(7) Funding at evey level is inadequate. A major change in Federal policy is needed to ensure mutually reinforcing funding formulas. (8) New Federal legislation should give local libraries the incentive to join larger systems outside of their immediate jurisdictions. Some Concerns of the Private Sector The phrase "private sector" includes libraries and other organizations, for-profit and not-for-profit, that produce, process, and distribute information. Through publishing, indexing, abstracting, and other services, they perform vital functions in information transfer. The "information industry" directly or indirectly affects all elements of society, and the Commission considers it essential that information activities in the public and private sectors work in harmony with one another in consonance with the national interest. A major concern of the private sector is its economic viability in view of the possibility that the sharing of resources through networks implies a loss of potential sales. Librarians, on the other hand, claim that networks will lead to greater information use and, hence, to increased sales. The Commission believes that the creators and consumers of information cannot exist without each other and that precautions should be taken to protect the economic balance between them. Another cause of alarm in the private sector is the dominance of the Federal Government as the largest single producer and disseminator of information in the United States. The question is whether the Federal Government or the private sector should publish and dissemininate information produced with public funds. The Commission believes that policy guidelines about the use of private agencies for the dissemination of public information are needed. The third major concern of the private sector is the copying of copyrighted materials from network resources, as noted above. The Trend Toward Cooperative Action Present Networking Activities Librarians have long shared resources by such means as union catalogs and interlibrary loans. During recent years, encouraged by Federal and State leadership and funding, they have begun to evolve more formal, contractual "systems," "consortia," or "networks," a few of which, such as MEDLARS,' already benefit from computer and telecommunications technology in the provision of regional and local services from national resources. Typical of evolving networks are the intrastate programs in Washington, Ohio, Illinois, New York and California, and the interstate programs in New England, the Southeast and the Southwest. Increasingly, the search for fruitful ways to share the public knowledge resource crosses geographical, jurisdictional and type-of-library boundaries. Although none of the existing library networks has reached full potential, a few have demonstrated the viability of resource sharing through electronic networking. An example is the not-for-profit Ohio College Library Center that now serves over 600 library terminals from a single computer at Columbus, Ohio. This system allows participants to access a large data base containing over one-and-a-half million catalog records, for the purpose of producing cards for local library catalogs, locating books in other libraries, and, eventually, providing such other services as search by subject, control of circulation records, and collection of management information. Barriers to Cooperative Action (1) The information agencies in the public and private sectors are growing more diverse, and the components-the libraries, the publishing industry, the indexing and abstracting services, the educational institutions and the various governments agencies-have had little experience in working together toward a common national goal. (2) State, local, institutional, and private funding is unstable and insufficient, and is not designed to foster interjurisdictional cooperation. (3) Traditional funding patterns will need to be changed to make them equally supportive of both local and nationwide objectives, because the provision of information service in many localities is still limited by taxes supporting a particular jurisdiction. (4) No national guidelines exist to ensure the development of compatible statewide and multistate network services. 1 Medical Literature Access and Retrieval System. (5) Many Federal libraries and information centers have neither adopted a fully-open policy toward serving the general public nor formed among themselves a Federal network. (6) The attitude of librarians toward the new technologies and new conceptions of the role of the library in society is often negative. (7) The library work force needed to plan, develop and operate cooperative networks is not yet being well enough trained to deal with nonprint materials or with computer and communication technologies. (8) The nation does not yet have an official center to coordinate the processing and distribution of standard bibliographic records, including not only the records distributed by the Library of Congress, but also those produced by other public and private agencies in the current complex pattern of bibliographic services. (9) A final obstacle to the sharing of resources is the lack of public knowledge about their existence and location. The Recommended National Program The recommended national program is an overall structure within which current deficiencies can be corrected and future requirements addressed. It would coordinate and reinforce all Federal and state efforts to support local and specialized information services. Program Objectives (1) Ensure that basic library and information services are adequate. to meet the needs of all local communities. (2) Provide adequate special