In 1988, Lorenz joined the staff of the U.S. National Commission on Libraries and Information Science as consultant Coordinator of the Library Statistics Program, a new cooperative program with the National Center for Education Statistics. In less than ten years, this program has produced seven annual Public Library Surveys, four biennial Academic Library Surveys, a school library media center component of the quadrennial Schools and Staffing Survey, a Federal Library Survey, the State Library Agency Survey (a cooperative effort between NCES, COSLA, and NCLIS), and planning for a Survey of Library Cooperatives. The program also pioneered and developed the use of electronics in recording, editing, communicating and publishing the library surveys. All of this was accomplished through cooperation and communication with state library agencies and organizations, and reporting libraries.
Lorenz served on the Commission (for the Librarian of Congress) from 1970-75 and as Acting NCLIS Executive Director for a short period in 1990. Other major library posts he has held have been Assistant State Librarian of Michigan, 1946-56, Chief of Library Service Programs at the U.S. Office of Education during the years of the Library Service Act and the early years of the Library Services and Construction Act, 1957-1965, Deputy Librarian of Congress, during the years of MARC development, the initiation of the National Program for Acquisitions and Cataloging, the development of the Preservation Program, the Federal Library Committee, Cataloging in Publication, and the planning and construction of the Madison Building, 1965-76. In 1975, the year he served as acting Librarian of Congress, prior to his first retirement in 1976, the Library’s budget for fiscal 1976 received a 20% increase from the Congress, including approval to purchase the Walt Whitman papers for a half million.
Lorenz then served as Executive Director of the Association of Research Libraries during the early years of the Higher Education Act grants for academic libraries. His second retirement took place in 1980. In the seven years following, Lorenz taught at the Catholic University library school, served as acting director of the Catholic University Library, director of CAPCON and the Washington Research Library Consortium, and assisted the Georgetown University Library in its development program.
Lorenz is the recipient of numerous professional awards, most notably the 1993 Joseph W. Lippincott Award presented by the American Library Association, which concludes by citing: “His role as a friend and mentor, his diplomacy, and his commitment to education and library development have been lauded by an unparalleled array of library leaders.”
In leaving the Washington scene after 40 years of great change, Lorenz and his wife will be joining a retirement community near their daughter and family in the North Hills of Pittsburgh, PA. More travel, volunteer and consultant services are also in the vision picture.
Lorenz says he will be trying to fulfill his favorite wish: “May you have health, love and money, and the time to enjoy them all.”