COMMITTEE ON APPROPRIATIONS

JOHN TABER, New York, Chairman

RICHARD B. WIGGLESWORTH, Massachusetts CLARENCE CANNON, Missouri

GEORGE Y. HARVEY, Clerk

SUBCOMMITTEE ON LEGISLATIVE BRANCH APPROPRIATIONS

NOBLE J. JOHNSON, Indiana, Chairman

CLARENCE CANNON, Missouri
MICHAEL J. KIRWAN, Ohio
GEORGE W. ANDREWS, Alabama

PAUL M. WILSON, Executive Secretary to Subcommittee

LEGISLATIVE BRANCH APPROPRIATION BILL, 1948

HEARINGS CONDUCTED BY THE SUBCOMMITTEE, NOBLE J. JOHNSON (CHAIRMAN), HARVE TIBBOTT, GORDON CANFIELD, P. W. GRIFFITHS, CLARENCE CANNON, MICHAEL J. KIRWAN, AND GEORGE W. ANDREWS, OF THE COMMITTEE ON APPROPRIATIONS, HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES, IN CHARGE OF THE LEGISLATIVE APPROPRIATION BILL, 1948, ON THE DAYS FOLLOWING:

MONDAY, MAY 26, 1947.

LIBRARY OF CONGRESS

STATEMENTS OF DR. LUTHER H. EVANS, THE LIBRARIAN OF CONGRESS; VERNER W. CLAPP, CHIEF ASSISTANT LIBRARIAN; DAVID C. MEARNS, DIRECTOR, REFERENCE DEPARTMENT; ERNEST S. GRIFFITH, DIRECTOR, LEGISLATIVE REFERENCE SERVICE; HERMAN H. HENKLE, DIRECTOR, PROCESSING DEPARTMENT; SAM BASS WARNER, REGISTER OF COPYRIGHT; AND JOHN C. L. ANDREASSEN, DIRECTOR OF ADMINISTRATION Mr. JOHNSON. We will take up first the appropriation estimates for the Library of Congress. I presume you have a prepared statement, Dr. Evans?

Dr. EVANS. Yes, sir.

Mr. JOHNSON. You may proceed.

GENERAL STATEMENT

Dr. EVANS. Mr. Chairman and gentlemen, the estimates now before you for the Library of Congress contemplate a considerable increase in the collections and the activities of the Library, as well as in the staff necessary to meet the present work load and the currest demands for service on the basis of the present intake of material. Before going into the details of the appropriations which my colleagues and I believe to be necessary in the national interest, I wish to state briefly the philosophy behind our request for these considerably enlarged appropriations.

First, the Congress has indicated its need and desire for additional specialized research and reference services. We are providing in part for this need in our estimate for the Legislative Reference Service, which is in accordance with the authorization contained in the Legislative Reorganization Act. It is, of course, a matter for Congress to determine how much service it wishes the Legislative Reference Service to give. My colleagues and I can testify, however, that the total amount requested is inadequate rather than more than adequate to meet

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the sum of the demands made of it. In part, the increases requested in other appropriations are necessary to make the Library adequate to the requirements placed upon it by the Legislative Reference Service and directly by the Congress itself. An activity administered by the Legislative Reference Service because it is so closely related to its major purpose is the program provided under the appropriation "Index to State legislation." A small increase is necessary for the full operation of the daily State bill and law service which was initiated a year ago at the request of numerous Federal agencies as the most economical means of meeting an essential need.

Second, the Library of Congress is an important agency in connection with the national security. Its collections include materials in many forms from all nations of the world which are absolutely essential to the foreign-policy research and intelligence activities of the Government. The recent war demonstrated beyond doubt that the Library urgently needed expanded collections and services and emphasized anew the importance of providing adequate cataloging and bibliographical controls over scientific, economic, and historical information. We believe that the failure of the Library of Congress to have much of the material required by war agencies and to provide adequate access to the material it possessed cost much in efficiency in fighting the war as well as human lives and unnecessary expense. We have come to the end of the war period with the firm conviction that the Library of Congres must embark upon a long-range program which will prevent the repetition of past failures.

Third, there is every reason to believe that the development and maintenance of one great comprehensive library, which, when supplemented by the Army Medical Library and the Library of the Department of Agriculture, will be adequate for the needs of the entire Government is a major economy. The alternative is the building up of a large number of special libraries designed to meet expanding needs, but none of them nor all of them together being adequate to the need. During the war period we witnessed costly emergency measures designed to make up for past failures to have one complete library, and we saw that they were only partially effective. Our requests for adequate staff to develop and maintain the great national map collection, to establish a Division of Science and Technology, to expand our aeronautics work, to develop new divisions in regional terms are all requests which, although they represent an increase in the Library's budget, will, in the long run, result in actual and substantial economies in the total expenditures of the Government.

