a year ago, and I believe I raised some question about it then, everybody was so positive at that time and there was no question about the validity and the possibilities of this program, only to find now that the questions we raised a year ago were kind of pertinent and were probably in order.

How do we know that the responses we are getting now are any more reliable than a year ago?

Dr. MUMFORD. We cannot know with absolute certainty that we will be permitted to operate this program, Mr. Langen. We certainly did not mean to convey last year that we were assured that we would be able to. We were sure of the desirability of doing it if we could be permitted to.

PROGRAM IN YUGOSLAVIA

Mr. LANGEN. Let me ask about Yugoslavia where you have the program started. When was the program started there?

Dr. MUMFORD. About 2 months ago.

Mr. LANGEN. About 2 months ago.

Mr. WELSH. Yes, sir.

Mr. LANGEN. I see the same request there for $87,000 to annualize the program.

Mr. WELSH. Yes, sir.

Mr. LANGEN. How many people do we have over there now?

Mr. WELSH. One American, sir.

Mr. LANGEN. There again for six additional participants. That is six local people.

Dr. MUMFORD. No, additional libraries in the United States to receive the materials..

Mr. WELSH. The number of locals, sir, is 12.

Mr. LANGEN. How do you select these people that serve in these countries?

Mr. WELSH. In the past most of the Americans have been selected from our own staff, some with the knowledge of the area, some with administrative experience.

Mr. LANGEN. Are these people trained in the language of the country?

Mr. WELSH. In some cases they are and in some they are not. The man we sent to Indonesia did not know the Indonesian language but studied it as soon as he got there and was fairly fluent in a short period of time.

Mr. LANGEN. How about the man you sent to Yugoslavia?

Mr. WELSH. No, sir, he is not fluent. This would be very desirable but we could not get someone with the language and other necessary qualifications. He does have French and he will be taking courses in Serbo-Croatian.

Dr. MUMFORD. The people with whom he is dealing usually speak English, Mr. Langen.

Mr. LANGEN. Isn't this quite a handicap in a foreign country, not to have a knowledge of the language with the number of negotiations that they participate in?

Do we send him over there so that his first assignment there is one of learning the language and his first period of service is of no consequence because he has first to learn the language?

Mr. WELSH. No, sir; his immediate contacts all speak English.

Mr. LANGEN. Have you selected his immediate contacts ahead of time so that you know they speak English?

Mr. WELSH. Yes, sir; we know that his immediate contacts speak English.

Mr. LANGEN. I understand that there is quite some barrier and quite a little problem involved in these people coming there without a knowledge of the language.

Dr. MUMFORD. I was there last December and I had no difficulty in negotiating matters with the publishers and Government officials.

Mr. LANGEN. Doesn't it involve a number of libraries and interested people much the same as here? Furthermore, how do they evaluate the literature over there in that language if they cannot either read it, write it, or speak it? It is pretty hard to place an evaluation on a piece of literature if they have no knowledge of the language, even as to the subject matter.

Dr. MUMFORD. We indicate the categories of material we are interested in, whether it is economics, history, politics, or literature. The publishers themselves, with the detailed instructions we can give them, supply the material.

Mr. LANGEN. At the same time this individual picks up all those books and he does not have the slightest idea what he has in his hand. Dr. MUMFORD. He would not have the time to attempt to evaluate every single piece of material.

Mr. LANGEN. He could read the title.

Dr. MUMFORD. But he would not have time to go over every single piece of material, certainly not in India where there is a large production and it is published in some 17 different languages.

Mr. LANGEN. Are they learning the language of those countries now that they are over there?

Dr. MUMFORD. They acquire some familiarity with it. I would not say they all learn it so they are fluent. They do obtain an acquaintanceship with it.

Mr. LANGEN. The local people that you hire, are they all trained in English?

Dr. MUMFORD. They can handle the language of their own country, and I believe they can speak English.

I do not believe we have any foreign employees who do not speak English.

Mr. LANGEN. Do you have a requirement that they speak English! If you are going to have six people under him and he cannot talk to them, this would seem to be a complete absurdity to me.

