Dr. Billington on Nov. 29 told Congress of the Library's efforts to tackle collections security, create new financial and personnel systems and reduce the backlog of uncataloged books and other materials.
"We have plenty of improvements still to make and problems to solve," the Librarian said, "but the basic fact is that, despite everything, this Library staff is doing far more with far fewer people than it did eight years ago. I am proud of their efforts."
Dr. Billington described these efforts in written testimony submitted to the Joint Committee on the Library (JCL), chaired by Sen. Mark Hatfield (R-Ore.).
All these efforts involved basic matters "that had to be addressed -- and resolved over the long term -- even as we explored new technology and new ways to bring the Library's resources and services into the 21st century," Dr. Billington said.
Joining Sen. Hatfield were Sen. Connie Mack (R-Fla.), chairman of the Senate Legislative Branch Appropriations Subcommittee; Rep. William M.Thomas (R-Calif.), vice chairman of the Joint Committee on the Library (JCL); Rep. Ron Packard (R- Calif.), chairman, House Legislative Branch Appropriations Subcommittee; Sen. Claiborne Pell (D-R.I.), member of the JCL; Sen. John W. Warner (R-Va.), chairman of the Senate Committee on Rules and Administration; and Reps. Ed Pastor (R-Ariz.) and Robert W. Ney (R-Ohio), members of the JCL.
The JCL hearing was the first since June 1993, when the Librarian testified on collections security measures taken after he closed the stacks in March 1992. Since then, dozens of additional measures have been taken under the Library's security plan.
The latest hearing was scheduled, as Dr. Billington observed, after widespread allegations of continued mutilations in the Jefferson Building and complaints in early August that the Library had apparently failed to live up to a 1993 request from the U.S. Attorney's office to report routinely to that office all mutilations and thefts from the collections.
Dr. Billington said that "based on available information and preponderant judgment of those who work most closely with the collections, I do not believe that there has been a large number, let alone an increase, of thefts and mutilations since 1992," contrary to allegations in the press.
He noted that he had ordered investigations by the Library's assistant inspector general, Ken Keeler. He said he would carry out "appropriate administrative actions when the investigation is complete."
Meanwhile, he said, he had made management changes, cemented ties with the U.S. Attorney's Office, further reduced staff access to the stacks, tightened up security coordination and hired an outside consultant, Computer Sciences Corp., to review LC security measures to date.
He said specific instances of mutilation that occurred during 1993 and 1994 remain under investigation by Mr. Keeler and the FBI, along with one serious theft since August (of sheet music). Between Aug. 3 and Oct. 30, 1995, Library staff reported further discoveries of mutilations of 86 books, none of them valuable or rare. There was no evidence that these book mutilations were recent.
In his statement, Dr. Billington also noted that the Library had:
(1) implemented six of eight recommendations made by the General Accounting Office in a 1991 audit report requested by the Library;
(2) seen federal district court approval of a settlement in the Cook class action lawsuit and instituted a revised personnel selection process;
(3) proposed statutory authority to Congress for LC's Inspector General's office, first established by Dr. Billington in 1988;
(4) recently revised fitness-for-duty regulations to accord with those governing executive branch agencies; and
(5) greatly reduced the backlog of uncataloged materials -- despite a steadily downsized work force.
He said he welcomed the current GAO audit, requested in August 1995 by Sen. Hatfield and Sen. Mack. "We anticipate," he said, "that as with the 1991 GAO audit, which I requested, the GAO report next spring will provide the basis for requests [by the Library] for new or revised legislative authority in key areas."
Addressed to Sen. Hatfield, Rep. Rep. Thomas and other members of the JCL and Appropriations Committee, Dr. Billington's Nov. 29 statement follows:
Chairman Hatfield, Vice Chairman Thomas and members of the Joint Committee on the Library and the Appropriations Committee: I am very pleased to appear before you today. I last had the opportunity to testify before the Joint Committee on the Library in 1993 in the wake of my order a year earlier to close the book stacks at the Library of Congress. That decision was occasioned by unmistakable evidence of prior theft and mutilation and the successful prosecution of three individuals. We have since mounted a costly, long-range effort to protect the unrivaled collections in our three buildings here on Capitol Hill against theft and mutilation.
