INTRODUCTION

The National Commission on Libraries and Information Science, (NCLIS) a permanent and independent agency within the Executive Branch, is charged with primary responsibility for developing and recommending overall plans for library and information services adequate to meet the needs of the people of the United States. This report, the second Annual Report of the Commission, describes the activity of the agency between July 1, 1972, and June 30, 1973. It covers the results of investigations and studies that were begun as the first year of operation ended; provides initial information on the surveys and contracts in progress; summarizes the testimony from the first three regional hearings; condenses the recommendations of a special conference on user's information needs; and sets forth the initial points in a national program statement on libraries and information services that has been drafted and is now being revised by the Commission.

The work of the Commission during fiscal 1973 was (and is) both timely and directly related to major national goals. It was timely because national leaders have recognized that information provided at the right time and in the right amount and format can improve the ability of an individual, an organization, a business, or a governmental agency to make an informed decision, produce a better product, or live a richer life. It was in consonance with major national goals because better information services lead to a better informed citizenry-one that can cope with problems in the areas of neighborhood and personal security, adequate food and fuel, improved human relationships between persons of differing backgrounds and world peace. The Commission is seeking diligently for those paths, old or new, that will make information equally available to all.

Furthermore, it is seeking ways to communicate information to users in the most usable forms. This document summarizes the year's activity of the Commission toward these ends.

Information As A National Commodity

Information for the user is an end product worthy of considerable effort. The libraries and information facilities that provide access to information must be understood in three roles; each role has continuing and increasing importance.

The educational role of the school and academic library is largely unquestioned. The public library has, since the nineteenth century, been called the university of the common man. As off-campus education proliferates, all types of libraries will be used for access to assigned and collateral library materials. The educational role of the library and information center must be strengthened and enlarged as this occurs.

The informational role is not new to libraries, but its importance is heightened because society demands that the individual and the corporate group be knowledgeable on a broader front than previously was expected. As society changes, better informationsupplied more quickly-is needed in order to cope with events and trends. Information is of paramount importance to world economy and individual well-being. Information, a prime product of government and of private industry, has become the basis for improved functioning of industry, agriculture, trade and services.

One goal of information is to produce consistently a better yield at a lower cost. In industry the requirement for information may be a need for market forecasts or tariff data or the machinability characteristics of an alloy. Improved productivity as a result of current and valid information is the goal. At all levels of experience and activity the pressing requirement for trustworthy information is a critical and universal feature of our times.

Productivity in all sectors of the economy has become so dependent upon the development and use of information that information has taken on a new level of importance. It is a commodity that must be the concern of government, business and industry because the production of information in forms suitable for the marketplace of the future will be the best basis for continuing growth in the gross national product.

The recreational function of the library is too frequently undervalued. Important but unmeasured values come through the reading of books and the perusal of other library materials. So-called recreational reading can profoundly affect the life style of the reader or it can provide a stepping stone to improved living conditions. Library access to nonprint recorded materials-records, films, tapes,

pictures- may be a threshold for individual development along new lines of thought and activity. In the effort to understand the benefit of a library to its users, it is important to realize that the material in the library that is solely recreational for many users will be instructive and educational for another-and perhaps larger-group. Collections of popular paperbacks in supermarkets and drug stores do not fulfill the demands that are met in a people-centered library. This recreational function of the library is sometimes wrongly named "'entertainment." While people may be entertained by the matter they see or hear in library books, entertainment is not the goal. Recreation-"to make again"—is one of the suitable goals for the library and for the materials it collects and provides to users.

THE NATIONAL PROGRAM

Information, a commodity with a price, must be acquired, organized, preserved, distributed and put to use without waste of effort, time, energy or money. In the interest of this goal, the National Commission on Libraries and Information Science has been working this year toward a new national program of library and information services. An initial draft of the program has been circulated to those whose constructive criticism can assist with the first revisions. The notions in the current early edition are unlikely to survive unchanged in the final recommendations, but it is important for the reader of this report to know that the hearings, meetings, studies and conferences held this year have provided the basis for the ideas in the draft document. Six major points are made in the document:

1. A top-level agency in the Federal Government should be designated or created to develop, guide and lead the nation's effort to coordinate its library and information services. 2. A policy establishing certain encyclopedic and specialized library and information collections and national resources must be developed and implemented.

3. Bibliographic services that cover wide segments of the printed or nonprinted literature and that serve extensive groups of users with the means to identify and obtain it must be designated and supported as national information utilities.

4. National telecommunication linkage of information service facilities including computers must be extended and subsidized to provide nationwide access to national resource library collections and to national information utility services from any inhabited location that has telephone service.

5. Improved efforts must be made to select, train and retrain information system managers to deal with the complicated problems in this area of endeavor.

6. Existing state and regional library and information programs can become the building blocks of a national program. The partnership of Federal-state-local services must be developed to make the best use of resources, reduce duplication and accomplish at each level the tasks best suited to that level.

State programs that mirror the Federal program in organization and operation can contribute greatly to a unified attack on this important problem.

During the next year some of these points will be expanded, modified, amended, multiplied or perhaps eliminated. Their enumeration here should be considered as preliminary and informational.