ABSTRACT
Young's passing was followed by a rush of interest in who his successor would be. The new Library building and the role the institution was assuming in the national intellectual scene had, in a very brief time, made the position widely known and fashionably desirable. Daniel J. Boorstin had been a Rhodes scholar, was a Pulitzer Prize winning historian and an Oxford-trained lawyer, and was director of the Museum of History and Technology of the Smithsonian Institution when he was named as Librarian. Institution is Boorstin's working tool, and we will see the changes he has made in organization. Archibald MacLeish brought a revitalization to the institution that generated its own momentum. Every element seemed to come alive. He achieved his hope that he had given "an increasing number of men and women the sense of participating creatively and responsibly in a work which all of them may well feel proud to share."
