Thursday, July 27, 2000

Report Says Library of Congress Lags in Providing Digital Resources By FLORENCE OLSEN Washington The Library of Congress must become actively involved in creating digital libraries or risk becoming irrelevant to scholars and the public, says a National Research Council report released Wednesday. The study, "A Digital Strategy for the Library of Congress," depicts an inward-looking institution that no longer leads in setting library standards or in building collections for the digital age. The library "lags significantly" in receiving and archiving "born-digital" documents of American history and culture, the report says. And it warns that the library operates with a technological infrastructure inferior to those of many corporate libraries and even some nonprofit research libraries. To its credit, the library has been involved in a few notable digital projects and pilot programs through the National Digital Library Program and the Copyright Office, said James J. O'Donnell, chairman of the committee that produced the report. But "the steps taken have been far too limited in scale," said Mr. O'Donnell, a professor of classics and vice provost for information systems and computing at the University of Pennsylvania. James H. Billington, the Librarian of Congress, requested the study in 1998. He said Wednesday that the study highlighted the library's needs for more-flexible hiring practices, better information technology, and new relationships with corporations and other libraries. At a briefing Wednesday, Mr. O'Donnell pointed out the library's "very slow progress in devising strategies and tactics for the acquisition, preservation, cataloging, and accessibility of material that is created and distributed primarily in digital format." The report recommends hiring a deputy librarian to coordinate digital activities and other strategic advances, and appointing an external board of technically informed senior advisers from other libraries, businesses, and academe. Citing the library's popular "American Memory" project to make its U.S.-history collections available in electronic form, the report criticizes the institution for sponsoring a digitization effort that "has emphatically and purposely not addressed the scholarly user." When the library undertakes such projects in the future, it must "keep the needs of the researcher squarely in mind," the report says, even if that means making a "less populist case for funding" or scaling back efforts to appeal to the public. "The library's language of appeal to a mass audience has created confusion, both within the organization and outside it," the report says. "This cannot go on." Unsparing in their language, the report's authors urge the library to set new electronic-format standards and collection policies for digital materials, whether they are acquired through copyright registration and deposit, or through purchase, exchange, or donation. The study chides the library for playing only a minimal role in digital-preservation projects in which university research libraries and other organizations have been leaders. Many of the committee's recommendations will require additional financing -- "more on the order of a doubling or tripling of this year's amount in the next budget submitted to Congress," the study says. It recommends that the library spend more money on information technology and that it share responsibilities with universities and government libraries for collecting and preserving digital information. Given the library's limited financial resources and the exploding production of digital information, the report recommends that the library conceive of itself as a "portal" for research materials distributed on the Internet, offering links to the materials through the library's World Wide Web site. The University of California at Berkeley operates a digital-library program that could provide a model for how the Library of Congress might collect and preserve digital works in the future, the report says. At Berkeley, digital librarians have defined four "levels" of collecting -- archived, served, mirrored, or linked -- each referring to where the digital material is kept and for how long. "Archived" material is digital information that is stored and permanently accessible on the library's servers. "Served" documents refer to digital works that the library has placed temporarily on its servers to make them available. "Mirrored" documents are local copies of digital documents that are stored permanently on another institution's servers. "Linked" documents are stored permanently on another institution's servers and are accessible only by means of hypertext links from the library's site. The report applauds the Library of Congress's joint project with Cornell University, in which researchers plan to capture Web sites created during the 2000 election campaign. The report also urges the library to expand the National Digital Library Program beyond its current focus on digitizing the library's own special collections. The library should aggressively collect all types of digital works and "integrate them into its systems for description and cataloging, access, and preservation," the report says. The committee concludes by recommending that the library publish, by January 1, 2001, a response to the report and a plan of action for reorganizing, training staff members, and upgrading its technology infrastructure. Mr. Billington, the Librarian of Congress, replied that paying for the recommendations would require "bold new relationships with the private sector and other research institutions, as well as continued Congressional support." Background articles from The Chronicle: The Virtual Library of Congress (10/19/1994) 'American Memory,' Coming Soon to America's Campuses (11/27/1991) Easy-to-print version E-mail this article

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