role in the annual National Book Festival, and works with libraries and academic and research organizations around the world. The center’s program, publications, and projects must be supported by tax deductible contributions from individuals, corporations, and foundations, or by funds transferred from other government agencies. The Library of Congress supports its four staff positions.

The center’s Web site at <http://www.loc.gov/cfbook/> provides information about its projects, forthcoming events at the Library of Congress, including the National Book Festival; state center affiliates and their programs; organizational partners in the U.S. and overseas; storytelling festivals; community “One Book” reading and discussion programs; and other literary events taking place across the U.S. Specifics also are included about projects such as Letters About Literature, Reading Powers the Mind, River of Words, and Read More About It.

On behalf of the Library’s Lifelong Literacy initiative, the Center for the Book and OSI’s Educational Outreach Division will sponsor two presentations in the booth. Terry Trueman, award-winning writer for teen readers, will speak and answer questions from 12 noon to 1:00 p.m. on Saturday, January 20 and librarian and reader advisor Nancy Pearl will speak and answer questions from 12 noon to 1:00 p.m. on Sunday, January 21.

Federal Library and Information Center Committee (FLICC)

During fiscal 2006, the Federal Library and Information Center Committee (FLICC) continued its mission “to foster excellence in federal library and information services through interagency cooperation and to provide guidance and direction for FEDLINK.”

The FLICC working groups completed an ambitious agenda in 2006. Notably, the Competitive Sourcing Working Group completed an analysis of the history and current practices of federal competitive sourcing of federal libraries; the Education Working Group presented a variety of seminars and workshops, including a week-long program for federal library technicians, and a variety of other workshops, seminars and institutes on cataloging, pay banding, creating Wiki’s for federal libraries, competencies, digital futures and other information science policy issues; and the Content Management Working Group sponsored a content management update on digital preservation and workshops on Web standards, information architecture, taxonomy and librarians as members of the agency management team.

The FLICC Awards Working Group announced the following awards: 2005 Federal Library/Information Center of the Year in the Large Library/Information Center Category (with a staff of 11 or more employees): the Scientific and Technical Information Center (STIC) at the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office; in the Small Library/Information Center Category (with a staff of 10 or fewer employees): U.S. Army Military Intelligence Library in Fort Huachuca, Arizona; 2005 Federal Librarian of the Year: Leslie Campbell, Law Library program administrator at the National Judiciary Library Program for the Administrative Office of the U.S. Courts; and 2006 Federal Library Technician of the Year: Sue Hubbard, library technician, Base Library, Little Rock Air Force Base, Arkansas.

FLICC added four new programs to its online video library on topics ranging from content management, pay banding, embedded librarians and federated search technologies.

FLICC's cooperative network, FEDLINK, continued to enhance its fiscal operations while providing its members with $63.3 million in Transfer Pay services, $7.2 million in Direct Pay services, and an estimated $42.6 million in the Direct Express services, saving federal agencies more than $15.2 million in vendor volume discounts and approximately $22.3 million more in cost avoidance.

To meet the requirements of the Fiscal Operations Improvement Act of 2000 (P.L. 106-481) that created new statutory authority for FEDLINK’s fee-based activities, FEDLINK governing bodies and staff members developed a new five-year business plan in fiscal 2006. Planning for this business plan began in the fall of 2005 when FLICC/FEDLINK asked a team of graduate students from the University of Maryland—College Park to research and compile an environment scan. In the winter of 2006, FEDLINK released, via the Web, separate surveys directed at FLICC/FEDLINK leadership, members, current vendors, and program staff members. Budgeting efforts projected both costs and revenue, looking at private sector and historic costs with adjustments calculated based on vendor and GAO predictions. Throughout June and July, the FLICC/FEDLINK staff, with assistance from some external advisors, drafted the 2007 – 2011 Business Plan.

In fiscal 2006, FEDLINK continued to give federal agencies cost-effective access to an array of automated information retrieval services for online research, cataloging, and resource sharing. FEDLINK members also procured print serials, electronic journals, books and other publications, document delivery and preservation services via Library of Congress/FEDLINK contracts with more than 130 major vendors. The program obtained further discounts for customers through consortia and enterprise-wide licenses for journals, aggregated information retrieval services and electronic books. FEDLINK awarded six new contracts for electronic retrieval services and competed requirements for serials subscription services for 206 agencies under new contracts with seven serial subscription agents. FEDLINK staff consulted with six agencies to use the new preservation contracts to digitize and conserve special collections and create related metadata. They also assisted the Government Printing Office in the competition of a new contract for library binding services.

In 2006, FLICC re-engineered its publication program and evolved into an electronic-only communication provider. Staff members added more than 2,500 contacts to the moderated FEDLIB listserv and published the first electronic version of FEDLINK Technical Notes for more than 3,000 electronic subscribers.

Interpretive Programs Office

American Treasures of the Library of Congress reopened on July 17 with a featured presentation of Herbert Block (Herblock) political cartoons titled “Get Out the Vote!” Information on other exhibitions is found throughout this document.

Much of the Office’s effort in 2006 and 2007 has focused on preparing the New Visitor Experience for the large number of visitors to the Library anticipated when the U.S. Capitol Visitors Center opens in 2008. The Office has worked with the custodial divisions, Visitor Services Office, Preservation Directorate, Office of the Librarian, the Library’s enabling infrastructure units, and the Architect of the Capitol to develop an experience that will help visitors to become lifelong Library users.

Kluge Center/Office of Scholarly Programs

The new Poet Laureate, Donald Hall of New Hampshire, succeeded Ted Kooser in October and appeared at the National Book Festival on September 30. Since 1955, Donald Hall has published fifteen books of poetry, including White Apples and the Taste of Stone this year.

Librarian of Congress James H. Billington has named Congressman Major R. Owens (D-NY) as a distinguished visiting scholar in the John W. Kluge Center at the Library of Congress. Rep. Owens begins his residency at the Library after his retirement from Congress in January and will work on a case study of the Congressional Black Caucus and its impact on national politics. Owens earned a bachelor’s degree from Morehouse College, a master’s of library science from Atlanta University and honorary doctorates from Atlanta University and Gallaudet University. Owens began his career as a librarian at the Brooklyn Public Library. He was first elected to the U.S. House of Representatives in 1982 from New York’s 11th Congressional District.

John Hope Franklin, professor emeritus at Duke University, and Yu Ying-shih, professor emeritus at Princeton University, received the third John W. Kluge Prize for lifetime achievement in the study of humanity on December 5. Endowed by Library of Congress benefactor John W. Kluge, the Kluge Prize rewards lifetime achievement in the wide range of disciplines not covered by the Nobel prizes, including history, philosophy, politics, anthropology, sociology, religion, criticism in the arts and humanities, and linguistics. The two awardees will share the $1 million prize.

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

The pace of change from analog to digital systems intensified during fiscal year 2006--the year the National Library Service for the Blind and Physically Handicapped (NLS), Library of Congress, celebrated its seventy-fifth anniversary. The digital transition project marked some important milestones, and NLS acquired new key staff members to facilitate the transition.

On December 26, 2006, NLS announced that it had awarded a contract for administrative tasks of the braille certification program to the National Federation of the Blind (NFB), beginning in early 2007. Authority and oversight of the program will remain with NLS; NFB’s role is strictly administrative.

Digital talking books

Updated business plan published. NLS continued to move forward in its ten-year plan to develop digital systems and services, following the steps outlined in Digital Talking Books: Planning for the Future (1998) and detailed in the Current Strategic Business Plan for the Implementation of Digital Systems (2003). The plan guides the phase-in of digital talking-book playback machines (DTBMs) and media and the gradual phase-out of obsolescent analog cassette-based service and equipment. In September 2006, NLS published a supplemental edition of the Strategic Business Plan that detailed accomplishments and current and future activities in light of the experiences of the past three years.

Usability tests near completion. NLS completed a series of eight usability tests to validate the new digital talking-book (DTB) system requirements and reveal unanticipated problems in everyday use. A functional digital talking book machine (DTBM) prototype is in the last stages of refinement and will lead to the production of working models for field testing early in 2007. NLS has confirmed that machine and cartridge models are pleasing to all types of users and that the physical design and layout of controls are nearly optimal. Users approved the flash-memory book cartridge, large-print and braille labeling, and the system’s superior sound quality. Machines and cartridges were tested under a variety of circumstances—in network libraries as well as private homes, in rehabilitation and long-term care facilities, and in retirement communities. In addition to administering the tests, the contractor interviewed library staff and repair personnel at network libraries.

Distribution systems assessed. NLS also studied distribution systems for the DTBs and players. The goal of the study was to compare competing systems and determine the best model for distribution--one that gives high-quality service and is compatible with the new digital format.

The two-phase study was initiated in March 2005 and completed in August 2006. A contractor evaluated three models and recommended the most appropriate for the digital system. A hybrid option--one that included both mas duplication of the most popular DTBs along with duplication-on-demand of infrequently requested titles--was identified as the superior option. However, because of the complexity of implementing duplication-on-demand procedures, the contractor recommended that DTB distribution begin with an all mass-duplication option during the transition period from 2008 to 2012. Duplication on demand will be reevaluated as the system evolves, and a hybrid distribution option of some type may be implemented after 2012, but not before. NLS will follow this course of action. For the first three years of the transition period, cassette production will also continue.

