significance have not always been consistently institutionalized as ongoing services. The committee’s contacts with librarians here and abroad and with publishers have repeatedly uncovered the desire to see LC take a more active role in bringing together stakeholders in the rapidly changing world of print publishing (particularly with regard to materials whose primary consumers are not-for-profit organizations such as universities and libraries and whose primary producers are for-profit publishers) and in the emerging world of digital information (especially where not-for-profit users have a large stake in the use of the material). Indeed, the committee believes that LC’s inward focus during the past two decades has resulted in a decline of trust and confidence in the research library community in the United States.

At the same time, it is important to be clear about the kind of role that LC can and should take. The vast size of its collections and its national importance to the United States do not elevate it—or any other player—above the rest of the library community. The Library should see itself as a particularly privileged, and therefore particularly responsible, partner in a wide range of conversations. The committee spoke above of the important role LC could play in establishing standards for a wide variety of infrastructural elements of the library of the future, just as it did in the past when it created the MARC record. But LC cannot dictate the outcomes of such a process to others. Rather, its true value would be to bring stakeholders together in a collaborative process that begins by identifying issues and needs that cut across broad swathes of the information community. Having done so, it should then focus on the specialized needs of less-privileged sectors of the information community and, finally, motivate that community to achieve solutions and resolutions that are fair, economical, and functional for all parties.

Examples of such processes in other domains include the Congress of Vienna in 1815 and, in our own day, G7 summits. While LC and all of the other stakeholders are sobered by the realization that the outcomes of high-level summits are always debatable and never last forever (although the Congress of Vienna saw its work last almost 100 years), they can take heart from knowing that LC would participate in such conversations not as one of several hostile parties seeking influence but rather as the genuine representative of a common public good that can advance the interests of other participants in the process. A genuinely broad vision and a determined insistence on turning that vision into reality must be accompanied by a collegial, humble manner that seeks the broadest possible common good for both the users and the producers of information.

The Library must recognize and genuinely respect other senior partners in these undertakings. Over the last three decades, both RLG and OCLC have emerged as serious and respected players in advancing broad