Info agencies built on paper shift to meet demands of digital age

Two legislative-branch agencies built on paper are working hard to reinvent themselves as Congress’s consumption of and demand for digital information increases.

“We’re responding to technology because technology is affecting how information is created and distributed,” said Robert Dizard, deputy librarian of the Library of Congress. According to Dizard, the “great majority” of the library’s products are now delivered electronically to lawmakers and staff, a far cry from when the agency was founded in the early 19th century. Leaders at the Government Printing Office (GPO) report a similar congressional demand for digital data. Paper might have served as the agency’s primary medium when it was created in 1860, but the rise of the Internet has significantly changed the GPO’s strategy.