Mr. FAZIO. Is it an annual responsibility to catch up with the backlog and to maintain it? Ms. AVRAM. Yes. the LC backlog will be processed in two years for the U.S. papers. Mr. LEWIS. Do you include their advertising sections? Ms. AVRAM. What we are inputting into the data base is the citation for a newspaper title and the holding data. Mr. WELSH. But we do reproduce the entire paper. Nothing is omitted. We think the advertisements are an important social expression. Mr. FAZIO. John Nesbitt wrote a whole book on that. Mr. HIGHTOWER. You don't include anything that might be folded in though in the way of- Mr. WELSH. Like something in the Sunday supplement? No. We would not do that. Mr. LEWIS. Like my campaign mailer? Mr. WELSH. That would go in. Mr. HIGHTOWER. But like the magazine that is inserted, that is a fold-in? Mr. WELSH. No. Mr. HIGHTOWER. Are they indexed, preserved, cataloged? Mr. WELSH. Some are indexed. Most are not. They are working on this sort of level of indexing. This is part of the major effort. First, you find out what has been published and then create the catalog record of what has been published and then indicate where they are located. Mr. HIGHTOWER. Are we going to give them priority in the deacidification? Mr. WELSH. We haven't discussed that yet. The major effort has been to microfilm newspapers. Mr. FAZIO. We wouldn't have to worry about preserving them. Mr. HIGHTOWER. That is why I said if you are going to preserve the paper Mr. WELSH. It is probably too late for deacidification. Mr. FAZIO. Is this an item that appears in the budget this year that will never end as far as any of you are concerned? Mr. WELSH. That is right. NEW TITLES CONTINUE PROJECT LIFE Mr. FAZIO. It is a matter of trying to find a level of what the annual maintenance of the project will be and for the next twenty years what the annual maintenance could be. I am not sure I understand the full $700,000. Mr. WELSH. There are always new titles that come out. The basic effort will be on the part of NEH. We will pick up the remainder work. We are doing the microfilming. This will be part of that effort. Mr. FAZIO. I am trying to get Mr. LEWIS. What would we do if we didn't have microfilming? The New York Times Sunday advertising section alone would fill a very large warehouse after a while. ged" are maj! ight Mr. WELSH. We are expecting that optical disc technology will provide a suitable alternative with much greater compaction than microfilm. Ms. AVRAM. I would like to add that there are many products that can be made from this newspaper data base in order to make the information available to people who are not online to the OCLC system, such as book catalogs of the newspapers. Mr. FAZIO. It is going to take 20 years to catch up with the arant rearage. Ms. AVRAM. No. New newspapers are being issued all the time. We will be adding holdings and cataloging new titles. It is estimated there are approximately 500,000 newspaper titles in existence today. Mr. FAZIO. Is the authority for this essentially a decision by the National Endowment for the Humanities to embark on this? That is basically it? They made a decision to grant funds? No one else reviewed that except that their budget was approved? Mr. WELSH. There was another cooperative effort that preceded that. Ms. Avram referred to the CONSER Project. We did that for serial publications. National Endowment picked up the major part of it. We owe them a great deal for having exercised this initiative. MAINTENANCE COSTS da Mr. FAZIO. Can you give us some trend line as to what dollars will be involved in the maintenance of this project? ng the -to p et the Ms. AVRAM. As far as the Library of Congress is concerned, we have asked for two indefinite positions to take care of the U.S. newspaper back log. Then we will revert to our normal staff to handle current titles and the foreign back log. It will take no more than presently available in the library to maintain the newspaper project. Mr. FAZIO. The request is for three permanent positions? Ms. AVRAM. There are two units of the library involved here. The permanent people will be in our Serial Record Division, which is in Processing Services and the cataloging will be in Research Services in our Serial and Government Publications Division. Mr. FAZIO. We have to go and vote again. Perhaps if you have anything to add when we get back, we can put that in the record. [Recess.] Mr. FAZIO. At this point, we will provide some additional quesertions which can be answered for the record. They will provide more specific information about the preparation of books and the Cataloging Distribution service activities of the library. [The questions and responses follow:] PURCHASE OF BOOKS Question. The purchase of books budget is level with last year. One of the reasons is a decrease in duplicate receipts due to advances in automation. Would you explain how and why you obtain unnecessary duplicates. Response. Duplicates may be acquired inadvertently by receipt of the same titles through multiple sources. The Library obtains materials for its collections through copyright deposits, purchase from vendors at home and abroad through arrange ments conducted by the Order or Overseas Operations Divisions, by gift (from the author or other sources), by exchange (or transfer) from other institutions, or by deposit in the Cataloging in Publication program. An item might be acquired nearly simultaneously from two sources; examples are: (a) Deposit for copyright at the same time as submission to the Cataloging in Publication program (U.S. trade publications or items simultaneously published in the U.S. and abroad); (b) Commercial publications purchased as well as donated by the author; and (c) Univeristy press publications acquried by exchange as well as purchase, etc. A strategic publication of current research interest may deliberately be sought for acquisition by a variety of sources to ensure obtaining it, particularly for foreign publications (and especially from third world countries). Also, the political situations in some countries may lead us to question the realiability of exchange sources (ie., institutions of the foreign government); in these instances, it is preferable to seek publications through purchase as well as exchange in order to guarantee receipt of the materials. As soon as the most reliable source is determined, the duplication is curtailed in these instances. Question. How has your automation program reduced that? Response. Since fiscal year 1982, a portion of the titles requested on exchange or purchase by the Library have been entered as machine-readable records in LC's Automated Process Information File (APIF). The APIF file was created primarily to locate materials in the process of being cataloged. In fiscal year 1982, it was decided to extend the use of the file to include materials which were being recommended for acquisition either by purchase or on exchange and later to indicate that these mate rials had been received by LC. Initially the use of the APIF file was extended experimentally to acquisitions in Chinese and Russian and other Slavic language. Gradually more languages have been added. Duplication of receipts has decreased in the languages in which APIF acquisitions records have been created in two major ways. The Library's recommending officers can search titles which they think should be acquired for LC's collections in the APIF database; in some instances, they now find that the titles have already been requested. The APIF database now can provide a single machine-readable file for searching where previously several distinct manual files had to be consulted before it would be determined if a title had already been requested. In addition, titles can be searched on receipt by LC; in this way, titles which have already been received can be identified and could be returned to the acquisitions source if no further copies are needed for the collection. Question. Please update the additions and collections data found on pages 269-272 of last year's hearings. Response. The information follows: |