Playback machine transition. A comprehensive Playback Machine Transition Study addressed phasing out cassette machines and phasing in DTBMs. The study determined that production of the C1—the most popular and widely distributed NLS cassette machine—should be discontinued after mid-2007. To offset the end of production, the study recommended that NLS intensify its cassette book machine repair capacity as soon as possible.

10² Talking-Book Club

The 10² Talking-Book Club was conceived in 2005 to recognize the accomplishments of the national reading program's centenarians. In 2006, twelve libraries in eleven states welcomed 117 centenarian patrons into the club with certificates, pins, and letters.

Web-Braille

Web-Braille, NLS's Internet-based service that provides in electronic format thousands of braille books, music scores, and magazines produced by NLS, has continued to grow during its seventh year. The Web-Braille site is password protected, and all files are in an electronic form of contracted braille, requiring the use of special equipment to gain access. Web-Braille offers more than 7,000 titles from the national collection, 600 music scores, 29 NLS-produced magazines, and 6 sports schedules. Local books and magazines provided by 8 regional libraries are also available. The number of users now exceeds 4,000 and continues to grow.

Outreach projects

Under contract to NLS, the international public relations firm Fleishman-Hillard, Inc., continued to implement strategic communications initiatives aimed at expanding public awareness of the service among potential patrons around the country, especially among key audiences such as seniors, veterans, and underserved segments of the African American, Native American, and Spanish-speaking communities.

The monthly newsletter about the digital transition, NLS Flash, is in its second year of publication. Flash is published in multiple formats and is available online. The newsletter, together with regionally specific press releases, has sparked coverage of NLS in major media outlets across the country.

The national toll-free “talking-book line”--1-888-NLS-READ (1-888-657-7323)--that was initiated in 2005 has drawn significant numbers of new inquiries. The voice-prompt telephone system provides callers with basic program information and eligibility requirements and then directs them seamlessly to their nearest regional library.

Key appointments

In August, Michael Montoya was appointed NLS financial manager and assistant head of the Administrative Section. Robert N. Norton was appointed head of the Quality Assurance Section at NLS in November. He is responsible for maintaining the quality and performance of all audio and braille materials and equipment produced by NLS and its contractors.

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PRESERVATION DIRECTORATE

The Preservation Directorate received approval to hire new scientists to oversee Library Services’ programs for traditional, audio-visual, and digital collection materials in the Preservation Research and Testing Division.

The Preservation Research and Testing Division began accumulating preliminary data from the installation of new equipment financed by reallocation of funds at the close of the last fiscal year. Examples of projects using the new equipment: Identification of mechanisms responsible for sticky shed in audiotapes, using a gel permeation chromatograph / viscometer; discovery of contaminants in polyester film produced through outsourcing, detected by direct analysis real time mass spectroscopy; screening for pesticides such as arsenic on collections, using a hand-held x-ray fluorescence analyzer; and tracking the rate of hydrolytic deterioration in real time at a microscopic level in magnetic and other media using an environmental scanning electron microscope.

In fiscal 2006, the Preservation Directorate completed over 10,472,480 assessments, treatments, rehousings, and reformatting for books, paper, photographs, audio-visual and other items, including Chinese rubbings and George Washington’s obituary. Through the coordinated efforts of the Directorate’s divisions and programs, over 7,688,900 items were repaired, mass deacidified, or microfilmed or otherwise reformatted. This represents an increase of 7.6 percent over fiscal 2005.

In fiscal 2006 the Directorate hosted 9 fellows and interns, including 2 Chesapeake Information and Research Libraries Alliance (CIRLA) Fellows, 2 Hispanic Association of Colleges and Universities (HACU) Interns, and 4 otherwise funded Fellows.

IFLA PAC Center Initiatives

The Directorate worked with the Bibliothèque nationale de France, the International Federation of Library Associations and Institutions (IFLA), and the IFLA Preservation and Conservation (PAC) Section to develop a special symposium on “The 3-D's of Preservation: Disasters, Displays, Digitization,” and presented a paper on exhibition preservation policy and practice, now available at <http://www.ifla.org/VI/4/ipi.html>.

In its role as the Regional Center for Preservation and Conservation for IFLA in North America, the Directorate also hosted IFLA PAC members and allied organizations and professionals for the “Future Directions in Safeguarding Document Collections, II” in collaboration with FLICC. Topics covered included LS’s Strategic Planning in the context of national preservation strategies, including emergency preparedness and research, as well as creation and preservation of digital assets.

Following the advent of Hurricane Katrina, the Directorate held 6 salvage workshops at LC and trained 44 librarians from LC and 30 from 19 outside agencies (e.g. Senate, Treasury, Census, Navy, Army, Mint) the basics of collections recovery, free of charge. At an offsite workshop in Alabama, 12 participants representing Auburn University and 7 public libraries were trained. LC staff in 12 divisions have been trained in salvage, and 14 staff in 4 divisions have been trained in relocation of collections inhouse in the event of an emergency incident. Working with Federal Library and Information Center Committee (FLICC) and other initiatives, the Directorate has provided outreach and onsite workshops, information and supplies for entities in the Gulf States of Florida, Mississippi, Louisiana, Alabama and elsewhere.

Mellon Photograph Survey. The Directorate, supported by a generous grant from The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, completed its 15-month program to adapt a photograph survey performed at Harvard University in 2003, to the Library. Findings indicate that in-depth risk and condition assessments are needed to improve storage and increase treatment for the collections. A workshop will be organized for fiscal 2007.

NEH Digitizing Sound Initiative

The Department of Energy’s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (LBNL) developed and delivered a prototype 2-D scanner to the Library for evaluation, in compliance with the “Image, Reconstruct, Erase Noise, Etc.” (IRENE) project, which aims to make the contents of shattered or damaged sound media retrievable. The prototype, which is now being tested for fidelity, will minimize scan time to image lateral (side-to-side) groove disc media using high-resolution digital microphotography in two dimensions (2-D) to provide quality reproduction. By quickly producing an audio file, the prototype addresses the mass digitization needs of major collections. Since it cannot measure the third dimension, a research project has been designed to develop the ability for 3-D scanning that can preserve audio on vertically cut cylinders, media with poorly defined groove geometry such as dictation belts, and the full groove profile of discs, which could lead to higher fidelity audio reproduction. Sources to fund this project are being sought.

Preservation of Treasures Program

With the National Institute for Standards and Technology (NIST) and the Alcoa Foundation, the Directorate has started the process of creating a permanent, oxygen-free, housing for the 16th century Waldseemueller Map that depicts the name “America” for the first time in the Western Hemisphere. The encasement design is almost complete and the fabrication process will start in the fall of 2006. Alcoa Foundation contributed over $100,000, as well as materials, to the project. Although the size of the encasement is unprecedented, upon completion the map will be able to be safely be displayed on a long - term basis, and will form one of the Library’s highlights when the passageway from the Capitol Visitors Center opens in 2007.

Conservation Division

Conservation Treatment Section

Highlights for fiscal 2006 include treatment of documents from the era of the Founding Fathers, such as the William S. Johnson Annotated Draft of the U.S. Constitution and George Washington’s personal copy of the Dunlap broadside of the Constitution from 1787, as well as the treatment of the Middlesex Gazette of 1799 containing George Washington’s obituary. For the Library’s exhibition Benjamin Franklin: In His Own Words and the Bruce Museum of Arts and Science exhibit Ben Franklin’s Curious Mind, Conservators treated fifteen items, including the Stamp Act of 1765, mezzotint portraits of Franklin, letters from Franklin to George Washington, his notes on the common cold, and his design for bifocals.

Other treasures treated included a major body of Chinese and Korean rubbings, whose fragility previously kept them from use by scholars; a pictorial map of China in watercolors from the 18th century; an ongoing project to research and treat an album of Indian paintings on mica; a 19th century Chinese woodblock print map of the world from Geography and Maps Division; and five 19th century paintings of Chinese costume images of aristocrats and government officials. Additionally two volumes of 19th century sketchbooks by noted Japanese woodblock artist Ando Hiroshige were mended to improve their longevity.

Of great significance to the worlds of music and dance, the Martha Graham copy of Aaron Copland’s Appalachian Spring with Graham’s choreographic notations was treated for the Music Division. Conservators treated selected rare books from the Dayton C. Miller Collection on the flute from the 14th-20th century and the Bradbury Album. Prints and Photographs Division holdings treatments included a major collection of Herblock political cartoons, salted paper prints from the Roger Fenton Crimean War holdings, and a lithograph by William Gropper of “Bowery Job Hunters.”