Mr. WELSH. Yes, sir. One of our initial tasks in establishing an office is to hire the local staff because the lists that we publish have the titles translated not only for the purpose of making selection over there but for purposes of aiding scholarship in this country. So they do hire a staff that is competent in the language and can assist in the identification, selection, and cataloging of materials.

Dr. MUMFORD. It is somewhat the same situation, Mr. Langen, as exists with the State Department representatives in foreign countries. Certainly some of the staff members in our foreign embassies do not. speak the language of the country.

Mr. LANGEN. There are a good many things in the State Department that are not exactly of the best standard either. I do not know that I

would want to recommend that anybody copy the policies of the State Department.

Dr. MUMFORD. I did not mean that. I meant they were able to communicate with the local people. They employ many local people.

Mr. LANGEN. I would like to see that the Library of Congress had a criteria that was far superior to the State Department and we might be able to say to the State Department, you might take a few lessons from the Library of Congress, rather than having it the other way around.

Mr. WELSH. May I elaborate a little bit? It is clearly our intention to hire people with the language qualification.

In some areas this is difficult, for we also require administrative experience, a knowledge of book acquistion procedures, and supervisory ability. If a candidate has all other qualifications except the language and there are no fully qualified candidates, we may have to forgo the language competence. In India where there are 17 different dialects, we recognized the impossibility of recruiting a director with the desired language competence. There are very few people in this country that have a command of all or even a portion of the dialects. Mr. LANGEN. We are talking of Yugoslavia.

Mr. WELSH. Yes, sir. We did not have a candidate who had all the requirements including the language. We picked Mr. Bowman, who had been with the Indonesian program for several years, since he had good administrative experience, and an excellent knowledge of the acquisition policies of the Library, despite the fact that he could not speak any of the Yugoslav languages.

Mr. LANGEN. How much traveling do they do in these countries when they get there?

Mr. WELSH. This depends on the country. In Yugoslavia he will be traveling to several of the major cities. In India it means covering the entire subcontinent. In Indonesia it means going into all of the publishing areas of the country. There is quite a bit of traveling.

Mr. LANGEN. Which means that they are subject to the problem of travel without knowing the language, and subject to the problem of becoming acquainted in any new library or any new source of material they might discover if they could discover it all without being able to read either a newspaper, a publication, a catalog, or any of the items related to the work that they are going to do there.

Mr. WELSH. It is surprising how much English is spoken in all of these countries. We also use the facilities of the State Department and take advantage of their personnel with necessary language skills. On occasion they take with them one of the native staff who knows the language. In the United Arab Republic we have an employee who frequently accompanies the Director in some of the areas where language might be a problem.

Mr. LANGEN. How many books have they acquired in Yugoslavia now?

Mr. WELSH. We have not received any as yet, sir.

Mr. LANGEN. Probably still learning the language so that he can identify a few of them. You have no idea what that program might amount to, either, in the way of procuring material or what the cost would be?

Dr. MUMFORD. We estimate that it will be in the neighborhood of 4,000 or 5,000 titles annually for each participating library.

Mr. LANGEN. What is that estimate based upon?

Dr. MUMFORD. The estimate is based upon the total book production, taking into account the fact that we can eliminate various categories of material that would not serve a reference or research purpose for the Library of Congress and the other participating U.S. libraries.

Mrs. HAMER. May I say that it was also based on specific conferences with the heads of libraries in that country, and, even more to the point, with a very broad spectrum of the publishers of materials in that country.

Mr. LANGEN. When were these conferences held?

Mrs. HAMER. Dr. Mumford referred to his visit last September, when he personally met with about 15 of the leading publishers in Yugoslavia and with the national librarians. They have more than one national library because each Republic has a national library. Those libraries are also cooperating with the program. Some of those people we have known for years through visits, correspondence, and through the exchange of publications. They know our needs and they very generously help our people.

