James H. Billington

Life

Library of Congress

• American Memory in 1990, which became The National Digital Library in 1994, providing free access online to digitized American history and culture resources with curatorial explanations for K-12 education;
• thomas.gov website in 1994 to provide free public access to U.S. federal legislative information with ongoing updates; and congress.gov website to provide a state-of-the-art framework for both Congress and the public in 2012;
• Educational portal for K-12 teachers and students in 1996, and subsequently new prizes and programs for advancing literacy in 2013;
• Online social media presence for the Library beginning in 2007, which expanded to include blogs, Flickr, establishment of Flickr Commons, Facebook, iTunesU, Pinterest, RSS, Twitter, YouTube and other new media channels. Twitter donated its digital archive to the Library of Congress in 2010; its vice president of engineering, Greg Pass noted, "I am very grateful that Dr. Billington and the Library recognize the value of this information."
• "eCo" online copyright registration, status-checking, processing, and electronic file upload systems in 2008;
• The World Digital Library in 2009, in association with UNESCO and 181 partners in 81 countries, to make online copies of professionally curated primary materials of the world's varied cultures free available in multiple languages.
• Resource Description and Access in 2010, a new cataloguing standard for the digital age implemented in 2013;
• BIBFRAME in 2011, a data model for bibliographic description to provide a foundation for those depending on bibliographic data shared by the Library with partners on the web and in the broader networked world;
• National Jukebox in 2011 to provide streaming free online access to more than 10,000 out-of-print music and spoken word recordings.
• BARD in 2013, digital talking books mobile app for Braille and Audio Reading Downloads in partnership with the Library's National Library Service for the blind and physically handicapped, that enables free downloads of audio and Braille books to mobile devices via the Apple App Store.

• The National Book Festival, founded in 2001 with Laura Bush, which has brought more than 10000 authors and more than a million guests to the National Mall and the Washington Convention Center. Thanks to a major gift from David Rubenstein in 2013, Billington also promoted the establishment of Library of Congress Literacy Awards to recognize and support achievements in improving literacy in the United States and abroad;
• The Kluge Center, started in 2000 with a grant of $60 million John W. Kluge, the Kluge Center increases engagement of scholars with the U.S. Congress and other public leaders brought to the Library through endowed Kluge fellowships;
• The Kluge Prize for the Study of Humanity, the first Nobel-level international prize for lifetime achievement in the humanities and social sciences ;
• The National Audio-Visual Conservation Center, which opened in 2007 at a 45-acre site in Culpeper, Virginia, thanks to the largest private gift ever made to the Library and $82.1 million additional support from Congress. In 1988, Billington also established the National Film Preservation Board, a congressionally mandated National Film Preservation Board to select American films annually for preservation and inclusion in the new National Registry. The Librarian named 650 films to the Registry by 2015;
• The Veterans History Project, congressionally mandated in 2000 to collect, preserve, and make accessible the personal accounts of American war veterans from World War I to the present day;
• The National Registry of Recorded Sound, congressionally mandated in 2000, to which Billington has selected 425 recordings to date;
• The Gershwin Prize for Popular Song, started in 2007 to honor the work of an artist whose career reflects lifetime achievement in song composition. Winners have included Paul Simon, Stevie Wonder, Paul McCartney, Burt Bacharach and Hal David, Carole King, Billy Joel, and Willie Nelson. Billington also launched the Living Legend Awards in 2000 to honor artists, activists, filmmakers, and others who have contributed to America's diverse cultural, scientific, and social heritage, ;
• Open World Leadership Center started in 2000, which has administered 23,000 professional exchanges for emerging post-Soviet leaders in Russia, Ukraine, and the other successor states of the former USSR to visit counterparts in the United States. Open World began as a Library of Congress project, and later became an independent agency in the legislative branch. Billington is founder and was Chairman of the Board of Trustees.
• The Fiction Prize created in 2008 to recognize distinguished lifetime achievement in the writing of fiction.

Honors

Death

Publications

• . New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1966
• . London: Temple Smith, 1980 Published with new introduction by the author in 1999: New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Publishers.
• * available at Internet Archive.
• Russia Transformed: Breakthrough to Hope, Moscow, August 1991 New York: The Free Press, 1992.,
• . London, 1998.
• . Washington D.C.: Woodrow Wilson Press & Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2004.