Conservators worked on several major projects for the African and Middle Eastern Division, including treating a Latin-American Dictionary from 1714 and a rare 1758 Armenian Church Doctrines volume. Staff conservators also assessed and repaired the only known Iranian-Kurdish Ketubah (Jewish marriage contract) from the town of Bijar, deep within Iran, dating from 1936.

The Phillips Society generously supported a contract conservator to treat maps identified by the Geography and Maps Division. Staff reviewed the maps, tested inks and colors, documented the treatments, supervised and assisted the conservators, and filed the treatment reports. Staff treated the valuable atlas, Theatro de Mondo, Ortelius of 1613. To aid in future treatments of Asian maps, atlases, scrolls and fans in the collections of the Geography and Map Division, Conservators designed a survey to correlate basic bibliographical information with conservators’ observations about the physical make-up and condition of the objects, as well as specific steps for treating each item.

The fiscal 2006 exhibition projects roster included the safe movement of Pre-Columbian objects from the J.I. Kislak Foundation in Miami Lakes, Fla., to the Library of Congress. Conservators prepared several Kislak items for access by the J.I. Kislak scholars, as well as assisting scientists in testing the objects to identify their component materials. CD staff surveyed, cleaned, and housed canvas bunks from transport ships from the Vietnam War for the Veterans’ History Project. Divisional staff also created gift boxes for First Lady Laura Bush, performer Marjorie Fisher, Library of Congress benefactor John W. Kluge, and Russian President and Mrs. Vladimir Putin.

Planning for the new Capitol Visitor’s Center exhibition hall exhibit cases, security, and mounting options and materials was a 2006 exhibit project of national significance. This work was supplemented by the preparation of Library of Congress items for exhibition in the Capitol Visitor’s Center exhibition halls.

Preventive Conservation Section

Staff completed the final year of a five-year MDEP project to preserve at-risk collections on the Library of Congress Capitol Hill facilities (i.e., Adams, Jefferson, and Madison buildings). Using existing resources, conservators and technicians treated an additional 113 bound volumes, 268 photographs, and 918 paper-based items for a total of 1,299 items, as well as providing custom housing to 77,657 paper items. Staff also constructed special protective boxes for an additional 5,435 items. Rehoused items included bound volumes, palm leaf manuscripts, glass plate negatives, photographs, and pre-Columbian artifacts.

Project highlights include assessment, photography and housing for recently acquired flasks and other objects belonging to the J.I. Kislak Collection, conservation treatment and housing for volumes from the Law Library’s Russian Imperial Collection, and the treatment and housing of important 19th century photographs from both the Roger Fenton and Western Survey Collections.

During fiscal 2006, conservators responded to over 16 separate incidents including floods and leaks. Day or night when emergencies happen, conservators on the emergency “Beeper Team” are on call to assess damage, rescue collections, and immediately ensure the safety of the materials. For example, when Washington, DC, experienced 12 inches of rain in 48 hours on June 25th-27th, 2006, Conservation Emergency Response Team members worked through the nights to protect collections from building leaks, remove wet collections materials, and stabilize them so they would not be lost to scholars and the American public.

Environmental monitoring. Staff members collected and analyzed environmental data with a focus on identifying the greatest risks to collections in collections storage areas. Focusing on chemical deterioration from a combination of high temperature and relative humidity and physical damage from excessively dry or highly fluctuating conditions, staff continuously monitored the environments in all three buildings on Capitol Hill, as well as the Library’s buildings in Landover, MD; Culpeper, VA; and Fort Meade, MD. Conservators managed and analyzed the resulting data from over 90 Preservation Environmental Monitors (PEM) to provide a comprehensive view of the threats to and life expectancy of all Library holdings. The Preservation Directorate is now planning for the implementation of a web-based environmental monitoring system that will allow multiple user access from many sites.

Staff completed the final phase of a three-year MDEP initiative to prepare collections for their movement to two remote storage centers: the National Audiovisual Conservation Center (NAVCC) in Culpeper, VA, and Fort Meade, MD, (Modules 3 and 4). The logistics for the Motion Picture, Broadcasting, and Record Sound Division (MBRS) move of a collection items to NAVCC were significant, involving staff reviewing holdings, containers, and transport issues for each collection individually. Working with MBRS and the Architect of the Capitol, staff developed indoor air quality guidelines for the commissioning of the facility. Research and development work on air quality continues in the coming fiscal years as the Library seeks to create permanent Library guidelines on indoor air quality.

For these moves, staff rehoused 77,657 fragile paper collections, constructed protective boxes for 5,435 books, stabilized 918 fragile paper based items, 268 photographs, and 113 volumes; assessed and surveyed 130,960 items, and offered consultations and guidance on preparations of collections for the relocations and new storage spaces.

Staff, in conjunction with the Serials Division and History Associates, rehoused The American Serials Collection stored at the Library of Congress Annex in Landover Maryland. This collection of over 8,000 bound American newspapers (ca. 1800s-late 1900s) will shortly be moved to a high-density storage facility in Fort Meade, Md., currently under construction.

Technicians working with a contracted mover, and MBRS rehoused, assessed and labeled 6,000 rare and highly valuable wax cylinders in less than six months in preparation for their relocation to the Library’s new National Audiovisual Conservation Center (NAVCC) in Culpeper, Virginia. These extraordinary cylinders date back to the origins of recorded sound. A random sampling after their relocation indicated that none of the irreplaceable discs were damaged during the move as a result of the careful rehousing and handling of the cylinders.

Staff worked closely with MBRS to rehouse an extremely rare collection of fragile early motion pictures prints on paper. Many of these Copyright deposit prints are the last surviving copies of nitrate films from the origins of the motion picture industry.

Preservation working in collaboration with staff from the Office of Security and Emergency Preparedness designed and contracted for the construction of an innovative, hermetically-sealed safe used to protect high value collection items from physical intrusion, impact, water damage, environmental fluctuation and fire. Before acceptance at the Library in August, 2006, the safe was tested via a water test, monitored, and modified to provide a stable environment.

Another notable fiscal 2006 special project was the development of the first Library of Congress Conservation Division laboratory protocols for the treatment of materials created or notated with corrosive iron gall ink. Widely used by artists, authors, secular and religious authorities, and the general public for all kinds of works from the 1400s to the present, iron gall ink poses significant preservation problems for archives, libraries, and museums worldwide. Staff also undertook a research project on 16th century colorants, specifically blue inks, found on documents manufactured in the Spanish colonies of present-day Mexico and Peru.

Binding and Collections Care Division

BCCD continued to provide general preservation assistance through the Question Point process answering 739 and an additional 78 by phone/fax/mail. The directorate continued to handle requests for ink for marking special collections and to mail out brochures. Enhancement to the Preservation Directorate web pages was begun.

The Library Binding Section continued to focus on improving efficiencies and eliminating backlogs. In spite of the retirement of three permanent Library Binding Technicians in January 2006, the LBS were able to stay current with the workflow and meet production goals. During fiscal 2006, 149,332 items were labeled, 19,494 of these items were softbound monograph volumes (Copy 2's) assigned to the General Collection.

The Collections Care Section provided treatment for 2,661 volumes, and made 8,384 boxes. This included two important boxing projects: for the Hispanic Reading Room, 1,000 boxes for the Luis Dobles Segreda collection of Letras Patrias, Costa Rica, 1826-1943; for the Asian Reading Room, 200 boxes for the Washington Documentation Center Collection, consisting of volumes from China created during the Ming and Qing periods (1368-1644).

The Section made use of the newly acquired automated Kasemaker boxing machine’s enhanced capabilities, by making self-closing wrappers for volumes being sent to Fort Meade. These wrappers are thinner than the previous four-flap box, and therefore use less space within the Fort Meade box while still protecting at risk volumes. Additionally, these boxes do not require any fasteners, which speeds production and lowers cost. Also, the machine is being used to cut foam inserts for multimedia boxes, and the Motion Picture, Broadcasting, and Recorded Sound Division’s Paper Print film boxing project. Previously cutting foam inserts had been a time consuming task done by hand using board shears, a book press and a die-cut knife. Now, this task is done with greater precision, and only takes seconds per piece.

Preservation Reformatting Division (PRD)

In fiscal 2006, PRD successfully converted 5,865,061 units (e.g. print pages, photographs, posters), a 25 percent increase over the fiscal 2005 level, of Library material through a combination of preservation microfilming (5,809,544 pages or 3,295,852 exposures), preservation facsimile (3,557 pages or 21 volumes), digitization (46,656 pages, 132,752 files, or 2,091 works), and other preservation photographic reproductions (796 images and 4,508 acetate microfilm reels) for service to Congress and the public. The Division continued its support for audio and video recordings of official Library of Congress performances (32 performances) by the Motion Picture, Broadcast and Recorded Sound Division. Reformatted materials were drawn from ten Library Collection and Services divisions, the Law Library, and the Master Negative Microform Collection held by the Photoduplication Service.

In addition to the more routine high-volume reformatting of General Collection and Law Library materials, PRD significantly increased its allocation of resources to address 1930’s era Copyright Drama Deposits held by the Manuscript Division, severely embrittled World War I and World War II era military serials, and deteriorating acetate and nitrate photographic items from the Prints and Photographs Division. A new hybrid digitization pilot project was initiated to produce complete best copies of local histories in digital form with content derived from early Library produced microfilm and from original illustrated print materials retained by custodial divisions.