services to special constituencies, including the unserved. (3) Strengthen existing statewide resources and systems. (4) Ensure basic and continuing education for personnel essential to the implementation of the national program. (5) Coordinate existing Federal programs of library and information service. (6) Encourage the private sector to become an active partner in the development of the national program. (7) Establish a locus of Federal responsibility charged with implementing the national network and coordinating the national program under the policy guidance of the National Commission. This agency should have authority to make grants and contracts and to promote standards, but must be supportive and coordinative rather than authoritarian and regulatory. (8) Plan, develop and implement a nationwide network of library and information service. Meeting the above eight priority objectives constitutes the sum of the Commission's proposed program. In some instances, existing programs would be strengthened or reoriented. In other cases, the Commission would initiate new programs, such as the nationwide network. Only by the melding of present and future cooperative systems into a national structure can the rich resources of this nation be fully exploited. The Nationwide Network Concept Major Federal Responsibilities The Federal Government would force no library or other information service to join the network, but would provide technical inducements and funding incentives to state governments and the private sector to strengthen their ability to become effective components of a mutually reinforcing program. (1) Encourage and promulgate standards. The Federal Government has a major responsibility to encourage and support efforts to develop the standards required to assure interconnection between intrastate networks, multistate networks and specialized networks in the public and private sectors, i.e., the standards for: (a) computer software, access and security protocols, data elements and codes; (b) bibliographic formats, films, computer tapes and sound recordings; (e) literary texts in machine-readable form; and (f) reprography and micrographics. (2) Make unique and major resource collections available nationwide. Institutions with unique resources of national significance, such as the Harvard University Libraries, the New York Public Library, the Newberry Library, the Glass Information Center in Corning, New York, and the Chemical Abstracts Service, would be provided incremental funding to help extend their extramural services to the whole country. (3) Develop centralized services for networking. While many services can be better managed locally, others might be sponsored centrally in either the public or private sector, for example, a national audiovisual repository, a national system of interlibrary communication, a national depository for the preservation of microform masters and "best copies" of all works of research value, a national periodical bank, and machine-readable data banks of articles and abstracts in the fields of language, literature, or musicology. (4) Explore computer use. Computers have become indispensable tools of network operations, not only for routine clerical tasks, such as the dissemination of bibliographic information, the acquisition of books, catalog card production, and the control of circulation and serial records, but also for the retrieval of knowledge resources in machine-readable form. In addition to dedicated minicomputers for local internal processing, a nationwide network might be expected to employ centralized computer installations (a) for production of bibliographic data for use by local agencies throughout the country, and (b) for searching the knowledge resource itself to learn what is available where, to record new holdings and to arrange interlibrary delivery. (5) Apply new forms of telecommunications. In order to place people in more immediate contact with the total national information resources, a future telecommunications system might eventually integrate teletype, audio, digital and video signals into a single system. The greatest boon to national access to the public knowledge resource would be free or reduced rates for educational and cultural use of the Federal Telecommunications System and satellite communication channels, at least until the traffic has reached an economically viable level. (6) Support research and development. A Federal program of research and development, through grants and contracts, should address such problems as the application of new technologies, the relevance of services to different reader communities, the effects of new information systems on users, and the profession itself as it struggles with the dynamics of change. (7) Foster cooperation with similar national and international programs. In order to tap the knowledge resources of the world, the national program should support such efforts as those of UNESCO'S UNISIST project, the International Standards Office, the International Federation of Library Associations, and the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development. Organizational Relationships and Supporting Responsibilities In addition to the Executive Branch of the Federal Government, key components of the national program are the fifty states, the Library of Congress, and the private sector. Each of the levels in the nationwide program should bear its share of the total financial burden. Responsibilities of State Governments The Federal Government would fund those aspects of the network which support national objectives and stimulate statewide and multistate library development. The state governments would accept the |