  Television productions

• Billington, James H.. Humanities Film Forum, PBS Documentary Series.
• Billington, James H.. The face of Russia: A Three part documentary television series. Malone Gill Productions, The Library of Congress, WETA, Washington, DC and Public Media Inc.,,.

  Contributing Author

• "Orthodox Christianity and the Russian Transformation," Proselytism and Orthodoxy in Russia: The New War for Souls, edited by Whitte, John, and Michael Bourdeaux. New York: Orbis Books, 1999.
• Preface, Revelations from the Russian Archives: Documents in English, edited by Diane Koenker and Ronald D. Bachman. Washington, DC: Library of Congress, 1997.
• Introduction to Before the Revolution: St. Petersburg in Photographs, 1890-1914, text by Mikhail P. Iroshnikov, Yury B. Shelayev and Liudmila A. Protsai. New York: Abrams, 1992.
• "Six Views of the Russian Revolution," Russian and Soviet History, edited by Bertrand M. Patenaude. New York, London: Garland Publishing, 1992.
• Foreword, Before the Revolution: St. Petersburg in Photographs, 1890-1914, by Mikhail P. Iroshnikov, Yury B. Shelayev, Liudmila A. Protsai; introduction by Dmitry S. Likhachov. New York: Harry N. Abrams; Leningrad: Nauka: JV SMART, 1991.
• "The Role of a Western University in Forming a Social Morality," Moral Values and Higher Education, edited by Dennis L. Thompson.. Provo, UT: Brigham Young University Press, 1991.
• Foreword, Henry M. Jackson and World Affairs: Selected Speeches, 1953-1983, edited by Dorothy Fosdick. Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1990.
• Introduction to Solidarity and Poland, Impacts East and West, edited by Steve W. Reiquam; a collections of papers presented at conferences, "The Legacy of Solidarity," Held February 1987 at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, Washington, DC: Wilson Center Press: 1988.
• "Diplomacy and the Soviet Union," Diplomacy for the Future, edited by George C. McGhee. Washington, DC: University Press of America, in cooperation with the Institute for the Study of Diplomacy, Georgetown, University, 1987, pp. 35–48.
• "American Foreign Policy and the New Isolationism," Public Diplomacy: USA Versus USSR, edited by Richard F. Staar. Stanford, CA: Hoover Institution Press, Stanford University, 1986, pp. 3–18.
• "Education and Culture: Beyond 'Lifestyles'," Virtue—Public & Private, edited by Richard John Neuhaus. Grand Rapids, MI: Wm. B. Eerdmans, in cooperation with the Rockford Institute Center on Religion and Society, 1986, pp. 1–7.
• "Socio-Cultural Imperatives for a New Containment Policy," Containment Concept and Policy, edited by Terry L. Deibel and John Lewis Gaddis. Washington, DC: National Defense University Press, 1986, v. 2, pp. 597–613.
• "General Change: In Search of a Post-Stalinist Identity," From Brezhnev to Gorbachev - Domestic Affairs and Soviet Foreign Policy, edited by Hans-Joachim Veen. Leamington Spa, Hamburg, New York: Berg, 1987, pp. 156–163.
• "Three Views of Revolution," And He Loved Big Brother: Man, State and Society in Question, London, 1985, pp. 13–24; also in Reflections on America, 1984, An Orwell Symposium, edited by Robert Mulvihill. University of Georgia Press, 1986, pp. 202–214.
• "Der Generationswechsel: Die Suche nach einer nachstalinistischen Identität," Wohin entwickelt sich die Sowjetunion? Zur aussenpolitischen Relevanz innerpolitischer Entwicklungen, edited by Hans-Joachim Veen. Melle: Knoth, 1984, pp. 180–183.
• "Rival Revolutionary Ideals," Totalitarian Democracy and After Jerusalem: Israeli Academy of Science and Humanities, 1984, pp. 56–69.
• "Reflections on the Nonmaterial Aspects of National Interests," The National Interests of the United States in Foreign Policy, edited by Prosser Gifford. Washington, DC: Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, 1981, pp. 180–183.
• "Neglected Figures and Features in the Rise of the Raskol," The Religious World of Russian Culture, edited by Andrew Blane. The Hague, Paris: Mouton, 1975.
• "The Spirit of Russian Art," introduction to The Arts of Russia. New York: Horizon, 1970.
• "The Intellectuals," Prospects for Soviet Society, edited by Allen Kassof. New York: Praeger, 1968, pp. 449–472.
• "Finland," chapter on Finnish Communism, Communism and Revolution,'' edited by C. Black and T. Thornton. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1964, pp. 117–144.

