An excellent example of Free Market Fusion in action is the work being done by Dr. James Billington, Librarian of Congress, in his ongoing attempts to, as he puts it, "get the champagne out of the bottle."

The Library's progressive efforts are a continuation of a legacy stretching as far back as Egypt's Alexandria library around 230 B.C. with its papyrus scrolls, up through Benjamin Franklin's 18th century Philadelphia subscription library and Andrew Carnegie's 19th century endowment of some 2,500 public library buildings.

From the moment he became the Librarian of Congress in 1987, Billington has had one over-arching vision: to make access to the vast resources of the world's most extensive library a reality for every American so that citizens could use information to improve their lives and make informed decisions.

He quickly understood two facts: that advanced communications and information technologies were the key to a broad-based, widely accessible distribution program, and that in order to achieve his laudable -- if daunting -- goal, he would have to secure support and expertise beyond that of the Library's highly knowledgeable 5,000-person staff or even its $322 million annual budget. Both were pressed to the limits handling the Library of Congress' nearly 100 million items (increasing at a rate of one item about every five seconds).

Billington's approach has been to accept the fact that technology costs money and then to figure out how to find (or create) the appropriate convergence point between public good and private enterprise to further the goals of a universally accessible Library. To this end, he has encouraged American entrepreneurs to join the Library of Congress in its quest for cost-effective, state-of-the-art solutions to the nation's information needs. The National Digital Library is the culmination of this effort and the umbrella project that has grown from several digital initiatives.

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