Introduction

Having weathered two world wars, expanded its collections, and constructed a second building, the Library approached the 1960s on firm footing. On April 22, 1954, President Dwight D. Eisenhower nominated L. Quincy Mumford, director of the Cleveland Public Library and president-elect of the American Library Association, to become the Librarian of Congress. About halfway through what turned out to be Mumford’s 20-year term, it was clear that a new global era of growth had been inaugurated, one featuring accelerated technological change; increased funding for libraries and for research materials in the United States and abroad; continuation of post–World War II interest in international affairs, especially in relations with Russia and the Communist world, along with Africa and Asia; and a national concern for civil rights, prompted in part by racial violence and the assassinations of President John F. Kennedy, Senator Robert F. Kennedy, and Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

The introduction of automation into the Library’s cataloging procedures (1958–66) and the initial development of the Library’s overseas acquisitions programs (1958–65) contributed to the institution’s unprecedented rate of growth between 1954 and 1975. In those 21 years, the Library’s book collection increased from approximately 10 million to approximately 17 million volumes, the staff from 1,600 to 4,500, and the annual appropriation from $9.5 million to $116 million. In collaboration with Congress and the Office of the Architect of the Capitol, in 1958 Librarian Mumford initiated planning for a third major Library of Congress building on Capitol Hill. The James Madison Memorial Building was authorized in 1965 and construction began in 1971. The Library’s occupancy of the James Madison Memorial Building in 1980 was a highlight of Daniel Boorstin’s administration.

Boorstin, who became Librarian in 1975, obtained congressional approval to create the American Folklife Center in 1976 and the Center for the Book, an office to promote books and reading, in 1977. Next came a Library of Congress Performing Arts Library at the Kennedy Center, a joint project of the two organizations. In 1980 he established a Council of Scholars, a formal link between the Library and the world of scholarship. In 1983, the Library opened the Mary Pickford Theater in the Madison Building, which was an important step in enhancing public access to the Library’s remarkable motion picture collection.

Librarian of Congress James H. Billington, who took office in 1987, developed a different, long-range approach to expanding the Library’s functions and outreach. He sought and obtained congressional approval for the Library’s first development office and the creation, in 1980, of its first private-sector support group, the James Madison Council. To help share the Library’s resources more widely, Billington initiated several projects to test new technologies. The culmination in late 1994 was his announcement of a pilot National Digital Library, supported primarily by private funds, which would create several million digital items from the Library’s Americana collections and make them widely accessible through the World Wide Web. Under Billington’s guidance, the Library moved forward on several fronts: creating the John W. Kluge Center, which encouraged the use of the Library’s wide and varied collections by scholars; opening Treasures of the Library of Congress, a rotating exhibition of the its rarest and most significant international items; and establishing a popular annual National Book Festival.

Dr. Carla D. Hayden broke the mold when she became the first African American and first woman Librarian of Congress in 2016. She inherited what is now a global institution. In her inaugural address, Hayden envisioned the Library as a place “where you can touch history and imagine your future. This Library of Congress, a historic reference source for Congress, an established place for scholars, can also be a place where we grow scholars, where we inspire young authors, where we connect with those individuals outside the limits of Washington and help them make history themselves.” This is the exciting future of America’s national library.

117. By 2007 the National Book Festival—which began in 2001 on Capitol Hill—was being held on the National Mall, with more than 120,000 in attendance. The 70 participating authors and illustrators spoke about their new books in 7 different themed pavilions, while the Pavilion of the States highlighted books and authors from all 50 states and 4 US territories.

1960

January 19 – The Africana Section is established.

March – In a report on the cataloging-in-source experiment undertaken in 1958 with funding from the Council on Library Resources, the Library concludes that a permanent, full-scale cataloging-in-source program cannot be justified in terms of financing, technical considerations, or utility.

May 9 – Librarian Mumford announces that, because of “the crowded space situation in the Library,” the Government Printing Office bindery, after being located in the Library for nearly 60 years, has been returned to the Government Printing Office. However, small “repair stations” for manuscripts, maps, prints and photographs, rare books, newspapers, and books in the general collections are retained in the Library.

June – The Library publishes A Guide to the Study of the United States of America: Representative Books Reflecting the Development of American Life and Thought, a 1,193-page volume that identifies and describes more than 10,000 individual titles.

June – The Library publishes the first issue of the World List of Future Meetings, which attempts to meet “the growing need by officers of the Government and by scholars and research persons generally for an up-to-date comprehensive listing of international meetings.”

July 12 – President Eisenhower approves the Legislative Branch Appropriations Act for fiscal year 1961. The new law appropriates $75,000 to prepare preliminary plans and cost estimates for a third Library building and additional funds to rent 62,500 square feet of temporary storage space in the Washington, DC, area for its overflowing collections.

1961

March – The Library publishes Archive of Recorded Poetry and Literature: A Checklist, the first detailed inventory of the holdings of the archive.

