how would you use it?” Being reactive and merely prioritizing scarce resources will not answer these longer-term questions.

The Information Technology Services (ITS) Directorate is chartered to provide a service to the rest of the Library. It is not chartered or budgeted to generate ideas about the Library’s future, even as that future relates to technology. Even for shorter-term technical matters, such as online content delivery, there is no organized plan for the Library as a whole. The THOMAS initiative to distribute congressional material publicly came from the Speaker of the House of Representatives, not from LC.

The current ITS Directorate and staff are not well suited to provide technical vision, strategy, or technical leadership for the Library. These roles require an outward-looking organization that participates in national and international library initiatives. No other part of the Library is providing technical leadership either. There is no indication that current initiatives like the Planning, Programming, Budgeting, Evaluation, Executing, and Evaluation System (PPBEEES) will change this.¹⁴ Other parts of the Library naturally emphasize their core business and focus on the short-term technical issues needed to meet their goals. Expectations of ITS seem unrealistically inflated and unrealistically cynical at the same time. ITS was initially excluded from full participation in the Digital Futures Group, and it played a subsidiary role in decision making during the ILS process.

The Digital Futures Group evolved during the time it took to prepare and write this report, and it continues to evolve. The committee’s sense is that it represents strategic “adhocracy”: that is, a gathering of people and units chosen because of their interest and willingness to participate, not because they represent the right mix of authority and responsibility across the Library. Their mission has been to institutionalize some of the NDLP project in the Library, but it has been conceived too narrowly and too tactically. This temporary alliance of some, but not all, of the relevant managers is no substitute for strategic management.

Given that the Library needs technical leadership, and given that the ITS Directorate is not structured or staffed to provide that leadership, the committee proposes instead that the Library needs a new organization to provide the needed leadership—call it, say, the IT vision, strategy, research, and planning (ITVSRP) group. This group would be chartered to lead the Library of Congress, and the national and world libraries, into

Front Matter (R1-R18)

Executive Summary (1-22)

1. Digital Revolution, Library Evolution (23-49)

2. The Library of Congress: From Jefferson to the Twenty-First Century (50-81)

3. Building Digital Collections (82-104)

4. Preserving a Digital Heritage (105-121)

5. Organizing Intellectual Access to Digital Information: From Cataloging to Metadata (122-143)

6. The Library of Congress and the World, Beyond Its Walls (144-162)

7. Management Issues (163-192)

8. Information Technology Infrastructure (193-213)

Afterword (214-216)

Bibliography (217-240)

Appendix A: Biographies of Committee Members (241-252)

Appendix B: Briefers at Plenary Meetings and Site Visits (253-260)

Appendix C: List of Letters Received (261-261)

Appendix D: Acronyms (262-266)