James Hadley Billington (June 1, 1929 – November 20, 2018)[1] was an American academic and author who taught history at Harvard and Princeton before serving for 42 years as CEO of four federal cultural institutions.

He served as the 13th Librarian of Congress after being nominated by President Ronald Reagan in 1987, and his appointment was approved unanimously by the U.S. Senate.

"[3] Three years later, he earned his doctorate in Russian history from Balliol College of the University of Oxford, where he was a Rhodes Scholar and student of the philosopher Isaiah Berlin.

[1][4] From 1973 to 1987, Billington was director of the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, the nation's official memorial in Washington, D.C., to America's 28th president.

[9] He led the acquisition of Lafayette's previously inaccessible papers in 1996 from Château de la Grange-Bléneau in France.

[10] He also acquired the only copy of the 1507 Waldseemüller world map ("America's birth certificate") in 2003 for permanent display in the Library's Thomas Jefferson Building.

[12] These included exhibits on the Vatican Library[13] and the Bibliothèque Nationale de France,[14] several on the Civil War and Lincoln, on African-American culture, on Religion and the founding of the American Republic, the Early Americas (the Kislak Collection is now on permanent display), and the global celebration commemorating the 800th anniversary of Magna Carta, and on early American printing featuring the Rubenstein Bay Psalm Book.

He created the Library's first Young Readers Center in the Jefferson Building in 2009, and the first large-scale summer intern (Junior Fellows) program for university students in 1991.

Besides these unique American Memory materials, the Library Internet services include the congressional database, THOMAS; the on-line card catalog; exhibitions; information from the U.S.

This precedent led to regular annual financial audits, which produced unmodified ("clean") opinions from 1995 onwards.

[9] At the 2011 National Book Festival, author David McCullough said: "We have had a number of eminent distinguished Librarians of Congress: Archibald MacLeish, the famous poet, Daniel Boorstin, the scholar and historian ....

Billington also wrote and hosted a nationally televised series for PBS, "The Humanities Film Forum", with Mark Waxman, executive producer, in 1973.

[4] Billington accompanied ten congressional delegations to Russia and the former Soviet Union, making him, in the words of commentator George Weigel, "the personal tutor in Russian affairs to several generations of members of the House and the Senate.