PRD maintained the quality of reformatted products through a quality assurance program supported by both staff and an external service provider. Approximately 2,005 micrographic units (e.g. microfilm reels, microfiche) received complete bibliographic inspection while all other units received a more basic level of review.

Work began under a new multi-year preservation microfilming and digital imaging contract that was successfully competed and awarded to OCLC Preservation Service Centers at the close of the previous fiscal year. This new contract allows the Library to continue high-volume offsite preservation reformatting of a wide variety of library materials at a competitive cost. Deliverables under this new contract include microfilm, microfiche and digital files. Forty-two percent of total PRD reformatting work volume was accomplished through this new effort.

A more closely coordinated preservation microfilming effort between PRD and the New Delhi overseas office resulted in more effective reformatting of newsprint serials acquired by the New Delhi, Nairobi and Cairo field offices.

The Library’s existing commercial binding contract with the HF Group, formerly Heckman Bindery, was modified to allow for preservation facsimile services. A relatively low volume of embrittled rights restricted monographs and single serial volumes assigned to reference collections were identified for preservation facsimile replacement. Fragile monographs in the public domain were digitized to allow wide-spread access rather then producing a facsimile copy for onsite use.

Master Negative Microfilm Inventory: Essential steps were undertaken to improve the stewardship of the Library’s Master Negative Microfilm Collection. Based on condition data collected through an earlier survey of this collection, PRD doubled the number of deteriorating acetate microfilm reels for duplication. All of the microforms were produced before 1948 and have never been rehoused. A new contract was awarded to Library Systems and Services (LSSI) to begin an item level inventory of the Master Negative Microfilm Collection in preparation for its upcoming move to cold storage at the Ft. Meade facility in 2009.

Digital Preservation Laboratory (DPL). Digital Preservation Laboratory (DPL) staff continued a number of longstanding investigations and collaborations, with the greatest success coming from the JPEG 2000 technology evaluation and adoption program. DPL staff proposed requirements for the inclusion of JPEG 2000 technology in the FEDORA digital object repository system (a project subsequently sponsored by the Google Summer of Code program). Other JPEG 2000 related activities include the refinement of encoding techniques for high-resolution scans of microfilmed newspapers. The DPL continues to support color management efforts at the Library by making available color management software and hardware for use by interested parties. Production oriented research and development activities include the continued development of objective imaging performance measures and statistical quality control techniques.

The Division continued its “Scan on Demand” digitization of embrittled items requested via the Interlibrary Loan program and brittle book programs, supplemented by telephone directories from the European Division, digital versions of the American Newspaper Annual (Ayers Directories) and other reference works. A total of 134 works were processed, consisting of 44,699 pages (125,071 digital files).

U.S. Newspaper Program (USNP)

The United States Newspaper Program (USNP) is an ongoing cooperative national effort among the states and the federal government to locate, catalog, and preserve on microfilm newspapers published in the U.S. from the eighteenth century to the present. Program funding has been provided by the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH), with the Library providing technical assistance to program participants. Total lifetime program funding has amounted to more than $54,000,000.

As of January 2006, USNP projects have produced or updated 281,841 newspaper catalog records and microfilmed over 71,864,000 endangered newspaper pages. The National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) announced U.S. Newspaper Program awards of $892,559 in fiscal 2006 to fund continuing projects in two states: Illinois (Chicago Historical Society, Chicago), and Pennsylvania (Pennsylvania State University, State College). Other projects are ongoing in Illinois (University of Illinois, Urbana) and Tennessee (University of Tennessee, Knoxville).

Staff continued working directly with program participants, OCLC and other interested external parties in repurposing the bibliographic and microfilm products produced through the USNP for new digital initiatives that better connect users to the collections. Tangible results of this effort include the successful conversion of over 900,000 local newspaper data records to the newer MARC21 holdings format in OCLC’s Connexion system and the inclusion of newspaper bibliographic and holding records in the National Digital Newspaper Program digital resource undergoing testing at the close of the year.

National Digital Newspaper Program (NDNP)

The National Digital Newspaper Program, a partnership between the National Endowment of the Humanities (NEH) and the Library of Congress (LC), is a long-term effort to develop an Internet-based, searchable database for all U.S. newspapers and select digitized historic titles. Supported by NEH, this rich digital resource will be developed and permanently maintained by the Library of Congress. As a collaborative digital effort between Library Services, the Office of Strategic Initiatives (OSI) and Information Technology Services (ITS), this program directly contributes to the ongoing strategic goals of the National Digital Library Program by creating a national collection of high-value digitized historical newspapers; developing a Web-accessible repository to the national collection selected by state awardees; providing free and open Internet user-friendly access to important historical content; and developing consensus on standards and best practices for access to both digitized historical newspaper content and digital library preservation practices. NDNP represents a logical extension of the technical and collection building expertise supporting the Library’s highly successful American Memory digital collection effort.

In the second year of a two-year program development phase, the Library continued building a viable and extensible program model for funding and digitization by state awardee institutions (in 2005, NEH awarded $1.9 million in NDNP awards to 6 states – California, Florida, Kentucky, New York, Utah and Virginia), creating a sustainable digital repository, and validating technical approaches for the processing and accessing of complex digital objects.

In 2006 the digital preservation architecture supporting the long-term program fully took shape with the development of an NDNP repository and a multi-functional user interface to provide access to historical newspaper content for the general public. Significant accomplishments were made in the incorporation of digital asset validation strategies and distribution of the process to awardees, establishing aggregation workflow, data ingestion, and dissemination services to a Web interface, all proceeding in parallel over the course of the development phase.

In early January 2006, the Library completed its initial conversion of selected microfilmed newspaper content, representing Washington, DC, newspaper titles from 1900-1910. These 93,000 digitized pages (approximately 400,000 digital objects), along with the comprehensive newspaper title directory -- approximately 140,000 bibliographic records and 900,000 holdings records for newspaper originals, microfilm masters, and copies created by the legacy United States Newspaper Program -- formed the initial dataset for ingestion and testing of the Library repository architecture and access capabilities. In addition, each NEH awardee submitted digital assets (approximately 26,000 pages) from their own award activities conforming to LC technical requirements for the initial Web site launch in October 2006. This data was ingested into the preservation architecture and provided a robust dataset for development of the access user interface. The Library also entered into an agreement with ProQuest Information and Learning to acquire 82,000 pages of the New York Tribune to incorporate into the NDNP repository in 2007. This material will be digitized from ProQuest microfilm holdings by ProQuest to meet NDNP specifications.

In keeping with the collaborative nature of the program, NDNP staff visited award sites this year to review production environments and met with project staff. Site visits included Library of Virginia, University of California – Berkeley, University of Florida, University of Kentucky, and University of Utah.

Based on the experiences of the development phase and additional environmental developments, NEH and LC updated, revised and published program and technical guidelines to clarify NDNP requirements for new award applications. Technical guidelines are posted on the Library’s NDNP Web site. NEH issued a call for proposals in August 2006 and plans to make up to 10 additional 2-year awards in June 2007.

Preservation Research and Testing Division

Digital Media Research Program

Longevity of CDs and DVDs. The Digital Media Research Program has primarily focused on two on-going projects that evaluate physicochemical degradation reflected by digital error rates, which resulted in 821 analyses. The CD-Audio Media Natural Aging Project, which monitors the aging properties of digital media in permanent storage under ambient conditions at the Library, has now been in progress for nine years. Closely related is the CD-Audio Media Accelerated Aging Project, which evaluates the effect of accelerated aging over a range of temperature and relative humidity on disc longevity. Two large project reports were published internally in 2005, and the Division is currently refining them for posting on the web and for publishing elsewhere.

A new research project is being developed based on the hypothesis that there are chemical indicators that can be used to predict life expectancy of optical discs. This project involves performing analyses of discs from the two above projects, and performing other experiments, to determine the physiochemical characteristics and mechanisms of degradation using advanced instrumental analysis techniques including FT-IR, SEM-EDS, and others. The results will provide data regarding how and why the degradation occurs that causes increases in the digital error rates so that a predictive model can be developed to forecast the life expectancy of optical media, determine optimum storage conditions, and develop a pilot program to integrate best practices into the Library workflow.

An on-going collaboration with the Information Technology Division of the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) was completed in 2006. This collaboration resulted in new data regarding test protocols (<http://www.itl.nist.gov/div895/loc/index.html>) and in the formation of the Government Information Preservation Working Group (GIPWoG ), which meets semi-annually to discuss preservation of CD and DVD optical discs. NIST recently passed leadership for the GIPWoG to the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory, which will continue to work with PRTD and the Optical Disc Testing Association to develop archival quality optical media.

