Rumors of dysfunction in top circles will fade, as will growing concerns about whether the 86-year-old, who has seemed to falter in some recent public appearances, is up to the job. The last responsibility of anyone who holds a lifetime office is to know when to leave, and Billington, who has served the library for 27 years, can now leave graciously.
Library insiders said Billington, who was appointed by Ronald Reagan, was reluctant to depart while a Democratic president was in office. His concern is reasonable. President Barack Obama's administration has a bumpy record when it comes to culture writ large.
Obama allowed the top leadership positions at the major endowments, including the National Endowment for the Arts and the National Endowment for the Humanities, to sit unfilled for unconscionably long periods. An early top staff appointment to the NEA, Yosi Sergant, attempted to politicize the agency's agenda. In 2013, the president elevated Bruce Cole, a divisive and obstructionist figure who led the NEH during the George W. Bush administration, to the commission overseeing the Eisenhower Memorial, greatly complicating its completion.
And one of his last acts — still under consideration — may be his most irresponsible: the destruction of historic public parkland in Chicago to build a presidential library. This indifference to the public realm, this unwillingness to grasp the levers of culture as one of the essential tools of office, suggests that Obama is no Jack Kennedy. He isn't even George W. Bush.
It will be overwhelmingly tempting to appoint a hack, as has become shamefully commonplace with Obama's politically motivated diplomatic appointments. The administration should look dispassionately to Billington's tenure before nominating his replacement, including everything he has accomplished and the many things that have fallen by the wayside in the past few years. A recent government report indicates that although Billington was at the forefront of digitizing library collections years ago, the library hasn't kept up with technology and desperately needs new oversight in that department.
But Billington was a scholar and an intellectual, and he positioned the library not just as a repository of information but also as a locus of debate and cultural exchange. If there has been mismanagement at the library in recent years, it is not because of Billington's status as a thinker but more likely his temperament as a leader. The library's next head should have the intellectual gravitas to compete on the world stage.
One might say: "Then look to this country's major universities and appoint an academic administrator." But our universities are in disarray, egregiously overpriced and interested only in organizational expansion, not in communities of learning or the humanities. The ideal of service has been bled out of American higher education, and the words "university president" now mean merely "effective fundraiser." Their failure to make college affordable is an intellectual and civic disgrace and disqualifies most of them from consideration.
There may be city librarians out there who can lead the library forward, perhaps one or two. But it would be a mistake to elevate someone from the library world merely for having demonstrated success at rising through the bureaucratic ranks. A city librarian might be able to manage the budget and repair relations with library staff. Very likely, that same figure would be skilled at carrying on Billington's admirable effort to open the library up to new users through online access. But that is insufficiently ambitious for the nation's greatest archive.
Where should the library be today? Perhaps where Google already is, at least in this respect: Isn't it odd that the nation's most august library plays such an insignificant role in giving people deep online access to books? No one looking for a citation, or searching for a fact, or seeking to download a text wastes time with the Library of Congress' website, which is great for idly surfing pictures and placing requests for material in the reading rooms. But it isn't a portal for scholarship.
It should be. Every word on every page of every public domain book sitting in the Library of Congress should be available online. That's a lot to ask, but why ask for less?
So perhaps interest will shift to someone from Silicon Valley, which is a chilling thought. Again, as with the ranks of city librarians, there may be serious intellectual leaders among our new technocratic elites, but they are increasingly encumbered with a lamentable legacy of social dissolution. They gibber endlessly about innovation while dismantling the social contract; they fetishize disruption as if that were an end in itself. It would be a tragedy for the library if its leader were primarily interested in change without regard to improvement, and in efficiency without deference to tradition. Silicon Valley is in its barbaric adolescence, and the library needs a civilized, mature and compassionate steward.
Walk its halls, spend time in its reading rooms. The library is a rare remnant of an earlier version of the American social compact, serving Congress without regard to partisan passion, open and available to ordinary citizens for research and enlightenment, no matter one's institutional affiliation, educational achievement or social status. On the personal and national level, it is an organ of self-improvement. Its staff is second to none when it comes to service. A search engine is capable of many things, but it will never walk over to your reading desk and say with curmudgeonly impatience: "You didn't request this, but perhaps it will be of use."
So Billington was properly chary of what will follow his retirement on Jan. 1. A great institution, which has had only 13 leaders since it was established in 1800, is ready for and desperately in need of change. But it also needs continuity and protection. Whoever is chosen for the post must be deeply accomplished, intellectually renowned, conversant in poetry, music, history, literature and the classics, and intimately familiar with the past and future of library science. But he or she must also be able to say these words with sincerity: "I love the Library of Congress."
