Management review of the Library of Congress: the 1996 Booz Allen & Hamilton report

R L Cope

Abstract
Analyses the methodology and findings of the management view of the Library of Congress (LC), completed by Booz Allen and Hamilton in May 1996, a major document in the history of LC as well as in American libraries of our time. We are at the start of important changes in the library, and the next few years are bound to impose heavy strains on its managers and staff as LC tries to 'reinvent' itself. There is a brief discussion of the library's initial response to the report, as well as of the report's relevance in Australia where the National Library is confronting its own parcel of problems by focussing on the deus ex machina technology and concepts such as the Distributed National Collection.

The author was NSW Parliamentary Librarian from 1962-1991, and is currently Visiting Associate at the School of Information, Library and Archive Studies, University of New South Wales, Sydney 2052.