Monday, July 6, 2009

Digitization Dollars (Strings Attached)

The Library of Congress, which preserves and makes available to the public more than 138 million books, photographs, maps, sound recordings, films, and other material in 470 languages, is undergoing a massive transformation thanks to the digital revolution -- and that point is not lost on lawmakers. The Senate on Monday approved a FY 2010 spending bill that would provide the institution with $8.5 million to update its information technology infrastructure. The library's overall budget under the legislative branch appropriations package would be $638.5 million, which is $31.5 million higher than 2009 and $19.8 million below President Obama's request. The House passed its own version of the bill last month, which provided $7.3 million for "digital collections and educational curricula."

"While less than the full request, the amount recommended is sufficient for LOC to embark on upgrades to its content delivery, content management and core technology," a Senate Appropriations Committee report from last month stated. The panel said it expects the library to update its digital strategy to ensure IT investments are targeted appropriately. The report pointed out that while a preliminary digital strategy has been developed, it does not represent an integrated, library-wide plan for digitization. Appropriators called on the institution to "incorporate key stakeholder views on the extent to which the library should make its collections available digitally."

They further stated that the library should "align its activities, information technology, workforce, and other resources, including partnerships, to position it to acquire, preserve, manage, and make available rapidly increasing amounts of digital content; identify and manage the long-term costs of acquiring, preserving, and making accessible its print and digital collections; and articulate the roles and responsibilities of all relevant service units and offices in developing and executing the strategy." The committee also asked the library to coordinate its work with the Government Accountability Office and send a report to Capitol Hill documenting its progress within 90 days of the bill's enactment.

Furthermore, the committee document expressed concern about the backlog of 500,000 pending claims within the Copyright Office, which is housed at the library. The build up stemmed from a $15 million "reengineering" of the copyright process and the switch to an electronic format over six years. But despite planning, the new system "has not yielded the results Congress expected," the panel wrote. Finally, appropriators directed the Copyright Office to work with Customs and Border Protection to investigate how the two agencies could use technology to facilitate the recordation of copyrights as part of CBP's intellectual property protection effort.