Digital Data Archiving Program

A goal of the Division is to develop a searchable relational database for all LC users to document all preservation treatments and chemical/physical analyses and tests that are performed on collection objects. The first step has been the development of a testing database, which includes searchable parameters regarding vendors, commercial product designations, test results, and other data for housing materials. Test data from years prior to the inception of the database is being added to make search results as comprehensive as possible. In fiscal 2006, 726 new records from current testing, old testing, and from the digital media Natural Aging Study were added.

The Division is digitally documenting two LC collections that are important in preservation research and testing. One is the Forbes Pigment Collection, which contains digital microscopy photographs and a variety of spectra of the pigments. A second is the TAPPI Fiber collection, which contains digital polarized light microscopy photographs and SEM-EDS spectra of the fibers. In fiscal 2006, 60 polarized light microscopy images and 80 SEM-EDS spectra were added to the database.

Audio/Visual Media Research Program

Magnetic Media Identification and Deterioration. This research program focuses on the causes of degradation of magnetic media (film and tape), to develop approaches for preservation treatments and for sampling collections for chemical species that potentially can be used to predict the state of deterioration of the media. The Gel Permeation Chromatography of Magnetic Media Polymers Project focuses on “sticky shed syndrome” determine the cause of the phenomenon and its treatment. A new state-of-the-art high-temperature gel permeation chromatograph (HT-GPC) is providing quantitative data, and 285 experiments were performed to optimize instrumental conditions, develop the methodology, and perform materials analyses.

Closely related is the Direct Analysis in Real Time Mass Spectrometry (DART-MS) of Magnetic Media Project, which has as its goal performing “fingerprint” analysis of the magnetic media analyzed by HT-GPC above to develop quick diagnostic methods for analyzing media collections and environments. In fiscal 2006, 240 experiments were conducted to optimize conditions and define how the instrument can be used for non-destructively characterizing magnetic media.

Longevity of Paper

This research program is currently focused on aging and analysis of paper, having two on-going research projects and a new one. The ASTM-sponsored 100-year project on the Natural Aging of Papers Project is continuing in collaboration with four other laboratories and 10 libraries across the US and Canada, including NARA, IPI, FPL, and CCI. The next group of material for analysis is scheduled to arrive during the summer of 2008. The on-going Accelerated Aging of Papers Project builds on previous research that identified chemical decomposition products from accelerated aging tests that are most closely related to products from natural aging.

A new project, the Direct Analysis in Real-Time Mass Spectrometry (DART-MS) of Paper, developed analytical methodology that will incorporate direct sampling, analysis, and chemical fingerprinting of paper that has been subjected to natural and accelerated aging, and to mass deacidification processes, to provide an approach for quickly evaluating the degradative state of paper collections and their environments. In fiscal 2006, 154 experiments were conducted to optimize conditions and define how the instrument can be used for the analysis of paper-based materials.

Pressure-Sensitive Adhesive Inventory Control and Security Devices Project: This research project identifies adverse effects from pressure-sensitive adhesive labels on different materials so that a “universal” label can be specified for use in bar-coding and labeling non-book and special collection materials. This project addresses a concern of the LC Joint Issues Group on Labeling (JIG-L), whose charge is to improve and streamline the marking and labeling of all formats received by the Copyright Office and the Acquisitions Directorate. In fiscal 2006, 1760 analyses were performed using a colorimeter/spectrophotometer, which will provide data for both revising current LC Specifications and developing a new one.

Other research concentrates on iron gall ink stabilization; detrimental effects of chemical migration; and zeolite molecular sieves as an adsorbent in housing materials. The Division maintains, services, and advises on the construction of highly sophisticated temperature and humidity controlled chambers and display cases. The Division remotely monitors conditions in the Top Treasure Case, the Top Treasure Vault, and the Gutenberg and Mainz Bible cases, and conducts bimonthly onsite inspections. In fiscal 2006, the Division facilitated and supervised 62 repairs and maintenance services to the treasure cases.

The expertise of the Division in environmental control and monitoring was recognized by the Governor of Pennsylvania who invited the Division to advise on environmental control of the state’s new special library that will house its collection of Benjamin Franklin papers.

Standards and Specifications Program

A Division staff member continues to serve as Chair of the ASTM D14.50 task group on Hot Melt, Pressure-Sensitive, and Archive Adhesives, which is part of the D14 Adhesives Committee. Revisions to standards D3121 and D6463 were successfully balloted and approved, which pave the way for standardization of test methods among various other ASTM committees.

The Division worked on the NFPA 909 Committee to address global preservation strategies in terms of prevention of fire, water, and smoke damage to collections. In fiscal 2006, PRTD initiated contributions to collaborations with Conservation to provide advice to the AOC and the Library regarding the design and implementation of the new Secure Storage Facilities in regard to fire-protection and collection environment.

More new infrastructure initiatives were begun in fiscal 2006 to improve the Division’s ability to evaluate existing preservation strategies and initiate and conduct original research, testing, and technology assessment. Major restructuring of the laboratory space was begun, including removal of 25 year old equipment and purchasing new instruments and other technologies to bring the laboratory to the state-of-the-art. Applications of new technologies for use in forensic analysis of collection materials and environments, including Solid Phase Micro Extraction (SPME), hand-held X-ray fluorescence, and digital imaging were identified and investigated. New digital forms and procedures for submission of electronic requests, maintaining electronic reports, and tracking data linked to research and testing of collection objects and housing materials were created.

Mass Deacidification Program

To extend the life and utility of collections through appropriate treatment and technologies, the Directorate deacidified 298,826 books and 1,069,500 document sheets as part of its 30-year initiative to stabilize over 8.5 million general collection books and at least 30,000,000 pages of manuscripts. Deacidification is an economic approach to keeping books and manuscripts available in usable form. It results in extending the useful life of acidic and slightly brittle paper by a minimum of 300 percent. This assures in most cases that treated books will survive for 300 to 1000 years rather than becoming extremely brittle, degraded, and unusable in less than a century, requiring much more expensive reformatting at over 600 percent of the cost of deacidification. The technology thus achieves economies of scale and future cost-avoidance as a dramatic preventive preservation activity.

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TECHNOLOGY POLICY DIRECTORATE

Find It , LC’s OpenURL Resolver

Pursuing the Library’s goal to improve user access to free and licenced electronic resources, the Library completed a successful upgrade of its OpenURL resolver, Find It!, in summer 2006. LC’s resolver application (SFX from Ex Libris) supports convenient linking between citations for resources and web services accessible to the Library (such as, links to full digital content, tables of content and abstracts; expanded searches for "more information" in the LC Online Catalog or web search engines; document delivery and interlibrary loan, etc.). The application is currently restricted to onsite patrons and staff.

Metasearch Project

On October 16, 2006, the Library of Congress launched a beta metasearch application to provide users with a single interface to search or access Library databases and digital content collections. Using open source software called Keystone Retriever developed by Index Data, the application allows users to search across the Library’s publicly available digital collections from one unified interface. Gateways provided for each target package a query so that it is understood by the native search engine. Results from each target are displayed in separate buckets – there is no merging of results.

The beta application currently searches five targets: the Library of Congress Online Catalog, the LC web site, American Memory, the Prints and Photographs On-line Catalog, and the THOMAS Legislative Information System. While initial search capabilities are rudimentary, the intent is to expand both the number of targets and search functionality if this pilot proves successful.

This project is led by Information Technology Services and the Office of Strategic Initiatives, with participation from Library Services. The New Search (BETA) feature is available from the Library’s public home page.

Handle Server

To provide persistent identification of LC-managed electronic resources, Library staff registered more than 130,000 handles in 2006. The Library’s handle server -- which uses software from CNRI -- currently contains 1,498,097 handles. As part of LC’s support of handles, the institution participates in projects sponsored by the CENDI Persistent Identifiers Task Force.

LC Persistent Identifiers using info:lccn

In 2006, Library Services began development of an application to provide persistent LCCN-based URL links to bibliographic records in the Library of Congress Online Catalog. Using a new Library web domain “lccn.loc.gov,” MARCXML records will be retrieved from the LC Online Catalog through its Z39.50/SRU gateway (the bath.lccn queries will search both LCCNs and cancelled LCCNs). Retrieved records will be processed by XML stylesheets to create web displays that replicate the look and feel of the LC Online Catalog. LCCNs found in an incoming URLs will be normalized using the info:lccn specifications. The application is expected to be in production by early 2007.

LC EAD (Encoded Archival Description) Archival Finding Aids

In 2006, eight Library divisions created 67 new EAD archival finding aids, bringing the total number of LC EAD finding aids to 357. Users are now able to access to more than 18 million archival items in LC’s collections through these documents. LC collection-level MARC data is extracted from the Library of Congress Online Catalog using Z39.50/SRU to provide controlled names and subjects as well as collection summary information in each EAD. The Library’s EAD indexes and browse listings -- for names, subjects,. collection titles, collections by date, and collections by repository -- are updated monthly.