  Booklets

• The Intellectual and Cultural Dimensions of International Relations. Washington, DC.
• The Electronic Erosion of Democracy, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.
• Books and the World, Center for the Book, Library of Congress, Washington, DC, 1988.
• The Moral Imperative of Conservation, The National Committee to Save America's Cultural Collections, Washington, DC.
• The Adventure of Liberal Education, Syracuse, 1982.
• The Humanities Film Forum, Los Angeles, 1973.

  Articles

• "Okay, They've Met. Now Let's Get Engaged," The Washington Post, June 17, 2001, p. B2.
• "Russia, Between a Dream and a Nightmare," The New York Times, Op-Ed, June 17, 1998.
• "Religion and Russia's Future: The Templeton Lecture on Religion and World Affairs," Foreign Policy Research Institute WIRE, v. 5 no. 10, pp. 1–4.
• "Russian Librarians Host Idea Exchange in Vologda," American Libraries, September 1996, p. 21.
• "Here Today, Here Tomorrow: The Imperative of Collections Security," American Libraries, August 1996, p. 40.
• "On My Mind: A Technological Flood Requires Human Navigators," American Libraries, June/July 1996, p. 39.
• "Libraries, the Library of Congress, and the Information Age," Daedalus: Books, Bricks, & Bytes, American Academy of Arts and Sciences, Fall 1996.
• "The Library of Congress' National Digital Library Program," Digital Libraries: Research and Technology Advances, Selected Papers from ADL '95 Forum held in McLean, Virginia, May 1995. Berlin, Heidelberg: Springer-Verlag, 1996.
• "Let Russia Be Russian," The New York Times, Op-ed, Sunday, June 16, 1996.
• "The Cross and the Sickle," review of A Long Walk to Church: A Contemporary History of Russian Orthodoxy, by Nathaniel Davis, New York Times Book Review, April 16, 1995, p. 25.
• "A Revolutionary Russian Writer's Redemption," review of Dostoevsky: The Miraculous Years, 1865-1871, by Joseph Frank, The Wall Street Journal, March 28, 1995, p. A24.
• "Cultural Heritage, Education, and the Information Highway," J. Paul Getty Trust Bulletin, spring 1995.
• "Gliazhu vpered ia bez boiazni," Moskovskie novosti, January 15/22, 1995, p. 20.
• "The Local Library and the Electronic Age," Moveable Type, Willamette University publication, Salem, Oregon, 1994/95.
• "Khristianstvo i preobrazovanie Rossii," Mera, St. Petersburg: Glagol, 1994.
• "Electronic Content and Civilization's Discontent," Educom Review, September/October 1994, p. 22.
• "The Case for Orthodoxy," The New Republic, May 30, 1994, p. 24.
• "The Electronic Library," Media Studies Journal, Winter 1994, p. 109.
• "Religious Revival in Russia: Discovery and Change," Woodstock Report, October 1992, no. 31, pp. 3–8..
• "Opening a Window on Deceit," U.S. News & World Report, August 24, 1992.
• "The Intellectual and Cultural Dimensions of International Relations: Present Ironies and Future Possibilities," The Journal of Arts Management, Law and Society, v. 22, no. 2, Summer 1992.
• "Feed Russia's Pride, Not Just Its Stomach,", The Wall Street Journal, February 25, 1992.
• "The Search for a Modern Russian Identity," Bulletin: The American Academy of Arts and Sciences, January 1992.
• "Library of Congress to Open Collections to Local Libraries in Electronic Access Plans," American Libraries, Feature, September 1991.
• "Russia's Fever Break," The Wilson Quarterly, Autumn 1991.
• "U.S.S.R.: The Birth of a Nation," The Washington Post - Outlook, September 8, 1991.
• "The True Heroes of the Soviet Union," The New York Times Op-Ed, August 30, 1991.
• "The Crisis of Communism and the Future of Freedom," NBR Publications: NBR Analysis, v. 2, no. 3, July 1991.
