Library of congress how does it work

Social reform HQ - The family. Women HS - Societies: secret, benevolent, etc. HT - Societies: secret, benevolent, etc. HS - Communities. Races HV - Social pathology. Social and public welfare. Criminology HX - Socialism. JS - Local government. Municipal government JV - Colonies and colonization. Comparative religious law. Latin language and literature PB - Modern languages. Civil engineering TC - Hydraulic engineering.

Ocean engineering TD - Environmental technology. Sanitary engineering TE - Highway engineering. Nuclear engineering TL - Motor vehicles. Astronautics TN - Mining engineering. Merchant marine VM - Naval architecture. Marine engineering Z - Books General. Book industries and trade. Bibliography ZA - Information resources General.

AG - Dictionaries and other general reference works. A AE AY. General Works Encyclopedias Almanacs. Philosophy, Psychology, Religion Psychology Religion. C CC CT. Auxiliary Fields of History Archeology Biography. History of the United States. History Local U.

J JK JZ. National libraries throughout Scandinavia have developed systems to make all of their collections available to all of their citizens, under various restrictions. Associations of authors and publishers agree to the establishment of a fund and a collecting agency, which provides payments to the rights holders according to a formula such as a fixed fee for every viewing of a page. Thanks to an arrangement of this sort worked out between the Norwegian National Library and a collecting society called Kopinor, Norwegians can read online nearly all the books that were ever published in their language.

The National Library of Australia operates a successful online system called Trove, which connects users with libraries scattered across the country. Australians click onto Trove and then follow the links that it provides, gaining access to They cannot download the material covered by copyright, but they can borrow it by interlibrary loan.

Most of them are now available from its website, although books protected by copyright can be consulted only from computers located within the library itself. But legislation passed on March 1, , empowered it to create a freely accessible database from copyrighted works that were published before January 1, , and that are no longer being commercially distributed. The rights owners will be compensated for ten years by a collective management organization representing authors and publishers.

They can opt out of the arrangement, and they may sign up with Google for the sale of their out-of-print works; so it is not yet clear how the French will have access to twentieth-century literature. But the B n F is committed to accessibility, and it has also developed a solution to the problem of orphan works—books under copyrights of which the owners have not been identified.

The B n F will post the titles of such books from its collections; and if no claimant comes forward within ten years, it will digitize the texts and make them available free of charge. Legal constraints mean that access to copyrighted texts is restricted to computers within the library.

Only one person at a time can consult the text of an e-book, and that person cannot print out more than one of its chapters or more than 5 percent of an article in a journal. The Library of Congress has the same mission. But while other great libraries were leading the way into the digital future, it failed to manage its own information technology, to say nothing of developing a national network of electronic resources.

How can the new librarian, who will assume office on January 1, , achieve this goal? Although it provides services to members of Congress, the Library of Congress is above all a national library. The danger of disappearing into electronic clouds is compounded by inconsistencies in the metadata furnished by every institution with a digital repository. The Library of Congress should set metadata standards and promote interoperability on a national scale; and while fostering advanced technology in the US, it should promote innovations that are compatible with the systems of other countries.

It should collaborate with Europeana, an aggregator funded by the European Union, which links together databases scattered throughout twenty-eight countries in Europe. Does this standardizing function mean that the Library of Congress would crush other libraries with its sheer size and weight?

Not at all. Not any more than its earlier cataloging service compromised the independence of other institutions. The Library of Congress should facilitate, not dominate the activities of libraries outside of Washington. Instead of operating from the top down, the national network should function horizontally.

The Digital Public Library of America has demonstrated the effectiveness of a horizontal or distributed system. Highly trained professionals in these hubs help public libraries develop their own digital resources. Librarians in small towns and urban neighborhoods invite local citizens to bring in photograph albums, letters, and family papers of all kinds.

Public libraries are the most vital and most trusted institution in many communities. They could be empowered, not overpowered, by help of this kind from the Library of Congress. What sets the Library of Congress apart from every other library is the size of its collections, the largest in the world.

They should be digitized. Perhaps Google could be persuaded to donate copies of its files or to digitize everything in the LOC , while correcting the imperfections of its earlier work.