I’m still fascinated by the open position(as of January) for the Librarian of Congress. According to an online technology article from June 18th issue of the the Atlantic, this will be the first librarian appointed since the invention of the web. The position is thought of as “one of the best titles in government”, and the Librarian has considerable power. He or she will be in charge of the largest library in the world, and ultimately oversees thousands of staff. The position also carries with it the responsibility of supervising the Copyright Office. The Librarian possesses ultimate power over copyright violations, which was not an issue in 1987 when Billington was elected, but is much more important in today’s world. The new Librarian will also face a backlog of materials to be digitized, an issue of which Billington has been criticized, for not keeping up with the demand to have materials readily available to the online community. And the suspense continues…