• "The Crisis of Communism and the Future of Freedom," paper prepared for Conference on Global Responsibilities and National Interests, co-sponsored by the Carnegie Council on Ethics and International Affairs and DePauw University, and held June 1990 in Greencastle, Indiana. Ethics & International Affairs, 1991, v. 5.
• "Sovetskaia drama," Kar'era, no. 8, April 1991, pp. 8–9.
• "Rossiia v poiskakh sebia," Nezavisimaia gazeta, June 4, 1991, p. 5.
• "The Soviet Drama," two-part article, The Washington Post. 1. "Russia's Quest for Identity," January 21, 1990, and 2. "Looking to the Past," January 22, 1990.
• "James Billington on Russian Opera," The Washington Opera, Winter 1989.
• "Russia: the Search for a New Identity," Geopolitique - Review of the International Institute of Geopolitics, Summer 1989, Paris.
• "Keeping the Faith in the USSR After a Thousand Years," Smithsonian Magazine, April 1989, pp. 130–143.
• "...Rossii nepovtorimye cherty," Literaturnaia gazeta, April 13, 1988, p. 2.
• "A Search for Leaders," A Symposium: What Future Directions for Academic Exchange? by Paul Seabury, A. Kenneth Pye, Mark Blitz and James H. Billington, The Annals, The American Academy of Political and Social Science, May 1987, Sage Publications, pp. 161–163.
• "Realism and Vision in American Foreign Policy," Foreign Affairs, February 1987.
• "Soviet Power and the Unity of the Industrial Democracies," The Atlantic Community Quarterly, Winter 1986-87, vol. 24, no. 4, pp. 374–379.
• "Liberty, Equality, Fraternity - Old Ideals, New Revolution," Jubilee, Summer 1984, pp. 7–12.
• "With Russia: After 50 Years. A Time of Danger, an Opening for Dialogue," Washington Post, November 20, 1983.
• "The Essentials: Goodness, Beauty, Truth," Envoy, Fall 1983.
• "Russia After Brezhnev: A Nation in Search of a New Identity," Washington Post, November 14, 1982.
• "Revolution and Its Discontents: The Revolutionary Faith in the Modern World," Syracuse Scholar, no. 2, Fall 1981.
• "The World's Fight: 17. An Innovation in International Scholarship," American Oxonian, no. 2, Spring 1981.
• "Christianity in the USSR," Theology Today, July 1980.
• "Fire in the Minds of Men," Wilson Quarterly, Summer 1980.
• "The Crisis of Legitimacy," Theology Today, July 1976.
• "The Gun Within," Newsweek, October 6, 1975.
• "The Strange Death of Liberal Education," Furman Magazine, Fall 1972.
• "Fulbright Success Story," New York Times Op-Ed page, December 13, 1971.
• "Purpose in the University," Theology Today, January 1971.
• "Address to the Rhodes Scholar Sailing Party, 1969," American Oxonian, April 1970.
• "A Ferment of Intellectuals," Life, January 10, 1969.
• "The Humanistic Heartbeat Has Failed," Life, January 10, 1969.
• "Force and Counterforce in Eastern Europe," Foreign Affairs, October 1968.
• Two articles on the Czech Crisis in Life, May 24, 1968.
• Articles on Russia in Life, September 22 and November 10, 1967.
• "Six Views of the Russian Revolution," World Politics, no. 18, April 1966, pp. 452–473.
• "Soviet Youth is Getting Out of Line," University: A Princeton Quarterly, 1965-66, winter.
• "Science in Russian Culture," American Scientist, June 1964.
• "Images of Muscovy," Slavic Review, March 1962.
• "Five Clues to the Khrushchev Riddle," New York Times Sunday Magazine, October 29, 1961, lead article.
• "The Intelligentsia and the Religion of Humanity," American Historical Review, July 1960.
• "Nikita Khrushchev and 'Doctor Zhivago,'" New York Times Sunday Magazine, November 9, 1958, lead article.
• "The Renaissance of the Russian Intelligentsia," Foreign Affairs, 1957, April.
• "The Bolshevik Debt to Russian Populism," Occidente, 1956, no. 4.
• "Thoughts on America and the Cold War," Freedom and Union, 1952, Autumn.