Integrated Library System Program Office

The Library has continued to expand access and improve service for users of the Library of Congress Online Catalog (<http://catalog.loc.gov>). In the past year, the Library increased the number of simultaneous OPAC sessions by 10 percent and saw a resulting decline in the number of users who could not be accommodated. The Library also implemented a new timeout alert that improves the usability of the OPAC. OPAC sessions are currently set to expire after five minutes of inactivity in order to balance equitable access for users and system performance. The new OPAC timeout alerts a user that the session will timeout in one minute and counts down the seconds remaining. If the session does expire, the alert feature enables the user to return to his or her previous search. The Library will continue to monitor external use and seek ways to increase and improve access for users.

The LC Online Catalog is one of the sources included in the Library’s New Search (BETA) feature. This new feature enables users to search the LC Online Catalog as well as the Library of Congress Web site and other valuable resources at one time.

LC staff recently completed field testing (beta testing) of the Voyager 6.2 release. The Library will likely upgrade to Voyager 6 in 2007, but a firm date has not yet been set. The Library intends to begin migrating all ILS workstations to a Windows XP platform beginning in January 2007.

Electronic Resource Management System (ERMS)

In fiscal 2006, ILS staff continued development of the Library’s ERMS, a software application to improve the availability of licensing information and holdings for electronic serials. This project incorporates the use of MS Access database operations to facilitate the tracking and loading of bibliographic and holdings information. The Innovative Interfaces (III) WebOPAC software was installed to act as a Web front-end to the ERMS data, delivering a powerful search engine to present records with serial holdings, updated URLs, and the licensed terms of usage associated with subscriptions to electronic works. Through such displays searchers are advised not only of the means to connect directly with desired content, but also of any permissions and restrictions associated with that access. A technical team has been trained on configuring the Web presentation of the III WebOPAC data and is beginning work to fold it into other information made available on the Library’s web pages. On the operational front, a pilot E-Resource team is being identified that will have staff drawn from the serials community and those with experience with acquisitions and cataloging of e-resources to work closely with Technology Policy staff to implement and maintain the ERMS. The team will support the further systems development and growth of data about licensed resources available to Library patrons

Network Development and MARC Standards Office (NDMSO)

METS (<http://www.loc.gov/mets>) and Digital Library Standards Prototyping

NDMSO continued support for the digital performing arts site, formerly called I Hear America Singing and now named LC Presents, Music, Theater, and Dance (LCP), and the Veterans History Project (VHP). The work involved use and development of standards such as METS, MODS, and TEI.

LC Presents (<http://www.loc.gov/lcp>) had two new releases, an update to Song in America, featuring articles and biographies of composers associated with selected songs from the Thomas Hampson tour, and Ragtime, a collection of sheet music, audio, and video related to ragtime music. These new sites required the development of new METS profiles for articles and biographies. The web prototyping has expanded into new areas, such as indexing and searching across collections and indices, as well as harvesting objects from legacy databases.

One new collection was made available from the Veterans History Project (VHP) site (<http://www.loc.gov/vets/>). The Art of War is about veterans who documented their experiences with paintbrushes, sketching pens, and camera lenses (23 collections comprising over 1500 images). A new feature called Staff Favorites was also introduced, allowing VHP staff to highlight veterans whose collections they find interesting and useful. For release in February is a collection called World War I.

MARC 21 (<http://www.loc.gov/marc>) and MARCXML (<http://www.loc.gov/marcxml>)

NDMSO continued to maintain MARCXML, an XML version of the traditional MARC 21 record, with the goal to maintain stability and upward compatibility in the record interchange environment which is vital to cost savings for libraries, by providing the standards and tools for the community to move forward to newer technologies. The transformation from MARC 21 to MARCXML converts characters to Unicode thus exposing the millions of records to Unicode-based XML tools. A September 2006 D-Lib Magazine report from the Los Alamos National Laboratory Library detailed the selection of MARCXML as the preferred format for a major journal article data file involving thousands of records. The MARCXML standard continues to be adopted by many international users and software developers.

MARC 21 Documentation. NDMSO has completed the conversion of all five MARC 21 formats into XML from former SGML and word processing formats. Using XSL-FO, NDMSO is currently producing Update No. 7 (October 2006) for all five MARC 21 formats in PDF via an XSLT transformation. These PDF updates will be made available to the public from the Library of Congress Web site, as well as being printed in the usual manner.

MARC Web site. The MARC 21 Web site (<http://www.loc.gov/marc>) was expanded and updated, in particular with the discussion papers and proposals for the MARBI Committee meetings at ALA 2007 Midwinter Meeting. Several new MARC-based library systems have been added to the "MARC Records, Systems and Tools" online registry (<http://www.loc.gov/marc/marcservice.html>). Likewise, many new translations of the MARC 21 documentation have been added to the MARC Translations registry (<http://www.loc.gov/marc/translations.html>). The Spanish language MARC home page (<http://www.loc.gov/marc/marcspa.html>) continues to be maintained to support the growing number of MARC 21 users in Spanish speaking countries, especially Latin America.

Unicode and MARC. A proposal for a “lossless” technique for converting Unicode to MARC-8 was developed and approved at the ALA Annual Conference in June 2006. It joins the “lossy” technique that was approved in January 2006, which specifies a technique for reducing Unicode characters (approx. 100,000) to the MARC-8 subset (approx. 16,000) by defining a placeholder character that is substituted for each unmappable Unicode character. This technique is not reversible as knowledge of original character is lost, whereas the lossless technique gives users the option of an encoding that remembers the original character even though it cannot be displayed in a MARC-8 system. The Library of Congress set up a special listserv for the MARC 21 systems and vendor communities to discuss and arrive at consensus on various issues concerning the implementation of Unicode with MARC 21.

MODS (<http://www.loc.gov/mods>) and MADS (<http://www.loc.gov/mads>)

Version 3.2 of the Metadata Object Description Schema (MODS) was released that included changes needed by the Digital Library Federation (DLF) Aquifer Metadata Working Group and for records in the DLF/OCLC Registry of Digital Masters, as well as additions to facilitate linking within a MODS description or METS (Metadata Encoding and Transmission Standard) document. This MODS XML schema furthers the goal of providing standardized alternatives for XML-based description of electronic objects for use with digital projects.

There continued to be wide interest and adoption of MODS in digital library projects that require rich resource descriptions, particularly in conjunction with METS and the Open Archives Initiative (OAI) harvesting of metadata records. Many institutions are now making their metadata available via OAI in MODS as an alternative format.

A transformation between MARC 21 XML authority records and MADS was completed and made available. Several projects using MADS were initiated in the community. Both MODS and MADS are developed through the open membership MODS listserv.

PREMIS

An Editorial Committee was appointed to assist in maintaining the data dictionary and XML schemas of the core Preservation Metadata data dictionary, PREMIS. The Committee has 10 members from various communities and from 6 different countries. NDMSO staff participated in the presentation of two two-day tutorials on PREMIS, one in Glasgow, Scotland, in July, hosted by the Digital Curation Centre in the United Kingdom, and the other before the Digital Library Federation meeting in Boston, Mass., in November. NDMSO also contracted for a paper to review enhancements to PREMIS that would allow better description of rights associated with preserved objects.

Information Retrieval with SRU and Z39.50

SRU (Search and Retrieval via URL) version 1.2 will be announced in winter or early spring 2007. It incorporates various minor changes and fixes minor problems. An OASIS Technical Committee will be formed to standardize a Search/Retrieval protocol, with SRU Version 1.2 as the basis and compatible with Amazon's OpenSearch a goal. When completed, this will result in SRU 2.0. The SRU implementors have approved the companion Update protocol, which will become official as soon as its XML schema is completed.

Completion of an upgrade to the Index Data YAZ proxy that LC uses as its front-end for Z39.50 access to its primary catalogs allows LC to support SRU access in additoin to Z39.50. The new version also supports returned records in MARCXML with holdings tagged as specified in the Z39.50 OPACXML record. Implementation continued on gateways to other databases at LC – Lucene, MySQL, and Inquiry – that will eventually enable federated searching of those databases with results returned in HTML.

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|| OFFICE OF STRATEGIC INITIATIVES ||

Chad Abel-Kops, a cataloger in the Serial Record Division and a Library of Congress Leadership Development Fellow in 2004-2005, has been detailed to the Department of State to serve in the Executive Secretariat of the U.S. National Commission for UNESCO, where he assists in coordinating the National Commission's participation in the formulation and implementation of U.S. national policies toward UNESCO, in particular regarding the World Digital Library Project of the Library of Congress.

During 2006, the Office of Strategic Initiatives (OSI) played a crucial role in the Library of Congress’s transition to an institution ready to meet the challenges of a century in which information is increasing exponentially, with commensurate expectations for access to that information.

OSI’s longtime experience in the creation and dissemination of digital content, combined with its national program to preserve digital materials, gives it a unique perspective that is essential to the Library’s continued ability to meet the information needs of the U.S. Congress, students, teachers, scholars, researchers and lifelong learners. This experience is rooted in oversight of the National Digital Library (NDL) Program, which provides access to millions of digitized materials from the Library of Congress’s collections and those of its partners. The NDL Program began in 1994 (before OSI was established) and led to the creation of one of the most extensive educational Web sites on the Internet: <http://www.loc.gov>.

