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During his tenure at the Library of Congress, Billington doubled the size of the Library's traditional analog collections, from 85.5 million items in 1987 to more than 160 million items in 2014. [9] He led the acquisition of Lafayette's previously inaccessible papers in 1996 from Château de la Grange-Bléneau in France.
James Billington served as the Librarian of Congress in Washington, D.C., from 1987 to 2015. He earned his doctorate from Oxford University, where he was a Rhodes Scholar at Balliol College, and is a former professor of history at Harvard and Princeton universities.
Nov 30, 2018 · A scholar, adviser to Presidents, friend to Members of Congress, director of the Woodrow Wilson Center for International Scholars, and the 13th Librarian of Congress, Dr. Billington was in charge of the world’s largest repository of knowledge, the Library of Congress, from 1987-2015.
Nov 21, 2018 · James H. Billington, the librarian of Congress for nearly three decades, who led the nation’s treasure house of knowledge into the digital age and added millions of books, films and cultural...
- Support of The Congress
- Reaching Out More Broadly
- Looking in More Deeply
- Meeting The Challenges of The Day
- The Billington Legacy
- Congressional Tribute
In 1800, Congress created the Library of Congress to support its research needs and thereby allow it to function as an informed independent branch of the federal government. Support for Congress’s research needs remains the Library’s principal purpose. Today, those requirements are met most directly by the Congressional Research Service (CRS), an i...
Billington’s most far-reaching initiative was the National Digital Library (NDL), which began placing digital materials from the Library’s collections on the Web in 1995. Envisioned from the beginning as a public-private partnership, the Library’s first major digital effort gained Congress’s agreement to appropriate $15 million for the program over...
Almost as soon as he took office in 1987, Billington convened a staff-led Management and Planning (MAP) Committee to conduct a one-year internal review of the Library’s functions. The result was a major administrative reorganization based on goals identified through the staff’s MAP study and articulation of a mission for the Library. The creation o...
A Librarian of Congress must have not only the vision to look ahead but also the courage to deal with the challenges that confront him every day. Billington had to oversee the final stages of renovating the century-old Thomas Jefferson Building; provide for storage and preservation of expanding collections that were outgrowing space on Capitol Hill...
Thanks to the efforts of James Billington, the Library of Congress has entered the 21st century as a dynamic, forward-thinking cultural institution that cherishes its heritage as the nation’s memory-keeper and igniter of imagination and creativity. As the June/July 2007 issue of American Libraries notes, “He [Billington] has built his legacy on the...
Sen. Richard Durbin (D-Ill.) read the following tribute to Librarian of Congress James H. Billington into the Senate record on the Senate floor, Sept. 10. The statement was presented to the Librarian on Sept. 14: “Mr. President, an important anniversary will be marked on September 14, at the Library of Congress. Twenty years ago, in the Great Hall ...
Jun 10, 2015 · James H. Billington has served as the 13th Librarian of Congress since 1987, when the U.S. Senate unanimously confirmed his appointment by President Ronald Reagan. During his 28-year tenure at the Library, Billington has:
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In 1999, Billington became the Librarian of Congress. He co-founded the U.S.-Russian Open World Program with Dmitry Likhachev, which brought over 14,000 young leaders from the former USSR to the United States.