A hearing has now been called to address the state of collections security at the Library following widely publicized allegations of continued mutilations in the general book collections in the Jefferson Building. The allegations were first brought to my attention on Aug. 3, when I heard complaints that the Library police had apparently failed to live up to a 1993 request from the U.S. Attorney's Office to report routinely to that office all mutilations and thefts from the collections for further investigation.
I immediately directed the Library's assistant inspector general to investigate not only the U.S. Attorney's concern but also wider allegations. These investigations are continuing with the help of the FBI. My purpose here today is to brief you on the actions taken by the Library to improve security and further strengthen management at the Library, to lay out our plans for the future and to answer your questions.
The Library's first priority is to make knowledge available and useful to the United States Congress. This primary purpose can be realized only if the Library preserves, secures and maintains its incomparable collections for present and future use. These are the two top priorities in the Library's overall statement of mission and strategy, which I would respectfully ask be included with my testimony as part of the record of this hearing. (Attachment A)
The Library's Strategic Plan
I believe it would be helpful at the outset to summarize briefly the overall goals for the Library that I have been pursuing and the progress we have made since I became Librarian in September 1987.
The fundamental challenge for the Library of Congress under my stewardship has been to sustain and make more efficient basic services to Congress and the nation while effecting a transition into the new types of electronic services required for the Information Age.
To promote needed innovation, I introduced new and more flexible team approaches and gradually reduced both the number of service units and the size of the central decision-making body (from 17 to 5).
After an unprecedented and extensive series of internal and external studies of the Library, we adopted a broad strategic plan in 1992. We assigned priority to certain core problems of the traditional library for the first period (1993-96), which have in fact been the main focus of our efforts and accomplishments during this time. We assigned second priority to developing a focus and timetable for our electronic program; and with the support of Congress, we have now launched the National Digital Library Program, which is to be realized during the second period of our strategic plan (1997-2000). The detailed recent restatement of our mission and strategy will enable us to develop the FY 1997 budget more directly from overall mission priorities.
Since FY 1988 (my first full year of service here), the Library has increased the number of congressional requests annually answered by the Congressional Research Service from less than 500,000 to almost 600,000 in FY 1995; increased in the Copyright Office the annual number of registrations from 560 thousand to 610 thousand and the number of copyright inquiries answered from 490 thousand to 511 thousand; increased the number of free reading materials delivered across the country to the blind and physically handicapped from 20 million to 23 million; increased the number of items cataloged for the nation's libraries from 197,000 to 276,000. I have appended a chart showing the Library's increased workload. (Attachment B)
Most astonishing of all has been the growth in the Library's total electronic transactions from almost nothing in FY 1988 to 8 million a month in FY 1992 to 20 million a month in FY 1995. With large portions of our card catalog and copyright records now on- line along with congressional information through our THOMAS system and the contents of all our major exhibits since 1991, we are now recording almost one million computer transactions a day; and we have only just begun to put online our American history collections as the core of the National Digital Library, which will make 5 million items from these unique collections [in collaboration with other najor institutions] locally available in electronic form throughout the country by the year 2000.
Congress has been consistently supportive of its Library, recognizing that it is a totally unique institution and fundamentally different from other agencies in the legislative branch of government. Congress has increased the Library's annual appropriations and provided vital seed money for the Library's effort to make its resources increasingly available electronically to all Americans.
But nearly 70 percent of the Library's budget is for personnel and the Library's budget has not been increased for three of the last four years to match the full amount of unfunded but mandated pay raises and price increases. The permitted number of funded full-time equivalent (FTE) positions has also been cut. As a result, the Library has lost 486 funded FTEs since FY 1987, a 10.5 percent reduction.
To have accomplished so much during this period, despite a steadily downsized work force, is a good example of doing more with less in a public agency. We have also been aided by the private sector in funding outreach projects and other areas not covered by federal appropriations (exhibits, retrospective acquisitions, leadership training).
The Speaker of the House has praised the National Digital Library as a an exemplary new kind of "private-public partnership for learning." Of the $45 million that is to be raised privately to support it, $20 million has already been committed in contributions and pledges. Overall, I have increased annual fund- raising from $800,000 in FY 1988 to $16.5 million in FY 1995. Considerably more private money ($70.8 million) has come into the Library during my eight-year tenure than came in during the previous 50 years (some $53 million).
