WASHINGTON - The Committee on House Administration's held a Full Committee Hearing titled, "Oversight of the Operations of the Library of Congress."

Witness:
  • Dr. Carla Hayden, Librarian of Congress
In case you missed it, here are the top takeaways:

1. Lessons Learned from Library of Congress Cyber Breach

Chairman Bryan Steil (WI-01): The Library of Congress recently experienced a cyber breach that compromised the content of several emails from Members of Congress and their staff. In the immediate aftermath, the Library of Congress worked with law enforcement partners and its IT vendors to mitigate vulnerabilities. Dr. Hayden, are there any high level takeaways and lessons learned that we should walk away with from that experience?

Dr. Carla Hayden: Yes, and I want to take this opportunity to publicly thank the Committee for your support during the cyber breach last year. We have a close working relationship with Microsoft and other Legislative Branch agencies, so we were able to uncover this extremely sophisticated cyber breach. We worked quickly to mitigate the vulnerability and it has been publicly recorded that we were able to stop the threat actor, and we have followed up, and this is something that we want to continue to do. We had a separate cybersecurity investigation - a second one -  that we think we need to make sure that we do annually and we're looking into that, not just when there's a breach, but a continual addition to our cybersecurity effort. 
Click the image or here to view Chairman Steil's Q&A. 

2. Digitization of the Library of Congress

Vice Chair Laurel Lee (FL-15): Would you describe for us further what is the library's role in preserving data and information and making it accessible to Americans?

Dr. Carla Hayden: The Library of Congress's role is to make its collections, foremost, available to the general public. The Library of Congress holds the papers of 23 presidents, 38 Supreme Court Justices, notable organizations and individuals from Clara Barton to Rosa Parks. Number one, so making those unique collections accessible in as many ways possible as we can. Also, there are collections of books, as you mentioned, prints and photographs, other formats that are also unique in some instances, but definitely not available on local and state levels. So as the national library, our role is to provide all of those materials for Congress to do its work, in many ways, and we have many requests for materials and collections, as well as the American public.

Vice Chair Laurel Lee (FL-15): You also touched on the concept of making some of those materials available for digital visits for those who cannot physically come to our nation's capital. Would you elaborate, please, on the types of things the Library of Congress has done to make collections and special exhibits available digitally for those who wish to see them?

Dr. Carla Hayden: At this point, the Library of Congress has digitized approximately 61 million items. That includes every page of Teddy Roosevelt's diary. That includes the papers of those 23 presidents that we just put on and the new exhibit that we just opened the, Two Georges, where a lot of those documents are on exhibit now at start of our America 250 celebration. And so when you look at the fact that you could have Rosa Parks' peanut butter pancake recipe available online for anyone to look at and try to replicate, it's a wonderful opportunity for people to connect to the Library of Congress. Our exhibits, of course, are in-person things, but we also have a digital component even for exhibits. So you can go online and look at past exhibits. One of my favorites, baseball, all of those exhibits we have a digital component and that's really the way that we can touch every American.
Click the image or here to view Vice Chair Lee's Q&A. 

3. House Administration AI Flash Reports and Congressional Research Center

Rep. Stephanie Bice (OK-05):  I want to first start by mentioning it was referenced earlier by Ranking Member Morelle talked a little bit about AI and how we're utilizing AI and as the Chairwoman of the Modernization and Innovation Subcommittee, that's been a big focus for my Subcommittee. There will be training, actually in utilization of AI tools that is currently being discussed within the House, so I wanted to make sure that that was addressed. And the other thing that I think is of note is the Flash Reports that our Subcommittee drafted and posted. You can find them on the CHA website that really talks about AI and, integration within the House writ large. And so I encourage anyone that wants a little more information about what the House is doing on an AI front to look at those. As has been mentioned, the Library is home to one of the most important congressional support agencies, the Congressional Research Service, and I see, the director, current Director Donfried and former Director Allen are here this afternoon. So thank you for your service and the great work that you are doing. This organization has faithfully served Congress for over 110 years, and the staff provides critical support and our subject matter experts help inform Members and certainly our staff. So we appreciate the work that is happening within CRS and appreciate the opportunity as Members of the House Administration Committee to continue that great work together. 
Click the image or here to view Rep. Bice's Q&A.