Trump Is Trying to Take Control of Congress Through Its Library (Rolling Stone)

[ShazzieB]

9. As a former librarian, I deplore and detest this!

The Library of Congress (LC, for short) is much more than "just" Congress's library. It's the de facto national library of this country. Among other things, their cataloging dept. sets the standards that most other libraries in the U.S. follow in cataloging their own materials.

LC, like thousands of other libraries worldwide, contributes cataloging records that are publicly shared, and when you search the catalog of almost any public, academic, or research library, you are guaranteed to find many records that were originally created by L.C. (You may not be able to tell, because that info is coded in fields that aren't usually publicly displayed, but librarians can access it.) Basically, if LC has already cataloged a book, other libraries will use that record as a basis for theirs, rather than creating one from scratch.

Sharing cataloging records also supports resource sharing. At WorldCat.org, you can search a database consisting of millions of records contributed by thousands of libraries around the world, including LC. Within a few moments, you can find out which libraries hold a particular item, whether they're located in a nearby town, another state, or even another country. This is particularly useful for scholars and researchers who need to track down obscure information sources.

I can easily see Schlump deciding to drastically cut funding for activities that support research and resource sharing, because he completely lacks any kind of intellectual curiosity and has no respect for intellectual activity of any kind. This possibility fills me with dread, as does talk of his wanting to remove items he doesn't approve of from LC's collection. Their mandate is to maintain a collection that's as comprehensive as possible, because that's what a large research library like LC does. I shudder to think of Schlump telling LC to get rid of things in the collection like books about the fraught history of race relations in thirs country, lgbtq issues, feminism, biographies of people who aren't white, male, straight, or cis gendered, etc. The damage he could do would be immeasurable, and I just hope to hell he isn't able to have his way with that library.

If i sound distraught, it's because I AM. Most people are not aware of the degree to which LC's activities support those of other libraries and institutions of higher learning all over this country and beyond, but I know, because I used to work in that field, and I felt the impact of LC's contributions every freaking day. We should all be very afraid of what Schlump might do to the Library of Congress, because it will affect everyone who ever uses a library in ways that are hard to imagine.