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I didn't mean that you weren't to answer constituent requests of course. We send those often. We have them from a high school student saying, "I am going to debate this subject." We send it over. We don't expect you to write an essay for them, but to give them a list of bibliographical material and if you have free pamphlets that cover that subject just send them a pamphlet.

Dr. ELSBREE. We never write an essay, or at least we don't do it knowingly.

Senator YARBOROUGH. In writing a speech, or a statement or a declaration of policy, you are to write those only for Members of Congress. If somebody is writing a book and wants a chapter written on education in Russia, we have no right for that constituent to ask the Library of Congress to give me a 30-page summary of education in Russia and then give it to a constituent to put in his book. That is what I had reference to.

Senator MONRONEY. You cannot keep from it, though, if a Member wants to misuse the Library of Congress, and that was one of my questions earlier, how many of these requests from Members of Congress knowingly are constituent requests, and I am sure quite a lot get through.

Dr. ELSBREE. We do within the limits of discretion, Mr. Chairman, press them. If they ask for 20 pages with elaborate footnotes, it raises some doubts in one's mind and we do try to find out whether it is a constituent request.

Now, if the Member's office insists, we must do it, we have to. But my honest opinion-I can't know, of course-is that increasingly over the years the Members and their staffs have played very fair with us on this and they do, I believe, nearly always tell us the request is for a constituent.

BUSINESS TYPE REQUESTS CURTAILED

There are some constituent requests which a Member virtually makes his own. We don't get very much casework, so called. We are very much interested in the proposal for adaptation of the Swedish ombudsman, which would curtail our business in this type of request. We don't get very many of these because we are not an investigative agency, but they are very time consuming when we get them. A Member quite often contemplates even introducing a private bill and so he says, "I want you to look into this matter" and this we generally label as a constituent request.

That perhaps is not properly labeled. Also, State and local officials will quite often ask a Member of Congress to help him out on something or for other reasons a Member will say, "I wish you would really go into this fairly seriously. This is a responsible request and I want very much to help this individual."

Out of about 4,500 requests in 1964 that took over a half day of research and reference work, there were 396 requests labeled "constituent." About 74 percent of constituent inquiries were handled in 15 minutes or under, and the others in 15 minutes to 4 hours.

Senator YARBOROUGH. Mr. Chairman, I would like to go off the record a minute.

(Off the record.)

Senator MONRONEY. Back on the record.

MISUSE OF LIBRARY FACILITIES

Senator YARBOROUGH. I think it is a good rule that they not furnish material from which some writer is going to write a book. I think this would be a misuse of the Library of Congress and the public funds. Senator MONRONEY. These should be screened very carefully first by the Congress and the Senate officials themselves. This is our research division and the more we overload it with constituent requests or requests for information of a frivolous nature, the more we are going to destroy the capability of handling the genuine job.

I am a little surprised that these committee staffs don't do more research of their own. In the original concept of the Reorganization Act we thought we were getting specialists on the committee staff's who would be somewhat of a research mind and then all the members who are not on the committees would use the Legislative Reference Service. Dr. ELSBREE. Senator, perhaps I ought not to comment on the staff situation in Congress in general, but I think in reality it is very hard to calculate the extent of the increased workload of the Congress.

Of course we are just feeling the impact of that. The number of committees and subcommittees has increased, I don't think just erratically, but because of the tremendous increase in the number and complexity of both domestic and foreign issues, and it is pretty hard for a committee if they stick to the old four permanent staff members, or even if they have subcommittee staff's, to handle the routine committee business and at the same time take on an extensive study, let's say, of the situation in Vietnam. We are a pool and a reservoir for them, and from all our indications they are working probably harder than we are, and still the number of bills to be processed and the number of hearings multiply-I have no idea what the mathematical increase has been.

As you know, in the Reorganization Act we were directed to prepare summaries of public hearings. That was dropped almost immediately because it began to appear obvious that the cost would be astronomical. Senator MONRONEY. We are using it now under the Reorganization Act.