In December 2000 Congress asked the Library to lead a national program to collect and preserve important digital content -- the National Digital Information Infrastructure and Preservation Program – and the Librarian of Congress created the Office of Strategic Initiatives. Information Technology Services, a directorate of OSI, supports not only these programs but also the technology needs of the entire Library. NDIIPP continues to be the major focus for the OSI service unit.

NATIONAL DIGITAL INFORMATION INFRASTRUCTURE AND PRESERVATION PROGRAM

The digital heritage of the nation relies in great measure on the success of the National Digital Information Infrastructure and Preservation Program (NDIIPP) and other programs with similar mandates. As the amount of digital information continues to be created at a pace almost too great to be measured, the need for this program to collect and preserve at-risk information increases exponentially. NDIIPP reached its halfway point during this fiscal year, having achieved several critical milestones in this unprecedented program to build a national infrastructure to save America’s digital heritage, which is at risk of loss if it is not now preserved. The program’s Web site is at URL <http://www.digitalpreservation.gov>.

Digital Preservation Partnerships

Since 2000 the Library of Congress has made significant advances in demonstrating the feasibility -- and importance -- of a national network of partners to collect, preserve and make available a “universal” collection of born-digital materials. NDIIPP continued to build a national network of collaborative institutions committed to sharing the best practices for digital preservation. These partners are building large collections of at-risk content and developing advanced research into tools, services, repositories and overall infrastructure for digital preservation. Individually, the partners have made significant strides over the past year in meeting the challenges of digital preservation.

Library of Congress-National Science Foundation Research Awards. In 2005 the Library and the National Science Foundation formed a partnership to develop the first digital-preservation research grants program (DigArch). The grants support pioneering research into the long-term management of digital information. The principal investigators of the DigArch programs have been active participants in Library of Congress meetings, and they presented their work at the January 2006 Digital Preservation Partners meeting in Berkeley, Calif. Final reports from a number of the participants are expected in 2007.

NDIIPP States Initiative. The Library has continued to build on the positive results of the 2005 States Consultation Workshops that helped identify the pressing digital preservation issues facing state and local governments. In 2006, the Library released Preservation of State Government Digital Information: Issues and Opportunities, a report of the Library’s convening workshops with the states.

The findings of the report confirmed that the Library has a role to play, and in May 2006, the Library released a Request for Expressions of Interest for Multi-State Demonstration Projects for Preservation of State Government Digital Information. Successful projects funded under this initiative will build on the initial set of NDIIPP investments in establishing a network of preservation partners exploring the viability of highly collaborative, decentralized digital preservation approaches. The Library intends to support multistate demonstration projects that reveal methods for preserving state government digital information by means of developing partnerships, distributing responsibilities and sharing technical expertise and infrastructure components. The intent is to demonstrate practical solutions at the state level useful for potential widespread adoption, as well as to learn how multistate consortial arrangements might be part of a network of preservation partners.

The Library of Congress received 11 submissions in response to the solicitation, and will announce awards in early 2007.

Initiative on Preserving Creative America. In July 2006 OSI issued an announcement that sought expressions of interest in a project to preserve the digital content produced by the private sector, including but not limited to motion pictures, sound recordings, still photography, graphics, illustration, interactive games, literary arts and other media. The request grew out of a strategy meeting held by the Library in Los Angeles in April 2006 in which NDIIPP gathered more than 50 private sector producers of digital content to assess their interest in, and plans for, the long-term preservation of their digital content. The deadline for submissions was September 22, 2006. The Library is currently evaluating several proposals for possible matching funding.

Partnership with Stanford University-CLOCKSS. The Library of Congress entered into a three-year cooperative agreement in June 2006 with Stanford University to provide approximately $700,000 in support of Stanford’s CLOCKSS (Controlled Lots of Copies Keep Stuff Safe) digital archive pilot and related technical projects. Stanford is matching the award dollar-for-dollar.

Since 1999, Stanford has been developing preservation software as part of its LOCKSS (Lots of Copies Keep Stuff Safe) program. Initiated by Stanford University Libraries, LOCKSS is open-source software that provides libraries with an easy and inexpensive way to collect, store, preserve and provide access to their own, local copy of authorized content. The CLOCKSS program (<http://www.lockss.org/clockss/>) is a collaborative, community initiative to build a trusted, large-scale, dark archive (an archive that is accessible only in case of emergency, such as a loss of data at another site). CLOCKSS is intended to provide a decentralized and secure solution to long-term archiving, based on the LOCKSS technical infrastructure. Its governance and administration structure are distributed to ensure that no single organization controls the archive or has the power to compromise the content’s long-term safety or integrity.

Partnership with SCOLA. Also in July, the Library of Congress entered into a cooperative agreement that will ensure that high-interest foreign news broadcasts such as those from Al-Jazeera (a news and current affairs television channel based in Doha, Qatar), and from Pakistan, Russia and the Philippines are archived and available for future research.

The agreement is with SCOLA, a nonprofit educational corporation that receives and retransmits television programming of long-term research value from around the world in native languages. Under this cooperative agreement, a minimum of 3,750 hours of programming in digital form will be archived by SCOLA over a six-month period and made available to the Library of Congress and its researchers. NDIIPP is providing funding support. SCOLA is matching the $250,000 provided by the Library, as required by the NDIIPP legislation. The agreement, subject to continuing matching contributions from SCOLA, was for an initial period of six months, renewable up to four years.

SCOLA (<http://www.scola.org>) has agreements with approximately 90 countries to obtain and disseminate copies of foreign television programs. While in the past SCOLA has retained broadcast material for only a brief period, it is developing a capability to archive the programs it now transmits digitally.

Partnership with the National Endowment for the Humanities: The National Digital Newspaper Program. In April 2005 the Library and the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) announced that six institutions had received more than $1.9 million in grants from NEH in the National Digital Newspaper Program (NDNP), a long-term effort to develop an Internet-based, searchable database of U.S. newspapers now in the public domain. Two-year projects in California, Florida, Kentucky, New York, Utah and Virginia are digitizing 100,000 or more pages of each state’s most historically significant newspapers published between 1900 and 1910. When completed, digitized newspapers will be made available through the Library’s Web site.

The NDNP Web site, to be called American Chronicle, was scheduled for beta testing beginning in October 2006, with release to the public in mid-2007. For more information, see “Preservation Directorate” in this document.

Partnership with San Diego Supercomputer Center. The aim of the NDIIPP partnership with the San Diego Supercomputer Center is to build and measure trust and utility in a third-party bit-storage and preservation facility. Two content types, namely digital photographs and Web content, are being used as test data in this project. Eight test scenarios are being developed for the purpose of this project. Some of the test scenarios and required storage are already set up, test data has been transferred to San Diego and tests are under way.

Electronic Deposit for Electronic Journals Project

The eDeposit for eJournals project is a collaborative effort among three service units of the Library: the U.S. Copyright Office, Library Services and the Office of Strategic Initiatives. The project will consider the near- and long-term needs of library users, as well as the technologies available, by studying other systems and technologies in order to build the most efficient system using available resources.

Copyright deposit represents the largest acquisitions channel for the Library of Congress. In general, all U.S. publishers are legally required to submit for deposit two copies of each of their publications to the Copyright Office in the Library. For the past 136 years, this mechanism has allowed the Library to build the largest and finest collection of knowledge in the world and to preserve the vast array of American creativity, while minimizing the cost to taxpayers of acquiring these rich materials.

A working group comprising senior managers from service units across the institution performs customer and stakeholder management. It has met on a biweekly basis since September 2005. The working group has also formed teams to explore specific subject areas and to engage key stakeholders outside the working group. The members and stakeholders have been chosen according to subject matter expertise, technical expertise or responsibility relevant to the execution of this project.

In 2007 the team will operate a fully functioning prototype system and conduct beta tests with a small group of digital content owners and other digital archival service providers. In parallel, the team will conduct policy roundtable discussions with stakeholders (including authors, publishers, libraries and archivists) to solicit input and craft policies and regulations that support LC mission goals of deposit, acquisition and institutional stewardship of digital publications. The initial area of content focus is scholarly electronic journals. E-journals were chosen because they represent a major trend in scholarly communication, are increasingly available only in digital formats and are widely perceived by research libraries to be at great risk of loss unless steps are taken now to preserve them.

Targeted outcomes for the program include building new technical infrastructure and service capabilities, such as a digital repository and related ingest and audit interfaces, a policy framework, and a policy planning process that will serve LC as it continues the acquisition and stewardship of a growing number of digital assets in the future.

National Digital Strategy Advisory Board

Members of the federal agencies that are part of the National Digital Strategy Advisory Board (NDSAB) met May 5, 2006, in Washington, D.C., to discuss the standards used in the creation and archiving of digital materials. The 27-member NDSAB comprises a diverse group of individuals from academe, private industry and the federal government. These individuals have given generously of their time and expertise to provide invaluable input toward the long-term preservation initiative.

