Library of Congress's budget is $600 million /year. Isn't it too much?

I was just watching a C-SPAN program, and they explained that budget for US Library of Congress was $600 million (FY 2006), and they hire more than 4000 people. I know it's an important library, but considering that many digitized resouces are now available online, shouldn't they restructure the system to reduce the budget?





I wonder why Bush administration has been increasing the budget for the library of congress, while they cut the basic science budget (NIH etc).

Library of Congress's budget is $600 million /year. Isn't it too much?
Doesn't seem like lot of money to me. I think they lost more than that shipping money to Iraq. Remember news stories about people losing track of millions(or billions) of dollars in CASH? That was supposed to be sent to Iraq.
Reply:I'm getting a headache.
Reply:you bet ye.
Reply:The US Library of Congress and US Archives hold the most amount of Books any Library on the planet. Real books, and hand written manuscripts cannot be converted to Digital Media, then they will no longer be original.





Preservation of the Buildings and Documents within take much of the budget. 4000 employees are not enough to manage the amount of material there.





Take a trip and visit the Library of Congress and US Archives. And you will understand.