Preparing the Librray For the 21st Century
When I first became Librarian, I realized that preparing the Library for the 21st century depended on coming to grips with a number of basic problems that had not been dealt with adequately in the 20th century. It was evident that, for a variety of reasons, the Library had fallen seriously behind in several key areas: human resource management, financial systems and clearing up the vast backlog of uncataloged materials in the Library's collections and ensuring that those collections were under bibliographic control. These were basic practical matters that had to be addressed -- and resolved over the long term -- even as we explored new technology and new ways to bring the Library's resources and services into the 21st century.
First, we had to free our human resources procedures from the burdens of the past and bring the Library clearly into a system that promoted equal opportunity for all. This effort included reaching an equitable settlement of the Cook class action suit that originated as an EEO complaint in 1975. The Library could not begin to develop a work force to meet the demands of the next century until we had addressed the grievances of the plaintiffs, who, as a class, now account for approximately 39 percent of our employees. The U.S. District Court approved a settlement in the Cook case last Sept. 22.
Long before that date, the Library had undertaken a wide range of remedial actions to ensure equity and greater opportunity for all employees: training programs, tuition support and leadership and development programs that few other federal agencies can match. Following an appeals period, the settlement calls for the disbursement of some $8.5 million as monetary relief to some 2,000 individuals. The greatest gains to the plaintiffs may lie, however, as the court recognized, in the revised selection procedures we have put in place. The Library can now move forward.
Second, I had to establish a top-quality financial management system. Shortly after I took office in 1987, I asked the General Accounting Office to conduct the first financial statement audit in the long history of the Library of Congress. I then hired the Library's first director of Financial Services. In 1991 GAO issued its report with, as I had expected, plenty of negative findings.
In order to correct the problems identified by GAO, we undertook a costly, long-range and comprehensive makeover of the Library's entire outmoded and nonintegrated financial system -- the essential prerequisite to establishing auditable financial statements. As noted during the passage of the 1990 Chief Financial Officer Act, other federal agencies were in similar straits.
We developed our own financial management improvement plan in 1990, even before the final GAO report was issued, and that plan is on schedule, though not yet complete. Four years after the GAO report was issued, the Library has implemented six of the GAO's eight recommendations and completed remedial action on 16 of its 19 findings.
There is no statutory requirement for another financial statement audit of the Library, but our plans have always called for annual audits. Our own schedule for audits beginning in 1996 proved to be right in line with the timetable later mandated for the 24 CFO executive branch agencies by the Government Management Reform Act of 1994. The Library now plans to begin this annual audit process in fiscal year 1995 -- one year ahead of our original plan and of the deadline for executive branch agencies.
I ask that a detailed account of our progress in addressing the GAO recommendations and findings be appended to my testimony along with a summary chart of our progress (Attachment C). Reducing the Backlog
Third, I wanted to make sure that all of our collections, now totaling some 108 million items, would be brought under bibliographic control. A book or document or photograph or map that is uncataloged, is, for all practical purposes, useless to the researcher since it usually cannot be located. We had inherited a massive, accumulated backlog of uncataloged items, mostly nonbook materials, including rare prints, photographs, maps, manuscripts and large collections of major documents like the NAACP archives.
We set up timetables and priorities for this long range processing task in 1991; and the project has since then involved thousands of Library staff, new techniques and special work teams. Our staff persisted despite hiring freezes, staff cutbacks and formidable technical difficulties. Many volunteered extra time and effort. They reduced the backlog that had peaked in 1988 at 40.5 million items to 23 million items by June 30, 1995, for a reduction of 42 percent.
At the same time the Library has kept current with its new acquisitions to the collections so that new arrearages are not being added to old ones. The inspector general has scheduled an audit of the collections arrearage project for the fourth quarter of FY 1996. How fast we go in the future in this major endeavor, as in others, depends in large part on continued financial support from Congress.
These three big, basic, high-priority efforts -- dealing with people, money and the collections -- have been repeatedly emphasized in our guidance to managers; and they have been strongly supported by Congress. The initiatives received extra funds, people and management attention. If progress has come more slowly than we had hoped in some areas, the staff has made extraordinary efforts, as well as steady and often remarkable progress in dealing with these long-neglected problems.