The May meeting brought together representatives of federal agencies that Congress asked the Library to collaborate with when it passed the NDIIPP legislation in December 2000. Agency executives and technical specialists in attendance were from the National Institute of Standards and Technology, the National Library of Medicine, the National Archives and Records Administration, the National Agricultural Library, the U.S. Government Printing Office, the National Science Foundation and the Institute of Museum and Library Services.

The agency representatives joined NDIIPP staff to discuss an April 2006 agreement between the Library of Congress and the British Library to support the migration of electronic content to the NLM DTD standard, where practicable. The libraries hope that their advocacy of migration to this standard will help ensure long-term access to electronic journal content.

In July 2006, the full NDSAB convened to learn about NDIIPP advances and make recommendations for future directions. The meeting opened with updates from key Library of Congress staff, after which the advisory board worked to help shape the NDIIPP vision for the future. The need to get more public institutions, private corporations and research organizations involved in preserving digital information was a major topic for discussion. The group also looked at setting goals and outcomes in the strategic plan for the future of the program. A representative from the National Science Foundation’s Office of Cyberinfrastructure spoke about the continuing activities and opportunities connected to cyberinfrastructure.

NDIIPP Public Awareness

NDIIPP received press attention from several media outlets during fiscal 2007, such as Investor’s Business Daily and Yahoo! Most notable was a September 2006 article in The Atlantic. Called “File Not Found,” the article by noted journalist James Fallows described NDIIPP and told how digital preservation is as important to libraries as it is to individuals.

Section 108 Study Group - see U.S. COPYRIGHT OFFICE

Web Content Capture Project

Because the Web has become a major source of born-digital information, NDIIPP supports a Web Capture Team to collect and preserve Web sites. In May 2006 the team launched a Web site devoted to the project at URL <http://www.loc.gov/webcapture>.

During fiscal 2006, the team captured 21 terabytes of digital content, for a total of 56 terabytes to date. This total represents more than 1 billion documents downloaded from the Web to date. This is the equivalent of digital text information from more than 55 million books (1 megabyte per book of text only).

OSI worked with Library Services and the Law Library on capturing the following collections: Election 2006; Prints and Photographs Acquisitions; The Manuscript Division Archive of Organizational Web Sites (Web sites of existing donors); General Collections Archiving Pilot; Crisis in Darfur, Sudan; Hurricane Katrina, a partnership with the Internet Archive and the California Digital Library; Supreme Court; 109th Congress; and War in Iraq.

Two technical areas were tested this year: indexing tools and transfer and storage technical requirements. NutchWax, the first full-text indexing tool for archived Web content was installed and tested at the Library. During this year, the following collections were indexed using NutchWax: Supreme Court, Darfur, General Collections Pilot, Prints and Photographs Acquisitions, Election 2004 and Papal Transition. The team also initiated work on a Web archive collection management tool to aid curator selection and collection and a tool to capture streaming media from the Web.

NATIONAL DIGITAL LIBRARY PROGRAM

In 1994, the Library established its National Digital Library (NDL) Program, following a five-year pilot in which digitized versions of rare Library materials were distributed on CD-ROM to 44 schools and libraries nationwide. With the advent of the public Web in 1994, the Library was able to distribute these materials more widely and at less cost. By 2000, more than 5 million historical items were offered in American Memory, the NDL Program’s flagship Web site at <memory.loc.gov>. During the next decade, the Library’s Web site has grown into one of the largest repositories of noncommercial high-quality content online.

In fiscal 2006, the Library’s Web site overall handled 4,039,719,596 transactions, or “hits.” This statistic accounts for all major sub-sites of <www.loc.gov>, such as American Memory, America’s Library, THOMAS, Online Catalogs, Exhibitions and Global Gateway.

The number of digital files produced by the Library in fiscal 2006 was 900,192, and the total files now number 11,074,223.

American Memory

Two collections were added to American Memory in fiscal 2006: “The Moldenhauer Archives” of approximately 3,500 items documenting the history of Western music from the medieval period through the modern era and “Miller NAWSA Suffrage Scrapbooks: 1897-1911,” a presentation of the scrapbooks of Elizabeth Smith Miller, and her daughter, Anne Fitzhugh Miller, documenting the National American Woman Suffrage Association. This brings to 135 the number of thematic collections in this Web site that presents digitized versions of the rare and unique multimedia materials from the Library and its partners.

Global Gateway

Global Gateway, a Web site of bilingual presentations in collaboration with overseas libraries and selected international collections of the Library, added one new collection: “Islamic Manuscripts from Mali.” New materials were added to the site’s presentations of “Selections of Arabic, Persian and Ottoman Calligraphy,” “France in America” and “United States and Brazil: Expanding Frontiers, Comparing Cultures.”

THOMAS

During fiscal 2006, the THOMAS congressional information Web site (<thomas.loc.gov>) was redesigned and upgraded with features to improve site navigation and make it easier for users to quickly find the information they want.

In addition to the Web Capture site, sites on Lifelong Literacy and Lyrical Legacy, an educational initiative, were launched. An online Performing Arts Encyclopedia was also made available.

The Library’s ranking jumped considerably in the 2006 Brown University eGov Study. This study has been conducted since 2000 and covers federal and state e-government portals and services. The Library’s Web site moved from a ranking of 28 in 2005 to a ranking of 15 in 2006. Federal sites are rated by the same criteria as those of the 50 states: contact information, publications, databases, portals and number of online services. In June the Library received the People’s Voice Webby Award for cultural institutions.

EDUCATIONAL OUTREACH

The Office of Strategic Initiatives strives to expand the use of the Library’s collections by educators and their students. Several OSI programs and services have made the Library’s online primary sources important tools for teachers who want to incorporate these materials into their classroom activities.

Teaching with Primary Sources Program/Adventure of the American Mind Transition

In fiscal 2006, as the request of Congress, the Library was authorized to develop and administer a professional development program for educators based on the pilot Adventure of the American Mind (AAM) program, which was active in seven states. OSI will expand the AAM program into the new national Teaching with Primary Sources Program.

Teaching with Primary Sources (TPS) was officially launched with the first consortium meeting in Washington and a new Web site at <http://www.loc.gov/teachers/tps>. An advisory board was also formed. One of the TPS initiatives will be a “virtual institute,” an online program that will provide programming to educators not currently in TPS partner areas. The Library has also contracted with the Center for Children and Technology for a research study of the best practices of the current AAM national program.

Collaborations

Educational Outreach staff played an active role in the Music Division’s online Performing Arts Encyclopedia. Externally, they also worked with the National Constitution Center to promote Library of Congress Constitution-related resources for the NCC Constitution Day Web site at <http://www.constitutioncenter.org/constitutionday>. They also worked with several curriculum specialists in the District of Columbia public schools on in-house teacher workshops.

Staff worked with the Ad Council and Public Affairs Office in developing the Lifelong Literacy Web site (<http://www.loc.gov/literacy>). This is the third campaign in which the Library has worked with the nonprofit Ad Council to advertise its electronic educational materials.

Learning Page

The Learning Page Web site (<http://memory.loc.gov/learn>) was specifically created for teachers and their students and features educational ways to use the Library’s online primary sources in the classroom.

In fiscal 2006, the site added materials to assist educators in teaching about “Early America,” “American Indians,” “Civil War Music,” “The Constitution,” “The Great Depression and the Dust Bowl,” “Found Poetry,” “Jim Crow,” “Thanksgiving” and “Suffrage.”

All lessons in the site were aligned to meet National Teaching Standards. Seventeen “Collection Connections,” which are teacher-oriented guides to the American Memory collections, were added.

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INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY SERVICES

Information Technology Services (ITS) supports the technology needs of all Library service and infrastructure units and their staff members and in the process provides a flexible, sustainable and secure Library-wide information and technology environment. The architecture fosters innovation and organizational learning, enabling the rapid and effective transition to interoperable solutions.

Fiscal 2006 saw significant advances in enterprise architecture and in the design, standardization and security of the Library’s networks and data centers, the expansion of the data centers’ capabilities and the security of the Library’s desktops and applications.

This was also the first full year of implementation of the ITS reorganization that occurred in February 2005. This reorganization grouped most of the 208 staff members into two groups: Research and Development, and Operations. The new organization also included a separate IT Security Group, reporting to the director, and a strengthened Technology Assessment Group. The goal of the reorganization was to improve alignment and support of the Library’s mission, Strategic Plan, and Digital Strategic Plan.

ITS also made significant strides in the development of a formal, business-driven enterprise architecture. Both a Business Reference Model and Technical Reference Model were developed for the current Library architecture. Fiscal 2007 will see the completion of the target architectures and transition plans, in alignment with the Library’s Strategic Plan.

To attain and sustain a high success rate for infrastructure and application projects, ITS has implemented project management (PM) methodologies along with System Development Life Cycle processes (SDLC) for all new projects handled by ITS and to continuing operational support provided during fiscal 2006. Use of PM and SDLC methodologies will increase the successful implementation of projects by identifying risks, schedules and costs based upon full consideration of business processes, functional requirements and economic and technical feasibility.

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