Nomination of James H. Billington To Be Librarian of Congress

The President today announced his intention to nominate James H. Billington to be Librarian of Congress. He would succeed Daniel J. Boorstin.

Mr. Billington is currently the Director of the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, Washington, DC. He was a professor of history at Princeton University (1964-1973). Mr. Billington is a director of the Association of American Oxonians, a past director of the American Association for the Advancement of Slavic Studies, and a member of the Council on Foreign Relations. He has been a longtime member of the editorial advisory board of Foreign Affairs and Theology Today. He is the author of Mikhailovsky and Russian Populism (1958), The Arts of Russia (1970), and Fire in the Minds of Men: Origins of the Revolutionary Faith, (1980). He has written widely in Life, Foreign Affairs, and other professional and popular journals.

Mr. Billington graduated from Princeton University (B.A., 1950) and Oxford University (Ph.D., 1953). He was a Rhodes scholar at Balliol College (1950). Mr. Billington served in the United States Army, 1953-1956. He was born June 1, 1929, in Bryn Mawr, PA. Mr. Billington is married, has four children, and resides in Washington, DC.