Dr. MUMFORD. Incidentally, there are three languages in Yugoslavia. Mr. LANGEN. All the more reason why probably somebody ought to be acquainted with one of them, at least, so he would have some kind of communication.

TRANSPORTATION COSTS OF MATERIALS TO THE UNITED STATES

As I recall the testimony from a year ago involving the further extension of the acquisition of materials, including the Russian accessions, there was quite some discussion about the transportation of this material back to this country and the cost of sending it back, much of it being sent by airmail.

What is the cost of getting this material back?

Mr. WELSH. Page 239 shows the total estimated cost for fiscal 1968 as $222,000, a corrected figure, in soft currencies. That would compare, sir, to the cost of the material itself, which is shown on page 241 as $1,078,000. The cost of transportation of things represents about onefifth of the cost of the materials.

Mr. LANGEN. On page 239, $270,000?

Mr. WELSH. No, sir. There is a corrected figure which perhaps you do not have. The figure that had been shown on the right-hand column under transportation of things, soft currency, was $232,000. It has been reduced to $222,000. That is the cost of transportation.

Mr. ANDREWS. That is soft currency?

Mr. WELSH. Yes.

Mr. ANDREWS. $38,000?

Mr. WELSH. Yes; $38,000 in hard dollars, sir. That is primarily for the shipment of household goods for our employees.

Mr. ANDREWS. Mr. Langen's question is: What does it cost to get this material that you purchase in these foreign countries back over here?

Mr. WELSH. $220,000, sir.

Mr. LANGEN. $222.000, or about 20 percent of the initial cost.

Mr. WELSH. Yes, sir.

COPIES SENT BY AIRFREIGHT

Mr. LANGEN. How much of this is done by airmail?

Mr. WELSH. I do not think any is sent by airmail. Airfreight is used, and only one copy, the copy destined for the Library of Congress for cataloging purposes, comes by airfreight. The other copies are sent by surface.

Mr. LANGEN. As I recall, this also relates to the Russian accessions and the cost of shipping that material here by airfreight, if that is the correct expression.

Dr. MUMFORD. I do not recall any specific relationship to the "Monthly Index of Russian Accessions" that we are compiling. If we had a program going with Russia, certainly we would want to obtain some of the materials by airfreight, but we do not have a Public Law 480 program in Russia, of course.

CURRENCY IN CATALOGING FOREIGN MATERIALS

Mr. LANGEN. How much of a backlog do you have in getting the catalog material?

Mr. WELSH. Almost none, sir. We are almost current. Most of the cataloging is performed overseas by the local staff. We have simply to make minor revisions at the Library.

Mr. LANGEN. What would be the saving, if any, and what would be the change in the time element if all of this were sent by the normal mail delivery?

Mr. WELSH. I cannot answer that, specifically, as far as the savings are concerned. The reason we have our copy sent airfreight is so we can finish the cataloging job here and have the cards printed and distributed to the libraries about the time they receive the material. Dr. MUMFORD. Also, it serves the purpose of having the material here which may be of assistance to the Congress through our Legislative Reference Service or other agencies of the Government.

Mr. LANGEN. I appreciate that. Of course, all at once we have come to the end of the road in Indonesia. By virtue of the fact that we no longer will get material there, is our whole relationship with Indonesia going to go to not now?

Dr. MUMFORD. It means we will not be able to get nearly as good or complete coverage as we are now getting, but we would make efforts to obtain materials from Indonesia through bookdealers, either there or outside of Indonesia. We would get some materials if this program is discontinued.

Mr. WELSH. I would like to comment further that surface mail, which is the way copies for other libraries are shipped, takes several months, and from India, sometimes longer. That is the reason we have Library of Congress copies shipped airfreight.

Mr. LANGEN. You get your copy as quickly as you can. Then the rest of them follow by surface mail; is that right?

Mr WELSH. Yes, sir.

Mr LANGEN. And it is several months before they get here.

Mr. WELSH. That gives us time to finish cataloging, and print and distribute the catalog cards. Airfreight shipment also makes that material available here earlier for use by the Library of Congress and others in Washington.