Collections Security: Closing the Stacks
Collections security soon became another high-priority area. When staff members alerted me to the full extent of theft and mutilation, I appointed a committee in 1991 to study the problem and propose solutions. After Library police apprehended three individual thieves and slashers who had been removing books and valuable illustrations from books in the Jefferson Building stacks, I ordered the stacks closed to the public on March 30, 1992.
It was not a popular move-- and was generally opposed by many employees and by many scholars. Closing the stacks was a necessary but not sufficient action to assure improved security, so I concurrently created the first Library-wide collections security task force to develop security measures comprehensively and aggressively throughout the Library. I will present here the highlights of the Library's efforts to improve physical security.
The Library has made significant progress in this 3 1/2-year effort to improve the security of its unparalleled collections. We have worked diligently to continue serving well the research needs of Congress and the public while reemphasizing our historical duty to preserve and protect the items entrusted to our care. After I ordered the book stacks closed in 1992, the Library began to train visiting researchers to use our new and user-friendly computerized catalog to access our collections and to compile bibliographies without direct access to the stacks.
The Library has never permitted public access to the storage areas for our special-format collections (maps, manuscripts, music, prints and photographs, rare books). In addition, we have strictly limited Library of Congress staff access to the general book collections, in the Adams and Jefferson buildings, except when assigned duties require such access to perform their work. The members of the staff with regular access has been reduced from more than 4,000 in 1992 to 492 today.
Protecting the Collections
In the wake of the thefts and mutilations discovered in 1992 and evidence unearthed by the Library staff of the vulnerability of the general book collections, experienced Library staff and managers developed a "Plan for Enhancing Collections Security." The 1992 plan was updated and modified in 1994 in light of our progress, our resources and our ongoing commitment to high- quality public service. I have attached a status report on the collections security initiatives contained in the plan (Attachment D). The Library has not only dramatically reduced stack access, but instituted and required staff to wear ID card and stack passes at all times. Staff working in the stacks and Library police patrolling the stacks can now identify everyone in the stacks.
We have controlled the loan of materials and enforced rules of conduct in Library reading rooms. We are developing additional ways to safeguard items we serve to users in our reading rooms. The procedures vary, depending on the nature and value of the materials. Techniques include counting and examining materials before and after use. This process imposes a burden on both the librarian and the researcher, but we have no choice.
All readers requesting the use of collection materials are now required to present photo identification to Library desk staff. We are installing and expect to have operational early in 1996 an automated reader registration system that will issue a user card and store a digitized photograph and signature of each reader. Information from the system will eventually be available to Library staff in each reading room.
Doors in the Jefferson and Adams buildings bookstacks are now electronically controlled and staff must use their IDs to access the stack areas. Jefferson north stacks were electronically secured in December 1993; Jefferson south stacks in August 1994; and Adams stacks in October 1995. The stacks are closed to all staff except those who work in them or need to access materials directly in order to perform their jobs. Library police have increased their patrols of stack areas.
The Library has reconfigured many of its reading rooms to improve sightlines for staff on duty, enabling them to monitor readers and their use of Library materials. Our staff in special collections areas in many cases now limit the number of special- format items that may be used by a reader at any one time. The Library prohibits the removal of materials by a reader from one reading room to another to prevent losses in transit.
Surveillance cameras have been installed in the Law, Manuscript, Music, Rare Book and Newspaper and Current Periodical reading rooms. We are putting in 113 more cameras in reading rooms this fiscal year. Monitoring the tapes from these cameras identifies readers who may have damaged materials in use or stolen them. We also monitor access in high-risk areas of the book collections. High-risk materials are kept in 117 secured, segregated areas within the books collections that we have enclosed in cages and recently made even more secure with tamper- proof locking devices. Access to caged areas is restricted to only a few staff.
Alarm Gates and Motion Detectors
The Library also limits the type and amount of personal belongings readers may bring into our reading rooms. We have opened a free cloakroom for readers in the Jefferson Building and are planning for larger and mandatory cloakroom facilities in all three buildings. We will implement mandatory use of the existing cloakroom in the Jefferson Building by late 1995 or early 1996. Most special collection reading rooms now have lockers available for reader use. We intend to restrict more severely the types of personal belongings that may be brought into reading rooms as soon as we have adequate locker facilities.
