87% There

The venerable Library of Congress can't locate a whopping thirteen percent of its collection. (The number was originally 17%, but a subsequent review found that four percent of the collection was checked out, misshelved, or otherwise unavailable.) With 130 million volumes in the institution, that means that 16.9 million of them are AWOL. Read the details in the Washington Post or go right to the LOC's own Inspector General's report (.pdf).

Don't hold your breath for a turnaround, either. Staff in the libary's CALM division (Collections, Access, Loan and Management Division) is down from 235 employees in 2000 to a current size of 165. Its requested budget of $12 million has been funded at only $6.3 million.--David E

With thanks to the Seattle PostIntelligencer's Book Patrol blog.