Dr. ELSBREE. Yes, sir; we do it on request. Your Reorganization Committee is one of the few we have been doing it for. I think Dr. Griffith once made an estimate several years ago of what the cost would be and the Appropriations Committee felt that it would be too much.

INCREASE IN COMMITTEE WORKLOAD

In every manner committee business has increased at a fantastic rate and of course ours has just gone along with it. One must add to this the tremendous increase in the Members' constituency business, and I don't mean just constituent requests, but his contact with his constituents, newsletters, broadcasts, visitors, relationships of every sort, intercession with the bureaucracy, which of course has increased at a great pace as the size of the Federal Government has increased.

In all of these ways the Member's business has increased so that his office is overwhelmed and they ask us to help and we, too, are in the position of doing too much of everything.

I am very much aware of that and it is a very serious danger, but I think every committee office and most Member's staffs are in a worse boat than we are.

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INDIVIDUAL MEMBER WORKLOAD

Senator YARBOROUGH. Mr. Chairman, I would like to say a word there. I think a lot of the big fault lies with the individual Member and his office. We don't have enough staff to halfway do our work in our office.

I asked my mailroom last week how much mail we were getting; some days it is 1,500 letters. I can't screen them and see what goes to the Library of Congress in my office. I have only four senior staff members, we have so little money. I can't even ask a senior staff member in my office to screen requests.

We have to train a stenographer to do that. We ought to hire enough staff in our personal offices here and authorize ourselves enough staff to do some of this work instead of the Library.

CONSTITUENT REQUESTS

Dr. ELSBREE. I think we had 51,000 constituent requests last year and 53,000 in 1963. I would estimate that there are quite a number of Senators, particularly, who get more mail than that in 1 year, just individual offices.

We get certain types of requests. Most of them are now going to the executive branch and one of our problems, quite frankly, is that the executive branch is setting such a high standard for us to compete with that we are getting an increasing number of complaints that say:

Here, you are the Library of Congress, and you aren't doing half as good a job in handling constituent requests as we can get from executive agencies. They write us a very fine letter, they put highly classified people on it, while you are just sending us some give away material.

Even with the type that we are getting, I am frank to say that we are not doing a very good quality job.

Senator MONRONEY. You can tell them to keep sending their business elsewhere.

Dr. ELSBREE. Mr. Chairman, as I say, when a Member calls me and says, "I don't care whether you put a GS-15 on it or a GS-11, 12, or 13," I need it," well, I am a civil servant and I want to do the job. Senator YARBOROUGH. I want to see you later and get the names of those who are doing that good work.

SCIENCE DIVISION PERSONNEL

Senator MONRONEY. What are these four that you are proposing to increase? What would be their specialties?

Dr. ELSBREE. Mr. Chairman, these are the four we did not get last year. We requested 8 for the new Science Policy Research Division. Senator MONRONEY. I think we delayed giving you the full eight on the grounds of your having a hard job going out and hiring all of a sudden.

Dr. ELSBREE. Yes, that was the reason, but we have all the jobs filled and a heavy workload.

DISTRIBUTION OF CATALOG Cards

Senator MONRONEY. You have seven for the "Salary and expenses, Distribution of Catalog Cards." That is because of the increased

volume of the copyrights I would presume and other books that have to be cataloged. Is that correct?

Dr. MUMFORD. It results from the increase in publications, yes, but also many libraries are being established or enlarged and they are buying more cards. The sale of the catalog cards has gone up enormously each year and continues to rise. We are now serving some 15,000 libraries.

As you know, this service saves them much of the cost of cataloging locally. I think the aid-to-education bills, the Library Services Act, and now the Higher Education Act, will stimulate library services and continue to increase the sale of cards.

In other words, other libraries are getting more books for their own libraries and they look to us for cards for them, so the volume of business continues to rise.

