ACRL News Issue (B) of College & Research Libraries


Inside W ashington
Christopher W right 

Assistant Director
A L A  Washington Office

As if heeding the arrival of autumn, the Li­
brary of Congress’ new Madison Building has 
replaced its summer garb of scruffy concrete 
and steel with a coat of grey marble. Those of
us who pass by daily can no longer peer into 
the shadowy interior spaces, imagining librar­
ians who will someday pace those floors. The
sounds of hammering and riveting come muf­
fled through the walls. The Madison Building
is beginning to have a permanent look.

But at the base of one marble flank is a 
protrusion, a half-buried concrete tunnel. This 
construct ends, for the moment, in a fringe of 
steel reinforcing rods just at the sidewalk’s 
edge but pointed unmistakably at the Cannon 
Office Building of the U.S. House of Repre­
sentatives across the street.

The tunnel is in the plans, evidence of the 
library’s expanding role as the research arm of 
Congress. W hen linked under the intervening 
street the tunnel will give members of Congress 
and their staffs private access to such resources 
as the burgeoning Congressional Research Ser­
vice to be housed on the Madison Building’s 
second and third floors and LC’s extensive law 
library.

However, this modest tie with the 131 con­
gressmen housed in the Cannon Building has 
taken on a symbolic significance far beyond 
its actual purpose. W hat was planned as a 
simple convenience has suddenly begun to look 
more like a sapper’s tunnel than an accessway 
to legislative information. Since late June there 
has been a move underway in the House of 
Representatives by members who wish not only 
to have their own entrance to the building 
but also to take over two floors of the library 
for their own office use.

The drive is headed by Representative 
Fortney (P ete) Stark, a first-term Democrat 
from California. Claiming he was “hanging 
people from chandeliers” in his two-room 
Longworth Office Building suite, Stark pro­
duced a list of some 220 fellow congressmen 
who apparently shared his views in late June. 
House Speaker Carl Albert, who himself had 
led a move three years ago to take over the 
building site, then approached Senator Howard 
Cannon, chairman of the Joint Committee on 
the Library, asking his opinion on the library’s 
lending the House two floors “for about five 
years while a fourth House office building is 
being constructed on another site.”

 

 

 

Cannon replied with gratifying outrage for 
which he deserves the thanks of literate people 
everywhere. “It was my understanding,” he 
told Albert, “that this issue was settled for 
good several years ago when the same pro­
posal was made and rejected in both bodies.” 
But the threat remains. A post-election Con­
gress could pin a motion onto almost any piece 
of legislation which could start the ball rolling. 
And the Senate, already planning a new office 
building of its own, might be swayed to sup­
port this “temporary” measure for the other 
house.

Anyone who doesn’t think this would be a 
disaster for the Library of Congress should 
drop by the Marc Development Office and see 
programmers pecking away at consoles jammed 
into four-foot hallways, or visit the library’s 
order division whose employees have to risk 
cracking their skulls on the concrete eaves of 
the fifty-year-old annex building every time 
they get up to check a catalog entry. The li­
brary has simply run out of space. Book stacks 
have been taken over by catalogers so books 
are piled on the floor. Stack attendants can’t 
find the books so readers complain to their 
congressmen.

On the other hand, what is Congress going 
to do with the two floors if it does take them 
over? Presumably they would want the two 
top floors, since those are the only ones with 
plentiful windows and are now destined for the 
library’s cataloging division, administrative of­
fices, and a cafeteria.

At the moment this area is open and un­
cluttered, and would be quite suitable if Con­
gress were an insurance agency or an engineer­
ing contractor. But congressmen want private 
suites with large offices and reception rooms. 
And they don’t like to hear what’s going on in 
the next office, and be heard themselves in re­
turn. They don’t like to walk down the hall 
to the bathroom. They don’t like to wait for 
elevators when they’re in a hurry to get to the 
House floor a half-mile away.

So any takeover would require massive rede­
signing of the two floors. Air conditioning and 
plumbing would have to be totally rerouted. 
Another elevator would have to be built. Fire 
walls intended to protect the priceless col­
lections of the library would have to be 
chopped open to meet the needs of congress­
men. The redesigning alone would take a year

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and cost a good million dollars, knowledgeable 
construction people say.

And what about all the hope and effort on 
the part of the library staff who have reconciled 
themselves to yet another year of labor in their 
cramped quarters with the promise that the 
bright fabrics and new desks pictured in the 
interior designer’s mock-up will someday be 
theirs in the new building going up across the 
street.

And what about the American public, the 
people all across the country who depend on 
their libraries and who count on the Library of 
Congress as a primary national cultural re­
source. How will they feel if Congress, while 
hailing openness in government, tunnels its 
way into the best space in the Madison Build­
ing to avoid facing the people with the bill for 
a new office of its own.

ACRL Chapter Developments
Under the guidance of Norman E. Tanis, 

ACRL president during 1973/74, the ACRL 
Board of Directors established as one of
ACRL’s top priorities the development of
chapters of ACRL. In July 1973 Mr. Tanis ap­
pointed an ad hoc Committee on Chapter De­
velopment, chaired by George M. Bailey, asso­
ciate director of libraries at the Claremont
Colleges. The committee is charged with pro­
moting the organization of chapters and with
assisting chapters in program planning and
development. In the past, ACRL has con­

 
 

 

 
 

tributed to chapter programs through the par­
ticipation of ACRL officers and committee 
members.

Article IV of the ACRL Bylaws provides for 
the organization of chapters within ACRL:

Article IV. Chapters
Sec. 1. Establishment. The Board of Direc­

tors may establish a chapter of the Association 
in any state, province, territory, or region on 
the petition of twenty-five members of the As­
sociation residing or employed within the area.

Sec. 2. Bylaws. A chapter may adopt its own 
bylaws provided there is no conflict between 
them and the Constitution and Bylaws of the 
Association.

Sec. 3. Members. A chapter may admit 
members who are not members of the Associa­
tion.

Sec. 4. Meetings. Each chapter shall hold 
at least one meeting a year unless it is affiliated 
with an organization that normally meets bien­
nially.

Sec. 5. Reporting. Each chapter shall send 
a report of its meetings to the executive secre­
tary of the Association within one month fol­
lowing the meetings.

Sec. 6. Dissolution. A chapter may be dis­
solved at its request by the Board of Directors 
of the Association and shall be so dissolved if 
it becomes inactive or fails to comply with the 
provisions of this article.

Within the past two years, the ACRL Board 
of Directors has approved three petitions for 
the establishment of new chapters: the New 
England College and Research Librarians, the 
Illinois Association of College and Research 
Libraries, and the Academic and Research Di­
vision of the Minnesota Library Association. 
The three additional ACRL chapters are: the 
Delaware Valley Chapter (eastern Pennsyl­
vania, southern New Jersey, and Delaware), 
the Tri-State Chapter ( Ohio, Pennsylvania, and 
West Virginia), and the Missouri Association 
of College and Research Libraries.

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