jcrc RECEIVED JUL 9 1979 105 West Fourth Street Cincinnati, Ohio 45202 Phone: 241-5620 jewish President Treasurer James Hilb Executive Director Rabbi Norman Cohen Carol Dragul Baron Gold The Jewish Community Relations Council also views the intention of the bill to license radio stations indefinitely, and television stations indefinitely after two 5 year license renewal periods as potentially dangerous. According to H.R. 3333 the public would have a very limited opportunity for petitioning for license revocation. The bill's random selection proposal and elimination of comparative Rabbi Solomon T. Greenberghearings could drastically limit the rights of minorities and women to greater access of ownership. Rabbi Fishel J. Goldfeder David Goldman Leonard P. Goorian Rabbi Harold D. Hahn Ray Kantor Anne L. Korey Joseph Leinwohl Ronald Richards Ruth Zeligs Past Presidents The Jewish Community Relations Council sees the The Jewish Community Relations Council believes that in order to maintain a variety of perspectives and diversity of background, the number of FCC Commissioners should remain at seven instead of being reduced to five. Indeed the Communications Act of 1934 may need to be updated, but a complete rewrite as set forth in H.R. 3333 would most certainly eliminate all guarantee of public interest and access in the broadcasting industry. For forty-five years the operators in the telecommunications industry have been accountable to the public. The basic premises of accountability and public access must not be abandoned in the interest of marketplace forces. We sincerely hope that you will make every effort possible to prevent H.R. 3333 from leaving committee in its present state. Cordially, Benjamin Gattl- Benjamin Gettler, President Statement of the AMERICAN LIBRARY ASSOCIATION to the House Subcommittee on Communications on HR 3333 The Communications Act of 1979 July 11, 1979 The American Library Association is a nonprofit educational association of some 35,000 libraries, librarians and information specialists, library trustees, educators and communicators. The Association is the only nongovernmental organization at the national level representing all types of library and information services. Libraries are a national resource and the Association's members are concerned with providing the public with maximum access to this resource. This concern is shared nationally and it is the intent of the upcoming White House Conference on Library and Information Services--through citizen participation in state, territorial, and national assemblies--to provide the impetus and planning that will expand and improve the public's access to libraries. Libraries collectively are a major disseminator of occupational, educational, and recreational information to the American people. As such libraries make use of the various forms of communications technologies. In order to provide needed information to all citizens, libraries must be able: 1. to share informational materials over distance. 2. to reach out to those persons not previously served nor served well by libraries via a means to which they can relate: broadcasting, cable and television. 3. to expand current library services involving computers and telecommunications to all libraries and information centers throughout the United States so that all citizens, no matter how remotely located, can be served equitably. On October 5, 1978, our Association filed testimony with your Subcommittee on the previous version of the re-write bill, HR 13015. The major thrust of that testimony is still pertinent for HR 3333. There are, however, certain points which need re-emphasis and there are important reactions that our members have expressed re garding HR 3333 which need to be communicated to your Subcommittee. We will deal with these in this testimony.1 Why does the library community have great interest in the "rewrite" legislation? There are three major reasons for the great interest in the rewrite by the library community: the evolving services and products libraries offer today or will offer in the future. The changing role of libraries: Today's libraries are no longer just reposi-. tories for books but sources of information with emphasis on access and communication. The static concept of the library as "a warehouse of information" is changing into a dynamic one through the use of media of all types. The current concerns with expanding the informational resources of libraries and the need to increase community awareness and support for libraries have caused many libraries to turn to cable and broadcast television and radio to extend their services to the public. Excellent examples of this are the Memphis Public Library in Tennessee and the Tri-County Regional Library in Rome, Georgia, which air over 40 hours of television programming per week in addition to providing their "regular" library services. Another example is the Washington State Library which administers the Washington Library Network (WLN), a small but growing automated library network, or bibliographic entity that supplies cataloging, ordering, and other kinds of bibliographic information to libraries via on-line computer facilities. Such utilities serve nearly two thousand libraries in the U.S. over thousands of miles of leased telephone lines and through a variety of dialed toll service carriers. Many of the viewpoints set forth in this testimony were taken from the transcripts of the Open Hearing on the Communications Act which was conducted by the Library and Information Technology Association (LITA), a division of the American Library Association, on January 9, 1979. The hearing was held as part of the Midwinter Meeting of ALA in Washington, D.C. The emerging technologies: In the future the means to library access and for information dissemination will be increasingly through computers and communication. The explosive development of information and communication technologies, including cable TV, mini and microcomputers, videocassette technology, video discs, and satellite transmission increasingly make possible heretofore unexplored possibilities for access to information to the public. The evolving services and products libraries offer today: Today's libraries and the libraries of the future will be experimenting with new ways of offering services to the public. Many of these services will be potentially affected by the rewrite act. As one of our members puts it, "Today, thanks to your local library, you can play a game of Star Trek on a computer, listen by phone to a tape on glaucoma, watch an educational program at home on cable TV, hear a radio broadcast book review and even borrow a book. Tomorrow? All of the above; but also, libraries could possibly become the information source of choice. A source of information when and how you need it." The technological developments that the new Communications Act will either encourage or impede can make ready access both feasiHome delivery of library services via electronic means is a good example of experiments now underway to explore new dimensions of library service to library patrons. ble and desirable. Unquestionably, the rewrite act will have a direct impact on the future of libraries through the technologies that it regulates and how the regulation is carried out. This legislation by design, or the lack of it, will create a de facto information infrastructure and directly impact the "ecology" of the information environment. Keeping in mind the above considerations regarding the changing role of libraries in today's society, the American Library Association wishes to point out to the Subcommittee some of the strengths and limitations of HR 3333. We shall summarize each, then comment on each of the limitations delineating our concerns about each provision. |