Commission on Libraries, indicate that the problem of manpower shortage in our libraries is of such critical severity as to merit its being singled out for special mention. All estimates of the number of professional personnel needed to fill existing vacancies and for normal attrition of staff in public, academic, and special libraries exceed the number of librarians graduated each year by the 42 accredited schools of librarianship in the United States and Canada. With respect to the provision of librarians qualified for positions in elementary and secondary school libraries, the situation is even more unsatisfactory. Before the library profession can hope to enroll the requisite number of persons for training in the schools of librarianship, a variety of obstacles must be overcome. First, librarianship should be made more attractive as a career for men as well as for women. As is true of most professions in which women predominate at the lower and middle levels of responsibility, the prestige of librarianship as a whole is lower in the public view than it deserves to be, and the financial rewards are less tempting than in many other professions that require professional education. General public ignorance of the variety of interesting specialized career opportunities within the broad field of librarianship also make recruitment difficult. A further handicap is the discrepancy between the status, salaries, and fringe benefits accorded the librarians of many academic institutions and those available to their colleagues employed in teaching and research. Finally, there is a long tradition of recruitment for librarianship among only the humanistically oriented college students. Too few scientifically oriented young people understand that the profession of librarianship embraces all categories of specialists who mediate between the sources of recorded information and the people who need access to information in all subject fields and at all levels of sophistication. A second major obstacle is the inadequacy of the 42 accredited graduate schools of librarianship in the United States and Canada with respect to financial support for staff and physical facilities. It is not known how many qualified applicants for library training may be lost for this reason. To complicate matters still further, all schools of librarianship contend with a shortage of qualified teachers, with a scarcity of fellowships to encourage the advanced study requisite for the preparation of future faculty, and with inadequate support for workshops, institutes, and other programs to enhance the competence of librarians already employed and help them adjust to changing demands. Equally important is the inadequacy of support for working librarians who wish to take advantage of opportunities for specialized training or advanced training when these do exist. Paralleling these dilemmas is the slowness of the library profession itself in achieving agreement regarding the nature and extent of education or training needed for employment in the various specializations of librarianship, and in enlisting more fully the aid of the various disciplines of the social, behavioral, and applied sciences in preparing library science students for the changing requirements of library management and for the evolving role of the library in our society. The resolution of library and information science manpower problems will be difficult, but they can yield to a number of specific measures. First, the library profession should undertake a program of ongoing research in librarianship in order to improve functional efficiency and facilitate the establishment of the variety of training programs needed now and in the future. Research in library education itself should be encouraged, as well as curricular experimentation. Second, library administrators should employ every effort to make all professional library work intellectually and socially challenging to retain the best minds that enter the profession. Third, the Federal Government, which has already acknowledged its responsibility for the improvement of library service under its constitutional mandate on the general welfare, should assist the profession through a number of undertakings. The United States Office of Education should analyze the library personnel situation on a regular basis, compare it with standards established by itself or the library associations, and publish its findings. It should, further, maintain a clearinghouse of information on all innovations in library education and training and on all efforts of libraries to make more efficient use of personnel. Further, the Office of Education should provide advisory aid to library schools, library associations, and others interested in recruiting people to library work in adequate numbers to carry out the various existing and emerging specialized tasks required. To assist the library profession, the proposed National Commission on Libraries and Information Science should give high priority to an exploration of professional education and training, including experimentation with alternate modes of library training. The Commission should assist also with achieving improved salary scales and providing better promotional possibilities to make librarianship more attractive as a career. Finally, Federal assistance in developing library personnel should be provided: (1) by direct aid to schools offering graduate and undergraduate training, postgraduate in-service training, and refresher courses; (2) by aid in the publication of suitable texts for such training; (3) by support of special programs to train potential teachers of librarianship; and (4) by greatly increased provision of funds for fellowships for undergraduate, graduate, and special library training. Conclusion These, then, are six areas where current inadequacies exist, and future inadequacies are foreseen unless all participants in the management and use of information can look to coherent national planning and coordinated research and development. The nation's needs for library and information service can be expressed in terms of the need to serve formal education, the public at large, and research of all kinds. The need to provide appropriate ways of locating information (bibliographic access) and acquiring it for use (physical access) is basic. Manpower is a pervasive and very urgent problem area. The six interrelated objectives discussed above form the context for the recommendations of the National Advisory Commission on Libraries set forth in Chapter 4. な Chapter 4 RECOMMENDATIONS FOR ACHIEVING THE OBJECTIVES In order to serve the needs of education at all levels, the general public in all its diversity, and research in all fields of knowledge, the problems of access to continually burgeoning information and efficient utilization of manpower must be resolved. Some dilemmas are immediately pressing and can be handled by immediate action. Other dilemmas are foreseen as still emerging over the transition period to the long future, and thus provision must be made for constant adaptation to inevitably changing needs and improved understanding of these needs. The National Advisory Commission on Libraries believes the five recommendations discussed below provide both a sound base for the future and a realistic means of coping with current inadequacies. National Commission on Libraries and Information Science RECOMMENDATION: Establishment of a National In order to implement and further develop the national policy of library services for the nation's needs, the most important single measure that can be undertaken is the establishment of a continuing Federal planning agency. It is noteworthy that almost all representatives of library, scholarly, scientific, and other professional associations who testified before the National Advisory Commission on Libraries gave high priority in their recommendations to the creation of such a Federal planning agency. The present Commission's efforts to analyze current and future national library needs, assess the strengths and weaknesses of existing library resources and services, and evaluate the effects of library legislation, leave the members with the absolute conviction that the goal of library adequacy will be achieved only as a consequence of long-range planning and fostering of the evolutionary process of library development. This will require taking advantage of present and emerging knowledge in information science; it will require encouraging and exploiting future research. The proposed National Commission should be charged with the - responsibility of preparing full-scale plans to deal with the nation's library and information needs, and for advising the Federal Government and other agencies, institutions, and groups both public and private, with respect to those needs. It should be empowered to conduct, or have conducted, such studies and analyses as are necessary for the fulfillment of its responsibilities; it should have ready access to information relevant to its purposes from other Government agencies concerned with library and information services; and it should be empowered to recommend legislation which is needed to enhance and strengthen the nation's library and information services. The National Commission should be established by the Congress. Its members should be appointed by the President with the advice and consent of the Senate. The National Commission should report at least once a year to the President and to the Congress on its activities, recommendations, and plans in the areas of its responsibility and concern. This report should be published. The present National Advisory Commission on Libraries recommends that this proposed National Commission on Libraries and Information Science be constituted of not more than 15 private citizens of distinction. This group shall include, but not necessarily be restricted to, persons competent in the library and information science professions. The Chairman should be appointed by the President from among its members. A rotating, staggered membership is suggested so that individuals serve for a term of five or six years. To accomplish its complex and broad mission the National Commission should be provided with a staff adequate in number and strong in expertise, and with funds sufficient to enable it to exercise the extensive research and planning functions which will be necessary if it is to provide sound advice to the President and the Congress. A suggested location appropriate for the National Commission on Libraries and Information Science is in the Office of the Secretary of Health, Education, and Welfare. The Library of Congress: The National Library of the United States RECOMMENDATION: Recognition and strengthening of the role of the Library of Congress as the National |