APPROPRIATION: SALARIES AND EXPENSES LIBRARY OF CONGRESS (CONTINUED) Justification of New Positions Requested To provide foreign law and foreign language competence for research services and 3 GS-13 Senior Legal Specialists @ $18,737 2 GS-5 Library Technicians @ $7,319 Personnel benefits ... $56,211 14,638 Three senior legal specialist, two from South Asia and one from the Middle East, are requested to provide foreign law and foreign language competence in important legal areas of the world not presently covered by the Law Library. The areas of South Asia (Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand, and Laos) and the Middle East (Iran and Afghanistan) represent major jurisdications which have become increasingly involved in United States relations and of vital legal concern. The Law Library is hampered by the lack of legal expertise in these areas where legislative, APPROPRIATION: SALARIES AND EXPENSES, LIBRARY OF CONGRESS (CONTINUED) LAW LIBRARY religious, and customary laws are of a mixed, complex nature and languages are of uncommon types. The addition of these legal specialists will insure the full complement of legal experts necessary to respond to legal inquiries from Congress, the Judiciary, the Executive branch, and the public; enable the Law Library to develop, organize, maintain, and service the collections; and to prepare indexing, reference, and other bibliographic tools to facilitate their use. Two GS-5 Library Technicians Two library technicians are requested to help insure availability of current materials and information to Congressional and other users; to relieve professional reference librarians of maintenance and other non-professional functions such as filing pages in loose-leaf treatises and reporting services, shelving, shifting, shelf reading, and inserting pocket parts and other supplementary and revisional material; to render preliminary reader assistance in public areas; to improve the response time in locating material for users; and to assist in arranging, accessioning, processing, recording, shelflisting, and indexing the increasing quantity of primary source material. FUNCTIONS OF LAW LIBRARY Mr. KENYON. The Law Library, with 1.5 million volumes, is the only comprehensive legal research library in the Government. It is the responsibility of the Law Library to supply lawbooks in all fields of law and provide information and services in law for all regions of the world. Our staff of foreign law specialists is engaged in developing the collection, indexing gazettes, court reports, and other sources preparing reference and bibliographic tools, but primarily in providing information on a worldwide basis from wide and varied legal systems, traditional civil, common, and customary law coexisting with the statutory, both past and present. These legal experts, which make us the foreign law reference and research service to Congress are engaged in preparing background studies, comparative surveys and detailed reports, and rendering legal opinions. We do this by locating, analyzing, translating, and putting the results into understandable English. This requires considerable law and linguistic competency as well as time and effort. However, our ability to develop the collections in a worldwide manner and pursue legal research in all areas of the world is restricted in several major nations of primary concern and strategic importance, where the language is unique, and the legal system is complex. This is particularly true in two South Asian areas and one in the Middle East. The South Asia area being Indonesia-Malaysia and Thailand-Laos. In the Middle East, we have no legal specialist who can handle the area of Iran and Afghanistan. MATERIALS RECEIVED BY LAW LIBRARY Our two other positions-the request for library technicians are for people to help us because of the enormous amount of material that we have received in the last several years. In 1969, we received 800,000 pieces. Last year we received much over 1,200,000 pieces. All of these pieces received in the Law Library must be sorted, distributed, processed, shelved, filed, and promptly located for use. Mr. CASEY. When you say pieces, what exactly do you mean? Mr. KENYON. I am talking about briefs, pamphlets, pocket parts, slip laws, advance sheets, but primarily looseleaf inserts. This is true not only of domestic law but for all jurisdictions. Mr. CASEY. You receive and file judgments from appellate Federal courts and State courts? Mr. KENYON. That is right. We have the same system in the common law countries and many civil law countries which are generally issued more and more in looseleaf form, even codes, like the bilingual code of South Africa which today is looseleaf, and many other African codes. WORKLOAD OF LAW LIBRARY Mr. CASEY. Do you keep a record of the number of requests that you receive for assistance? How do you gage your workload other than just the filing and compilation of publications that you receive? Mr. KENYON. We do considerable reference service which we keep a record of. If you want to include all of our reference service, that is for readers that come into our reading rooms-we have a law library in the Capitol, an Anglo-American law reading room in the main building, plus two foreign law reading rooms, and telephone service, reference inquiries, and special studies and reports Mr. CASEY. Where is your Law Library in the Capitol located? Mr. KENYON. It is located on the fourth floor of the Senate wing, adjacent to the Senate Library. We have a basic reference collection of around 20,000 volumes, mostly American law. It includes the regional reporter system, some periodicals and treatises, State codes, and Federal laws and reports. Our workload overall has increased about 12 percent in the last year from these various points where we have reference requests. Taken as a whole, they have gone from around 140,000 (1971) to around 160,000 (1972) in number. Mr. CASEY. Are you referring to reference requests only? Mr. CASEY. From checking out a book to what? Mr. KENYON. From direction to a book, to reader reference inquiries, telephone requests, or a study that needs the attention of legal specialists in foreign law. Mr. CASEY. Mr. Cederberg. Mr. CEDERBERG. I have no questions. Mr. CASEY. Mr. Ruth? Mr. RUTH. No questions. ADMINISTRATIVE DEPARTMENT Mr. CASEY. If there are no questions, we will take up the Administrative Department, where you are requesting 37 additional positions at a cost of $317,725. Mr. CROXTON. Mr. Chairman, pages 91 through 99 of the justifications describe the work of the 37 people that are involved in some more detail. You may wish to include those in the record. Mr. CASEY. Without objection, we will insert those pages in the record at this point. (The justification material follows:) To provide for the cleaning and shifting in the major reorganization of the collections which must occur to permit continued service prior to the move to the James Madison 2 WL-5 Collections Maintenance Workers (Leaders) @ $7,966 $ 15,932 8 WG-5 Collections Maintenance Workers $7,238 10 -57,904 These positions are urgently and immediately needed for the book and stack cleaning, |