Theft detection is a key ingredient in our security system. More than 3 million theft detection strips have been installed in books and other high-risk items. Alarm gates that react to these strips have been installed at each Library entrance and in the Newspaper and Current Periodical reading room. Additional installations are planned for the exits to all reading rooms, pending conclusion of negotiations with the Library's labor organizations.
The Library's efforts have significantly reduced the amount of damaged library materials retrieved from rest rooms, wastebaskets, eating facilities and other unsupervised areas in Library buildings. Commercial binders now install theft detection devices in Library materials sent to them for binding.
The Library's Landover Center Annex, a big warehouse in Landover, Md., that houses less-used items and our logistics activities, has been made more secure. We have installed electronic card-controlled entrances to key areas and placed motion detectors and video surveillance cameras in collections storage areas.
Most of our activities at Landover are scheduled to move to a new specially designed complex at Fort Meade, Md., during the next several years. We have bar-coded all the equipment and two- thirds of the furniture in the Library.
In addition to physical security measures, the Library has spent considerable time and effort planning an online item tracking system. We expect to begin acquiring such a system by the end of 1996, a system that will not only keep track of new items added to our collections but also 12 million items now recorded on 3-by-5-inch cards. Another expanding database is already helping our Loan Division keep track of items loaned to congressional staff, government agencies, Library staff and others. The new technologies help us control our collections and make it easier for us to identify and investigate losses.
While we have achieved a great deal, we recognize many areas that still require action, such as establishing the automated reader registration system, installing theft detection gates in additional reading room entrances and video surveillance cameras in more reading rooms and obtaining greater control over all the loading and processing areas through which an item passes between its arrival at the Library and its permanent placement as a bound and cataloged item in the stacks.
Protecting Materials on the Move
Library materials move through acquisition, cataloging, binding and labeling operations in preparation for use in the Library's reading rooms. At the earliest stages, these materials are unmarked. Sound recordings and computer software are thought to be particularly tempting targets for thieves --- and are thus closely monitored at all stages of the process. But total surveillance throughout the process for all the collections would be prohibitively expensive and cumbersome. We have made some progress in dealing with this problem through the Copyright Office, which has arranged with compact disk distributors to install theft detection targets before materials are shipped to us.
The Library's Preservation Office has recently identified a preprinted, bar-coded, pressure-sensitive label that has an embedded magnetic security device that is compatible with our current theft detection system. Such a label would provide piece- level control as well as theft deterrence and detection. We will be testing the label and its use for book materials, as well as for a variety of other formats, starting in January. We are also undertaking a related campaign to affix better ownership markings to our older, nonbook collections. The Library can provide important leadership in the research and development of techniques to deal with these problems, which concern all libraries.
Our progress has been slowed by the renovation and restoration of the Jefferson and Adams buildings -- buildings that were never designed with security in mind and that had to be continuously occupied and used with staff being periodically relocated during this protracted process. We are working now to craft immediate, workable interim solutions while ensuring the safety of staff working in these buildings. We will, of course, continue and intensify our security training for staff providing research assistance to readers who use our materials in a secured environment.
Implementation of many measures for securing the collections has also been delayed by the Library's statutory responsibility to negotiate the impact of these critical initiatives with the Library's three labor organizations. Putting into place a pilot KNOGO theft detection gate in our outer perimeter took from October 1993 to March 1995, or 18 months of negotiation.
Recent Efforts
As soon as allegations were brought to my attention this summer that there might be new thefts and mutilations, I immediately called in an outside consultant, the Computer Sciences Corporation (CSC), to recommend any immediate measures that seemed necessary, and I then engaged them to conduct an expert, independent analysis of our overall security program.
As I testified before this committee in 1993, the Library had already planned such an outside review for 1996. After receiving the consultant's best short-term advice in August, the Library took immediate action to implement some of their preliminary recommendations: increasing police patrols of the stack areas, further reducing authorized stack access, appointing an acting security director with line authority over all security operations and establishing a security hot line.
I am confident that CSC's review will ratify these and other actions we have taken or have under way and will provide valuable added guidance as we address the remaining initiatives in our plan. I would ask that the report of CSC's first assessment based on an initial, two-day survey and the scope of work and deliverables for its second, more extensive contract both be made part of the record (Attachment E).
Congress has approved a Library request to reprogram up to $300,000 from FY 1995 appropriations in order to undertake the CSC contract. As the Library continues its work with CSC, further adjustments in our appropriations will be necessary. The question of resources must be addressed. The Library will make requests in accordance with priorities developed after the CSC report, since it will clearly not be possible to do everything at once.
