From his penthouse-like office in the sleek Madison Building, graced with a spectacular view of some of the capital`s architectural landmarks, James Hadley Billington presides over one of the world`s cultural wonders, the Library of Congress. Only the institution`s 13th librarian since its founding in 1800, Billington has initiated an unprecedented series of changes in his two year tenure to make the riches of the world`s largest library more accessible.
”Getting the champagne out of the bottle” has become Billington`s slogan to gear up the library for the 21st Century. This fall he put into place a new management scheme after two years of sounding out the library`s staff of nearly 5,000 and crisscrossing the nation to meet with academic and library groups.
Yet not everyone finds his taste sparkling. Mary Ann Joyce, president of the union local that represents 1,250 of the library`s professional employees, said Billington seems to prefer ”imported champagne” in his appointments while ignoring the library`s own pool of talent. She contended that Billington ”has no patience at all for the library`s bureaucracy.”
So far Billington`s changes have provoked no organized opposition, but the congressional Joint Committee on the Library, headed by Rep. Frank Annunzio (D., Ill.), has received some 30 to 40 letters from staffers-most anonymous-complaining about the changes. ”Although we maintain oversight, by tradition the committee does not get involved in the micromanagement of the new librarian,” said Hilary Lieber, the committee`s staff director.
In a recent interview, Billington said of the riches to be found in the library: ”People ought to be able to have that excitement. It`s been stored here, but hasn`t been shared out there.”
Billington, a Russian scholar and author of ”The Icon and the Axe” and
”Fire in the Minds of Men,” speaks as if he were an expressionist painter dashing off ideas. He is in constant motion, occasionally standing as his thoughts shift direction.
”There has been an enormous intellectual and cultural resurgence in Washington,” he said. ”It hasn`t been appreciated how much an intellectual resource center Washington is. The Library of Congress is the central representative of the intellectual side. And it is potentially sharable with the rest of the nation because of the new electronic technology.” The library, according to Billington, is ”a vital spark plug in this city . . . a witness to the pursuit of truth in all formats and languages.”
Looking to the future he mentions ”the library without walls” and its advantages over museums. ”You can`t very well send out the First Ladies`
dresses (from the Smithsonian),” he says. ”Museum artifacts cannot be sent out in an electronic form, whereas human records-the printed word, recorded sound, visual images, (of) which we have the world`s largest repository-can be shipped. The act of sharing will be the library`s contribution to the spiritual uplift of our country.”
Trove of artistic creations
Billington, a 60-year-old former Rhodes scholar (B.A., Princeton; Ph.D., Oxford), was director of the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars here for 14 years before joining the library. Yet for all his time in Washington, he acknowledges that the library, Congress` research arm, provided some major surprises.
”I knew about the richness and variety of the collections,” he said.
”But I was unprepared for the enormous deposit of unpublished plays, novels and sheet music because of the Copyright Office.”
Since 1870 the library has required extra copies of works that have been submitted to its copyright office, which amounts to more than a half-million items a year.
”Another surprise (was) the enormous human resources locked up in the library, particularly in cataloguing,” he said. ”Many of the cataloguers have read everything on a given subject during their 10, 20, 30 years as practicing librarians.”
Billington doesn`t shy away from discussing what he sees are the weaknesses of the library bureaucracy, especially its tendency ”to become hierarchical, turf-conscious and preoccupied with its own procedures.”
Inevitably, he said, the bureaucracy ”tends to become highly divided baronial units without much communication with each other.”
Billington continued, ”We are trying to . . . create a much more fluid management culture, much more oriented to service outside rather than turf and procedure inside . . . and piddling and diddling over regulations.”
He neither denies, nor apologizes for, the downgrading of highly trained library employees in one division to book shelvers, laborers or typists. ”The aim is not to purge,” he said of the reorganization. ”Jobs have been openly posted.”
A local newspaper recently reported these examples of job downgrading in the library`s Federal Research Division:
– An 80-year-old Russian specialist with a degree from Massachusetts Institute of Technology and an annual salary of $40,000 was placed in a clerical job that normally pays $15,000.
– A 34-year-old researcher with a master`s degree from Brown University now works as a book shelver.
– A former Drake University professor was transferred to a job as a clerk-receptionist.
Federal regulations, however, protect their salaries from being cut for two years despite the drastic drop in job responsibility.
Billington explained that the division was hit hard by a cutback in Pentagon research contracts with the library.
Such contracts are vulnerable to ”money changes of the executive branch.” Overall, he observed, the library ”is not an organization used to change,” in contrast to executive-branch agencies, which feel the impact of elections every four years.
The budget crunch remains a fact of life for the library. In 1986, the library was forced to close its reading rooms on Sundays and most weeknights for several months, much to the consternation of scholars and students. Currently, 1 out of 10 library positions is vacant because of budget considerations.
In addition, the lagging value of the dollar has made the acquisition of materials from abroad more expensive. Billington estimated that as much as three-quarters of the library`s holdings are in foreign languages. (The library, incidentally, maintains offices in Rome, Cairo, New Delhi, Pakistan and Indonesia, and plans call for facilities in Mexico City, Moscow and West Africa.)
Information for sale?
Since only 2.5 percent of the library`s budget comes from private funds, and most of the library`s trust funds are earmarked for music and concerts, the library is exploring ways to get more money.
One potential source of revenue that interests Billington is the library`s bibliographic data, which he describes as ”the largest collection of information in the world.” As required by federal law, the library makes this computerized material available at cost to subscribers.
If the library were to sell it at a profit, it would boost revenue by hundreds of millions of dollars, Billington estimated.
Some subscribers, he explained, take the library`s data, mix it with their own, then sell this material for a substantial fee.
Government regulations, however, would not prevent the library from peddling its own data overseas for a profit.
The job of librarian of Congress, a lifetime appointment, has its pleasures and problems. Billington says he especially misses the full-time pursuit of scholarship.
”It`s a sacrifice you make to do this job,” he said. ”But if you love scholarship, the thought of bringing a little more life to this institution is the biggest service you can possibly render to scholarship.”