March 13 – Librarian Mumford establishes the Office of Information Specialist to study the “automation of the bibliographic functions of the Library” and guide both the plans for data processing and its integration into the Library’s organization.

April 23 – The Library announces a $100,000 grant from the Council on Library Resources “for a survey of the possibilities of automating the organization, storage, and retrieval of information.” Gilbert W. King, director of research for the International Business Machines Corporations, will head the six-person survey team.

July 10 – Librarian Mumford sends Congress a comprehensive report from the Register of Copyrights on the proposed revision of the US copyright law.

July 31 – President John F. Kennedy approves an act authorizing the Library to arrange, transliterate, index, and microfilm the vital statistics portions of its collection of the original records of the Russian Orthodox Greek Catholic Church in Alaska.

August 10 – President Kennedy approves the Legislative Branch Appropriations Act for fiscal year 1962, which includes the first appropriation to the Library for the acquisition of foreign research materials under the provisions of Public Law 480, as amended on September 6, 1958.

1962

May 24 – Senator Claiborne Pell of Rhode Island, a member of the Joint Library Committee, introduces into the Congressional Record a memorandum prepared at his request “on the subject of the Library of Congress and connected matters.” Written by Douglas W. Bryant, associate director of the Harvard University Library, the memorandum addresses “what the Library of Congress does and what it ought to do for the Government and the Nation generally.” In his memorandum, dated May 1, 1962, Bryant urges further expansion of the national role of the Library of Congress and the recognition of such a role through legislation and the establishment of a “National Library Advisory Board (if not a National Research Library Foundation)” in the executive branch. Librarian Mumford replies to this memorandum on September 28 and strongly defends the Library’s location in the legislative branch of the American government. He asserts that, “the Library of Congress today performs more national library functions than any other national library in the world.”

September 19 – President Kennedy approves an act that extends the period of copyright protection for certain works pending the enactment of a general revision of the copyright law.

October 22 – Librarian Mumford establishes a Children’s Book Section in the Library’s Reference Department. The creation of such a section was recommended as a result of a study undertaken by Frances Clarke Sayers in 1952, but Congress did not approve its establishment until 1962. The section’s purpose is not to serve children directly but instead to provide reference and bibliographic services to specialists and the general public or, in the words of its first head, Virginia Haviland, “to serve those who serve children.” It opens in March 1963 and is renamed the Children’s Literature Center in 1978.

October 22–24 – More than 30 poets take part in the Library’s first National Poetry Festival, which is supported by the Bollingen Foundation. The general theme, “Fifty Years of American Poetry,” marks the fiftieth anniversary of Poetry magazine.

1963

February 18 – The Library announces that it has undertaken a comprehensive program to microfilm approximately 500 foreign newspapers in lieu of binding them.

June 6 – The House of Representatives Committee on Appropriations recommends an increase in the Library’s fiscal year 1964 budget. In its report, it notes that “a third building is badly needed—now.” It also cautions against the recently renewed suggestion that the Library “ought to be officially designated as the National Library and its administration shifted to the Executive Branch.”

1964

January 15 – The Library’s first computer, a rented IBM 1401 to be used for payroll, budget, and fiscal work, is installed in the Library’s newly established Data Processing Office.

118. Staff at work in the Library’s Data Processing Office, 1960s.

January 22 – The Library releases Automation and the Library of Congress, the feasibility study sponsored by the Council on Library Resources. The survey team, headed by Gilbert W. King, concludes that the automation of bibliographic processing, catalog searching, and document retrieval is technically and economically feasible in large research libraries. The authors urge the establishment of an automation program at the Library and recommend that the Library, “because of its central role in the American library world as the national library,” take the lead in the automation venture. The Library begins the development of “system specifications” for its internal operations and also for services to other libraries.

March – The Bibliographical Society of America publishes Incunabula in American Libraries, a census of fifteenth-century books in North American libraries compiled and edited by Frederick R. Goff, chief of the Library’s Rare Book Division. The census determines that the Library’s collection of 5,616 incunabula is the largest in North America, followed by the Henry E. Huntington Library and Harvard University, with 5,314 and 2,910 incunabula, respectively.

119. In the 1960s, librarians turned to computers to help manage the overflow of books and archival material.

May 4 – The Main Reading Room is closed for cleaning and restoration, and for the installation of new lighting and a new heating, air-conditioning, and ventilating system. It reopens on August 16, 1965.

June – The General Services Administration makes warehouse facilities in Middle River, Maryland, several miles east of Baltimore, available to the Library “for the storage of equipment and material not frequently needed.”

July 20 – A comprehensive bill for the general revision of the US copyright law is introduced in Congress. The bill is a result of nine years of work by the Copyright Office.

August – Librarian Mumford establishes the Information Systems Office, which will be responsible for the Library’s program “to utilize mechanical and electronic equipment in library processes.”

November – The Library receives the first installment of the gift of the records of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), a private archive of more than one million items.