houses of books and manuscripts, not collections of reading-rooms, and not sets of reading devices. Any library is instead a particular kind of meeting-place, and it grows from certain major attributes of the human mind and spirit. It is not a neutral spot, not passive, and yet it does not have restrictive purpose or direction as a thoughtful radio or television show does. A library differs from other systems of communication, indeed, precisely because its value and power emerge from the use which we as individuals choose to make of it. - A library - great or small, privately or publicly supported has two major and unique functions. First, it makes possible meetings of mind and idea which are not limited by our normal boundaries of time, space, and social or economic level. An effective library gives us the option of moving to the far side of the world, to the fifth century B. C., or to the company of prophets and princes. And we do all this, not by the transient means of fantasy, but by the enduring power of our own human awareness. We can become more than we were; we can, if we wish it, increase our individual stature as well as our public effectiveness. - To say this is to suggest the second great function of a library. It is the institution in our society which allows and encourages the development, the extension of ideas not their passive absorption, but their active generation. Here our image of the conventional readingroom may interfere. We picture a hundred silent, inert figures, and forget that each is making some active reckoning with all that he thought to be true before he confronted a new range of ideas or conditions. He may be more active at that quiet moment, in fact, than at any other time in his life. The technical means of his encounter may be a record, a tape, a film, a print-out or most radical of all a book. Libraries are not bounded by means; they will and should employ any means to achieve their ends. - - At a time of great technical virtuosity it is important to realize that in the predictable future new means of information storage and retrieval will not displace the book. Nor will they lessen the need for materials, buildings, or skilled staff. Instead they will extend and supplement what we now have, and our investments during the next decade must take equal account of the enduring purposes of libraries and the diverse emergent means of strengthening them. Clearly, of course, libraries cannot achieve their ends for the - illiterate or the indifferent. They are dependent on teachers, writers, parents to set interest alight, but they are the means of meeting the interest, and giving it range beyond those who first stirred it. This creative center which is a library should not be defined by the adequacy of its space, equipment, and collections alone, but by the adequacy of its people those who first teach the mind to inquire, and those in the libraries who can show it how to inquire. The librarian of today and tomorrow must have many technical and professional skills, but above all he must have skill with people. He is a teacher whose subject is learning itself, and his class has no limits on age, field of study, or degree of competence. The national policy which we propose is as a result based equally on the need for skilled and sensitive people, bold and yet imaginative technical means, and support from every sector of the economy as well as every major level of government. Douglas M. Knight Chairman, National Advisory TABLE OF CONTENTS Chapter 1. The Commission's Charge.. Evolving Responsiveness to User Needs |