The allegations of theft and mutilations that were brought to my attention in August were made not by outsiders but by Library staff, who also suggested that supervisors might be involved in a coverup and/or in a retaliatory personnel action. These allegations are under investigation by the Library's own assistant inspector general for investigations with the help of the FBI.
I have directed the Assistant Inspector General to leave no stone unturned -- and to report any suspected criminal findings directly to the Justice Department and any seeming administrative failings directly to me. I will carry out appropriate administrative actions when the investigation is complete.
What has gone largely unreported is the expertise and dedication of the 250 collections management staff who represent the Library's first line of security for its collections in the stacks. They are responsible for handling the more than 750,000 volumes used by researchers in the Main Reading Room and elsewhere each year. These people are on the scene and are empowered to stop and question any suspicious person or activity in the stacks and then alert police. These employees tell us that, in contrast to the days before the stacks were closed, they have found in recent months almost no evidence of recent criminal activity -- such as the razor blades and shreds of paper that were found in 1992.
The Library may rightly be criticized for the past management of its security functions -- notably for the lack of coordination in collections security between the Library's police and its curators and for failures in its reporting of findings. We now have all investigative functions and all reporting on security centralized in the IG's office, and we have clearly established our essential liaison with the U.S. Attorney's office. We welcome the recommendations that CSC has already made and look forward to the completion of their work when we will be making any necessary further changes.
Magnitude of the Task
Even in a perfect world, the Library would face enormous challenges in securing its collections. The collections comprise 16.5 million books and 91.5 items in special collections. Some 48,000 items arrive on the average each workday -- not just books but federal documents, duplicate materials, copyright deposits of all kinds. Of these, about 4,600 items are retained and processed by many individuals in many locations before they are put on shelf. New collections are being added all the time.
Physically, the Library's collections are housed on 532 miles of shelves. The so-called general book collections -- 10 million books -- are used daily by about 500 members of the Library's staff to serve Congress and the nation. We have available a total police force of 106 individuals to guard all entrances to our buildings and patrol all stacks. Imagine driving from Washington to Detroit, every inch of the drive lined with books and you can begin to understand the challenge we face.
The Jefferson and Adams buildings were not designed with security in mind and our librarians, like those of other major institutions, were trained in "service," not "security." All of us are coping with a new environment. But I have made it clear ever since 1992 that the Library will tolerate no kind of loss or mutilation; and our own recent survey indicates that the Library of Congress is far ahead of other major libraries in openly assessing, recognizing and comprehensively trying to address the security threat that all great repositories now face in a far more serious way than ever before.
Collections security is a top priority for the Library and its managers and a priority that must be sustained by resources. The Library has not received all of the increased funding for collections security it has requested. However, the Library reallocated $2.5 million with congressional approval to augment the security outlays that were appropriated so that the highest priority tasks, such as installing cameras, could get done.
Despite limited resources, we have done much. We have secured the entire outer perimeters of our three highest-priority buildings on Capitol Hill using locks, electronics, cameras and human intervention. We have introduced new technologies and new procedures that will allow us better to control and protect materials moving inside those perimeters and within all of our most vulnerable reading rooms. We have at the same time avoided seriously curtailing our service to users despite a modest reduction in reading room hours. Indeed, shutting the stacks has markedly improved our ability to deliver books to the reading rooms where the all-important not-on-shelf rate has decreased from 23 percent to 18 percent. Readers now get access to 5 percent more books than in the past in the reading rooms -- the only places where the vast majority of our readers have ever used them.
Investigating the Mutilations
Based on available information and the preponderant judgment of those who work most closely and continuously with the collections, I do not believe that there has been a large number, let alone an increase, of thefts and mutilations as has been suggested. Specific instances of mutilations that occurred during 1993 and 1994 remain under investigation by the Library's assistant inspector general and the FBI and we know of one serious theft since August (sheet music), which is also under investigation. Between Aug. 3 and Oct. 30, Library staff reported further discoveries of mutilations of 86 books, none of them valuable, rare or determined to be recent.