SELF-SUPPORTING ACTIVITY

As you will note from the justification, Mr. Chairman, this is a self-supporting activity. We have returned considerably more than the appropriation each year to the Treasury.

Senator MONRONEY. That is $4,286,000 roughly, is that correct, in sales?

Dr. MUMFORD. Yes, sir.

Senator MONRONEY. That is real income, is it not? That is not savings that the libraries effect?

Dr. MUMFORD. No, sir; that is sales. In 1964 we returned 121 percent of the appropriation to the Treasury. It is estimated that in 1965 we will return at least 110 percent, possibly more.

From time to time it is necessary to raise the price slightly on these cards in order to maintain this balance of income.

Senator MONRONEY. You had a big jump last year of some 62 people, which helped to fulfill your terrible backlog.

Is that correct?

Dr. MUMFORD. Yes, sir; we were in a very dire situation then because of the accumulated increase in orders, and this has helped a great deal.

The number of additional positions we are asking for this year in connection with the card distribution is a very limited number but in particular we are asking for this contingency fund because for several years we underestimated in the fall when our estimates went in for this appropriation.

We could not anticipate the great increase that would take effect. We expected increases, but it was always greater than we could anticipate and it was necessary for us to ask for a supplemental appropriation for several years in order to meet the requests for catalog cards. We feel that if we have this contingency fund to be used only in the event of unexpected increases in business it would obviate the necessity of supplementals.

This contingency fund was actually suggested by the House Subcommittee on Appropriations last year because of the fact that our business continued to outrun the appropriation each year.

HOUSE PROVISION

Senator MONRONEY. The House has a proviso:

Provided, That $200,000 of this appropriation shall be apportioned for use pursuant to section 3679 of the Revised Statutes, and amended, only to the extent necessary to provide for expenses (excluding permanent personal services) for workload increases not anticipated in budget estimates and which cannot be provided by any normal budgetary adjustments.

Is that customary language, or is that new?

Mr. ROSSITER. That is new.

Dr. MUMFORD. To cover the contingency fund.

Senator MONRONEY. And you favor that contingency fund.

Dr. MUMFORD. Yes, indeed. We strongly favor it.

Mr. WELSH. Mr. Chairman, may I make one further statement? Senator MONRONEY. Yes, sir.

ESTIMATE OF MONETARY RETURN

Mr. WELSH. The Librarian referred to the difficulty of estimating the amount of increased business each year. In the fall, when we prepared these requests, we estimated that the amount we would return to the Treasury in fiscal 1965 would be $4,191,000.

As I said earlier, the amount that we have returned in the first 11 months is $4,286,000. It will be above that at the end of the year.

We estimated that we would sell 56 million cards. In the first 11 months we have sold 56,069,000 and we will probably sell in excess of 60 million cards. We may sell as many as 10 million more cards this year than last. Business has increased at a very rapid pace and it is very difficult to forecast the increase.

BOOKS FOR THE BLIND

Senator MONRONEY. I see you are adding two to the salaries and expenses, books for the blind. Will this help you keep more up to date on those talking books. Is that what we are talking about?

Mr. MUMFORD. Yes, sir. This program continues to expand. More blind people are using the service and our total request includes additional money for more talking book records and machines and it takes some more staff to administer the program.

Senator MONRONEY. I think it is a very deserving program and you get by with only 36 this year and you need 38. That will enable a greater service, will it, for the blind?

Mr. MUMFORD. It will.

PRESERVATION OF MOTION PICTURE HISTORY

Senator MONRONEY. I notice you only have one man on the preservation of all the motion picture history.

Mr. MUMFORD. Yes, sir. This person is responsible for checking out motion pictures and sending them out to the laboratory to be copied. We are also asking for some additional help to provide information about motion pictures. We get an increasing number of inquiries as to what we have in the collection. They may come from individuals from, for example, a student of social history. It may come from

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