Fourth, it seems clear to us that for generations it has been the determined intent of the Congress to develop the Library of Congress as the National Library. All Librarians of Congress for the past 80 years, of which I am the fifth, have believed this without question and have asserted it without successful contradiction. My colleagues and I believe that to serve as the National Library the Library of Congress must provide reading matter and the research and informa tional services required to meet the demands of the Congress, the demands of the executive agencies of the Government which they cannot better meet themselves, and the needs of scholars and the general public for materials and library services which cannot better and more economically be provided by local institutions. The Library

took large steps toward this objective when it became, by statute, the depository of the scientific library of the Smithsonian Institution, 1866; when Congress gave it responsibility for the records relating to copyright, 1870; when, later, Congress constructed for it the great buildings which it occupies east of the Capitol, 1897, 1939; when it was authorized by law to commence distribution of printed catalog cards, 1901; when it was required by law to place its facilities for study and research at the disposition of scientific investigators and duly qualified individuals in the several States and Territories, as well as in the District of Columbia, 1901; when it established a special Legislative Reference Service to Congress, 1914; and was given statutory responsibility for indexing State legislation, 1927; and for a Nationwide service to the blind, 1931; and when at many times during the last few decades its collections and its services have usefully expanded into new fields. Congress has continuously and generously supported this development, financially as well as in terms of legislative authorization.

Fifth, our present inability to take care of the current intake of material or to reduce the tremendous arrearages which have developed represents, in reality, a waste of the investments which have already been made. This extraordinary backlog of unfinished work has accumulated because of two developments. The first cause was the inadequacy of space in the main building for the enlarged collections and expanded services of the Library which rapidly developed in the more than 40 years following 1897. The space was made adequate by the opening of the annex building in 1939, and the staff was increased by approximately 425 during fiscal years 1939, 1940, and 1941, in order to begin an attack on the arrearage and to expand certain activities. During the next 5 years, instead of enjoying a wartime mushroom growth, the Library staff increased at the rate of 25 positions a year. The backlog which existed before the move to the annex has in large part remained, and in some ways has grown larger.

Sixth, certain of the Library's operations, although requiring increases in appropriations, do not contribute in their totality to the net expenditure of the Government, because of their total or partially self-supporting character. I refer specifically to the appropriations for "Salaries, Copyright Office"; "Printing and binding, catalog of title entries, Copyright Office"; "Distribution of printed cards"; and "Printing and binding, catalog cards." More will be said about this later.

In short, the situation which faces the Library of Congress today is an enormous growth in the demands as well as the opportunities for service, coupled with an increased world output of material in which the Library's users are interested and on which they demand service. Let us take first this matter of increasing the collections. It is the view of our experts in various fields that the Library now secures perhaps not more than half of the currently published material of the entire world which is reasonably required to give adequate service to the Congress and the Government, and to meet the important demands of scientific and scholarly research in this country, demands which the law compels us to meet as far as giving access to our collections is concerned. We are, therefore, submitting estimates for substantial increases in the appropriations for "In

crease, general" and "Increase, law," and for the personnel necessary to handle the many clerical, accounting, and record-keeping activities connected with the acquisition of material. Although the appropri ations for the purchase of books, etc., do not require doubling at this time, the number of persons required for acquisitions work is more than double the present staff, for the reason that the personnel now available is seriously inadequate to handle the present work load. This situation has developed as a result of recent increases in the intake of material, only a small fraction of which is purchased material, without corresponding increases in staff.

If the test of the Library's size and potentialities for service is its collections, the test of its actual usefulness is measured by its ability to deliver a book, a newspaper, a photograph, a map, or even an item of information when it is called for. This means that the Library must catalog or otherwise control, by author and subject, the books, maps, music, motion pictures, photographs, and all other forms of material which are acquired. Not only must additional staff be provided to catalog the intake of additional material we hope to acquire, but also a substantial increase is necessary to keep abreast of the present intake. A still further increase is essential if we are to make useful the enormous backlog of uncataloged material (perhaps a million titles) which has accumulated over the past few decades. Allied to the request for more catalogers are the increases required for the printing of catalog cards and the distribution of catalog cards, mostly reimbursable.

A related matter is our grave situation with regard to the binding of books, periodicals, and so forth. A substantial increase in the printing and binding appropriation is required in order to provide protection to incoming material and to used material. which otherwise would be destroyed in use.

A great research library can neither select and acquire the necessary material nor give adequate service on it to Congress and the other agencies of Government without the assistance of subject and area specialists. Although the Library possesses such experts in its Reference Department for a number of important subjects and a number of the important areas of the world, the picture is far from complete. It is our considered judgment that such specialization must extend to all major subjects of knowledge and all the important areas of the earth. We are proposing in this year's estimates to expand our aeronautics work, to establish a Division of Science and Technology as the next stage in the development of a national library collection in this field, and to develop new and expand old regional divisions to complete the coverage of the earth.

Also in the Reference Department the estimates include requests to provide for more adequate services of custody, circulation, and general service to readers. Our most urgent need is for additional personnel to provide reader service on Saturday and Sunday, thus eliminating the use of overtime, which became a necessity with the change from a 48- to a 40-hour workweek. It must be remembered also that in the Library's general reading rooms service must be