The Library's management of collections security will, in the future, integrate surveillance, police presence, investigatory techniques and statistical reports in combination with curatorial and preservation expertise. Only with the blending of such expertise can security personnel form policies soundly based on the reliable differentiation between normal damage on the one hand and intentional mutilation on the other; and between mutilations that occurred long ago and those that occurred recently.
The Library's special collections of manuscripts, rare books, prints and photographs have never been at such grave risk as the general book collections. Access to these special materials always was and still remains highly restricted. But the general book collections of some 10 million titles contain thousands of valuable illustrated volumes that have provided a tempting target to knowledgeable thieves, who razored out plates and sold them to dealers at high prices. We caught three of these people before the stacks were ordered closed.
Starting in late 1991, a staff group headed by curator Jane Van Nimmen began compiling a list of mutilated books that had been discovered and reported by staff, examining each volume to see which plates were missing, how much the damaged books were worth and whether replacement books were available elsewhere. This effort supplied the books that I was shown before I ordered the stacks shut and that I displayed in testimony before this committee in June 1993. At that time, I estimated that some 500 books were involved.
The staff group reported that the mutilations they discovered from 1991 through 1994 totaled approximately $1.8 million in replacement value. This figure has been hastily cited and repeatedly misrepresented -- originally in Time magazine, more recently in a Roll Call editorial -- as indicating that $1.8 million worth of books had been mutilated "since 1991." There is no evidence for such a conclusion. The damaged books were discovered during that period, but they could have been mutilated at any time since they were acquired, going back to 1897.
Neither the FBI nor others we have consulted have been able to pinpoint forensically when the books were mutilated. We are trying to develop some scientific detection techniques; but, in the meantime, there are a variety of indicators that most of the harm was actually done prior to the closing of the stacks and the heightening of security in 1992.
Inventorying the Books
We expect to continue improving our performance. We have in place many tools that were not available in 1992: book tagging, arrearage reduction, CSC, reader identification and registration, KNOGO gates, reconfigured reading rooms, reduced staff access, elimination of public access, electronic protection of the entire stack perimeter. We have inventoried 16.5 of the 19 classes in the general book collections and expect to complete the inventory in 1998 if staffing levels remain stable.
So far, we find an initial apparent "missing" rate of 3 percent, not all necessarily attributable to theft; searches continue to find some of the missing books, and we expect that more will be discovered now that the stacks are closed and books are being more systematically examined for tagging. But many more tasks remain to be done: an automated shelflist; a baseline, item-level condition survey of costly art folio collections and illustrated volumes; individual markings of valuable Library of Congress items without decreasing their value; and better control of new acquisitions through bar-coding.
Far from detracting from our security efforts, the National Digital Library Program will significantly help with the long- term security of many of our most valuable collections. As we digitize more unique items for the National Digital Library and put them on the Internet, fewer such items will be at risk from physical handling or mutilation by users. The same added protection comes when we microfilm collections, such as presidential papers and thus provide researchers with "surrogates" for the valuable original items. Unfinished Business
In summary, we have much unfinished business, but are pretty much on schedule with both our long-term plan for collections security and our financial management improvement system.
Human resources poses special problems. Our revised selection process is designed to ensure equity in hiring and promotion. It has resulted in dramatic improvements in the racial and ethnic hiring profile for administrative and professional positions. Our senior and midlevel ranks are already far more diverse than they were in 1988, despite hiring freezes, budget austerity and fewer job openings. In other areas of Human Resources, there is much work yet to be done. The complexity of our competitive selection hiring process and the enormous flood of job applicants still result in excessive delay and cost.
The size of the Library's EEO caseload and the time required to process EEO complaints have long been unsatisfactory. The hiring of a seasoned professional, in September 1995 as director of the EEO and Dispute Resolution programs will bring greater focus and accountability.
The Library has already issued a contract to accelerate EEO investigations and will recruit two additional EEO officers. Following concerns expressed by both employees and members of Congress, we have issued a new regulation governing fitness-for- duty procedures. These provisions conform strictly to the Code of Federal Regulations governing the executive branch agencies. The new regulation is applicable immediately to nonbargaining unit employees and will be applicable to bargaining unit employees upon completion of impact bargaining. These procedures have rarely been used -- and never to penalize staffers; they were designed to insure a healthy, capable work force.
But we came to realize that the Americans with Disabilities Act required updating our fitness regulation to place the responsibility on the staff member for assuring fitness instead of having the Library make that decision.
