"On Jan. 15, 1964, the first components of a small-scale computer system were delivered to the Library of Congress and installed in the Library’s newly established Data Processing Office.
"Provided for in the Legislative Branch Appropriation Act of 1964 (P.L. 88-248), the IBM 1401 was intended for use in payroll, budget control, card distribution billing, accounting for book and periodical purchases and to produce various statistical and management reports.
"A week later, the Library announced the results of a multiyear study on the feasibility of automating its bibliographic functions. Sponsored by a $100,000 grant from the Council on Library Resources Inc., the 88-page report titled “Automation and the Library of Congress” concluded that automation in bibliographic processing, catalog searching and document retrieval was technically and economically feasible. But developmental work would be required for equipment—not yet in existence—and the conversion of bibliographic information to machine-readable format. The report also recommended that the Library of Congress, because of its central role in the nation’s library system, take the lead in the automation venture. Many of the report’s recommendations were implemented in the coming decades, while others, such as a plan for an integrated library system, would wait until the turn of the century.
"Throughout the remainder of the 1960s, attempts were made for contractual development of a highly specialized bibliographic information system. The Library ultimately established its own in-house automated systems office (known today as the Information Technology Services Office) for system development. Over the past five decades, the Library has developed more than 250 enterprise systems and applications for use by Congress, and the library, legal and copyright communities, to name a few" (https://blogs.loc.gov/loc/2014/01/a-half-century-of-library-computing/, accessed 2-2021).