Who should replace Jim Billington as leader of the Library of Congress? And might it just be time to rethink the nature of the job?

No endorsement of anyone right now, but Billington’s serving as an unwanted in-house RIAA for librarydom is just one indication that he needs to step down. Feedback welcome on possible replacements. So much innovation is happening elsewhere, under Michigan librarian Christie Brandau and other library professionals; and the contrast with the 73-year-old Billington will only widen, as he stays in his own little time warp and technology moves on. I myself like the idea of changing the librarian’s job so there is more emphasis on actual librarianship and technology and less emphasis on the head librarian as a czar of culture. Instead we could expand the roles of visiting scholars, artists, musicians and writers and others. Meanwhile the actual librarian could focus on the nuts and bolts of bringing the Carnegie model online.

If the librarian were young and from outside the Beltway, so much the better–though I won’t count on it. Perhaps good talent could be found among the grunts who have been doing the work for which Billington has taken ample credit.

Just imagine what professional librarians and information scientists could accomplish without Billington around. However impressive is LOC’s online collection, it is not a true library in the range of its holdings. Call me old-fashioned, but a “national digital library” without contemporary books is a little surrealistic. Thomas Jefferson would not be pleased. Jefferson “believed that self- government depended on the free, unhampered pursuit of truth by an informed and involved citizenry,” and as one of the premier techies of his time, he would not have loved Billington’s statement that e-books are anti-social. Chances are that Jefferson would be pressing for a decentralized, TeleRead-style approach to strengthen local libaries as opposed to building empires in Washington.

Given all the library’s present failings, Jefferson might also call for Congress to modify LOC’s mission statement so the library was less a tool of Capitol Hilll and more a library for the entire country, especially in regard to putting books and other items on the Internet. Not to neglect our solons’ needs. But they could be handled through an independent and expanded Congressional research service, apart from LOC, so that the library could focus on what should be its foremost mission, an informed citizenry in the Jeffersonian tradition. As for the copyright office, a library-oriented approach is best, and the office should not budge from the bosom of LOC, especially with Billington out of the picture. No more in-house RIAAs, hopefully. What an obnoxious Hamiltonian.

One other lesson is that we badly need an official term limit for librarians of Congress. Billington is to the Library of Congress what J. Edgar Hoover was to the FBI–a pathetic relic who has outlived his usefulness but can still do plenty of damage. A brief LOC history by John Y. Cole, with a preface from you know which ‘crat, says that there is no term specified for librarians “even though in the twentieth century the precedent seems to have been established that a Librarian of Congress is appointed for life.” In effect librarians of Congress have often been like Supreme Court Justices. While lifelong appointments are right for a deliberative body in the vein of the Court–even then, cynics still joke about the justices and election returns–I question the needs for a similar situation at the Library of Congress. Long terms? Yes, of course. LOC needs independence. But, please, don’t sentence the country to Billington-type dinos “for life.” As a matter of fact, Billington’s predecessor, the distinguished historian Daniel J. Boorstin wisely retired on 1987 as librarian after having served just short of 12 years. He was 72 at the time, a tad younger than Billington.

Ironically, in an era of anthrax and dirty nukes, Billington could do real damage to our precious cultural heritage by not supervising the digitization of LOC as expertly as a younger, more tech-savvy person could–someone not just with the technical skills but the vision and the administrative savvy to see a well-stocked national digital library system become a reality.

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