Labor-Management Problems
Another area that needs and will receive increased attention is labor-management relations. Contract provisions -- coupled with the very broad requirements to bargain levied by the Federal Service Labor Management Relations Statute -- mandate bargaining over a wide variety of management-proposed changes that affect a condition of employment. I am not satisfied with the Library's relations with its three labor unions -- AFSCME 2477 and 2910 and CREA. We must do better, and we have taken important recent steps to improve relations.
We have requested the assistance of the FLRA officials, and I appointed in April a new labor relations chief; and our senior managers are now meeting regularly with union representatives. Faced with downsizing and budget austerity, we must have rational discussion of labor-management issues and a joint effort to modernize our collective bargaining arrangements.
Human Development
Better human relations and human development are central to our plans for a future staff able to perform new tasks. I have, myself, recently conducted two large forums with top managers and two with collections security personnel and intend to continue such meetings. I have given my senior adviser for diversity broad authority to be involved in work force issues; and I have asked the Deputy Librarian to explore the development of a major program for on-the-job training, mentoring and transferring skills from senior to junior staff, which we are referring to as our "internal university."
Faced with few prospects for new hires and one of the lowest turnover rates in government, the Library must find ways to develop new and greater skills with and for our existing staff. I have specified that such a project be realized essentially through existing resources. I will report on the progress of this exploration to the Joint Committee and will, of course, submit any proposals that might result for consideration to the committee and approval before beginning any such program.
For management as a whole, I have strengthened decision- making and accountability by replacing a large Management Team with a new five-person Executive Committee. The committee is steadily addressing such matters as collections security, human resources, labor relations and financial accountability. Core Library service programs have been consolidated from three service units to a single unit. All major support functions and the new National Digital Library Program are now under the chief of staff. I have appointed new leadership during the past year in all three service units that most directly serve Congress: the Congressional Research Service, the Copyright Office and the Law Library. Each of these experienced new leaders is reorganizing his or her unit for greater efficiency and productivity.
Financial Management And the Inspector General
The Library is preparing for a full external audit of its FY 1995 financial statements and welcomes the examination of all aspects of the Library's management by GAO as requested by Sens. Mark O. Hatfield [R-Ore.] and Connie Mack [R-Fla.]. The Library's management has already been meeting with the 1995 GAO audit team for several weeks and we will cooperate fully with this effort. We anticipate that, as with the 1991 audit that I requested, the GAO report next spring will provide the basis for requests by the Library for new or revised legislative authority in key areas.
In the meantime, I will be seeking statutory authority for a revolving gift fund as recommended in the previous GAO audit. We have developed and submitted legislation for this purpose for each session of Congress since 1991. The Senate has acted on each of these bills, but the House has not.
I created the Library's first Office of the Inspector General in 1988, shortly after taking office. Since then, the overall staff of seven has increased to 11 and performed many valuable audits with my full backing. We will increase the total IG staff to 16 in the current year. In April we brought aboard an assistant inspector general for investigations, as a criminal investigator. To reenforce the IG's effectiveness and firmly establish the appearance, as well as the reality, of the inspector general's independence, I have already submitted a draft bill to create a statutory inspector general. I hope Congress will act on it.
Looking Ahead
In the months to come, I expect to report regularly to this committee on the steps we are taking in these three areas of recent concern: collections security, financial management and human resources. We also will be developing for the committee's consideration some proposals to provide over the long term both the appropriate funding and the necessary legislative authority to address a number of other longstanding structural and systemic barriers to progress and flexibility. I will be bringing in two separate external consultants to review respectively our legal and our managerial procedures, and we have under way a review of our complex and cumbersome statutory and regulatory regime.
In this time of budget austerity, Congress has been extremely supportive of the Library of Congress, recognizing that it is the greatest collection of knowledge in the world, a unique national institution and fundamentally different from other agencies in the legislative branch of government. We appreciate the fact that the Library this year has been encouraged to pursue technological innovation, to seek private support for the National Digital Library effort and to move toward the 21st century, even as it maintains its traditional services to Congress and the public. We have plenty of improvements still to make and problems to solve, but the basic fact is that, despite everything, this Library staff is doing far more with far fewer people than it did eight years ago. I am proud of their efforts and I stand ready to answer your questions.
