Chapter 1 THE COMMISSION'S CHARGE In the Executive Order of September 2, 1966 (see Appendix A), the National Advisory Commission on Libraries was charged to: (1) Make a comprehensive study and appraisal (2) Appraise the policies, programs, and prac- (3) Appraise library funding, including Federal support of libraries, to determine how funds available for the construction and support of libraries and library services can be more effectively and efficiently utilized; and (4) Develop recommendations for action by Government or private institutions and organizations designed to ensure an effective and efficient library system for the Nation. The Commission tried conscientiously to meet these charges. In particular, it attempted a broad look at the complex roles of libraries in relation to user needs in a changing society, and it developed some recommendations for structural adaptations that can foster evolutionary development and enable continuing, coordinated study and action in the years ahead. The Commission's conclusions with respect to major objectives and its five specific recommendations for realizing these objectives are the basic subject matter of this Report. Chapters 2 through 4 present the rationale for the Commission's response to point 4 in the Executive Order. Here in Chapter 1, however, it seems appropriate to comment on the response of the National Advisory Commission on Libraries to the first three points set forth in the Executive Order. In some areas the Commission feels it would be presumptuous to make premature judgments on the basis of current evidence, but even in these cases some tentative judgments can be made. The discussion that follows touches on many areas, including some still confused by questions affecting the philosophy, administration, and financing of library and information services for the nation's needs. Tackling the imponderables is part of the job ahead. Evolving Responsiveness to User Needs With respect to point 1 in the original charge, the National Advisory Commission on Libraries approached its appraisal of the role of libraries in several ways. It arranged to hear a variety of testimony (see Appendixes C and D); it sponsored several major studies on basic aspects of the roles of libraries notably the System Development Corporation report on Technology and Libraries and the American Council of Learned Societies' study On Research Libraries (see Appendix B); and its members have discussed the issues at some length and familiarized themselves with many of the other major studies that fall into this general area. As a result of this effort, the Commission has reached a number of conclusions that have led to its specific recommendations. The Commission believes that libraries are both essential and major elements in providing resources for scholarship in almost all fields of knowledge, in serving as centers for the dissemination of knowledge, and in serving as components in the evolving national information systems. The library role in these matters is in fact so critical that the Commission believes that libraries serving these purposes must be significantly strengthened. This increased strength will require a variety of different approaches and techniques; Federal support, long-range planning, and better coordination are all urgent requirements. In the Statement by the President accompanying the Executive Order, three serious questions were asked about the future of our libraries. One of these was quite similar to the item in point 1 of the Commission's charge about the role of libraries as components of evolving national information systems. It asked: - What part can libraries play in the development of our communications and information-exchange In considering the role of libraries in national information systems and in communications and information-exchange networks, the Commission found many uncertainties, often further complicated by semantic confusion and a tendency to polarize conventional written information and scientific and technical data. The National Advisory Commission on Libraries favors resolving the uncertainties through multiple but coordinated planning and experimentation. It urges an evolutionary development responsive to user needs, whether it is simple interlibrary cooperation or a highly technical communications system. Some points supporting this conclusion appear to be already evident. Libraries are reservoirs of information whose means and ends of distribution are determined by the function the information is to serve in the hands of the user rather than by some abstract set of values inherent in the term "library" itself. Similarly, one cannot evaluate electronic and computer-processed information stores except in terms of improving the function of the ultimate user of this information. The requirements for effective library and information access for students, scholars, and practitioners in various disciplinary areas and at various levels display sharp and complex variations. Consequently, sweeping generalizations with respect to user needs are likely to be misleading through incompleteness and inaccuracy. For example, some misunderstandings exist because the need for books has now been joined by needs for information in other formats. In some technical fields traditional books may be playing a decreasing role as reservoirs of information. In other fields the need for traditional literary information may actually be increasing. But in all fields the needs are multiple and are likely to become more so as new multidisciplinary relationships emerge and develop simultaneously with further highly specialized needs. At the beginning levels of formal education, we find that the close adaptation of elementary school libraries to the functional needs of changing teaching patterns has made the book only one of many information resources handled by the information center of the elementary school. It is at other levels within the formal educational system the secondary school, college, and university levels -- that library needs are most evident and least satisfied. Here the more traditional understanding of the library asserts itself and a wide variety of measures will be needed, including more collaborative efforts among these libraries, to insure their long-range effectiveness. As for academic research, the library responses to these needs display, even where there appears to be greath strength, severe stresses and great unevenness in access. The roles of the public library are changing. The relative inefficiency of completely self-planned instruction and the increasing availability of organized instruction within the community have decreased the function of the public library as the university of the poor. Nevertheless, as educational demands upon the public library by the educational system itself increase, and as the sophistication of the community increases, the public library becomes an essential element within the community as an information reservoir for multiple user groups. It follows from the foregoing paragraphs that naturally evolving systems that clearly serve the needs of users should be given support in their own right at this time. No one can perceive the final nature of communications and information-exchange networks, nor the quality of a national information system--with a single exception. The exception is that such a system will finally be made up of a large number of highly specialized individual components, each one of which should be designed to serve the needs of a defined user group. The specialized libraries, such as the National Library of Medicine, one of our three existing national libraries, can therefore be looked upon as important models of how a library alters or develops its role and activity to serve a defined group--in this case the medical scientists and practitioners. The National Library of Medicine also engages in cooperative activities. Likewise the largest of our national libraries, the Library of Congress, has demonstrated many kinds of cooperation with other units, thus exemplifying how the understanding of the need of response to a user group (e. g., the Congress) does not exclude sensitivity to cooperation with the larger whole. Libraries badly need support in establishing new means of intercommunication and cooperation. Only after this kind of support of the existing order has been established can it be reliably estimated what the role of these units is in the evolving national information system. To summarize, then, and to place the Commission's response to the very broad point 1 of its charge in somewhat clearer focus, the following observations are relevant here. These are shared by members of the Commission and recur many times throughout this Report in various contexts. First, in order to improve the access of our society to information, the Commission believes the basic necessity is to foster development by an evolutionary process. An example is the application of technology, which can play an extremely important role in improving library and informational operations; the Commission does not presently see a technological solution that will make either the printed book or the library itself quickly obsolete --nor does it see any near-term system that will inexpensively provide instant access to all knowledge at any location. Second, if the present unsatisfactory situation, described particularly in Chapter 3 of this Report, is to be improved, the Commission believes there should be augmented Federal support for: (a) national or regional resource collections and services for infrequently used research materials in a carefully planned pattern; (b) nationally oriented indexing, cataloging, abstracting, and other bibliographical services; (c) basic and applied research in library operations and in the intellectual problems, technology, and economics of information transfer and dissemination. Third, it is apparent that public, school, and academic libraries will all be obligated to change many of their methods of work, their interrelationships, and some of their roles and objectives in the years ahead. If these libraries are to be responsive to contemporary and future requirements, the Commission believes that changes will have to take place at a much faster rate than has heretofore been the To effect more rapid rates of change and response, funds, among other things, will be required that are not now available. case. Fourth, there are, and there will continue to be, many information dissemination and data-handling functions that may be |