in Illinois has greatly strengthened my hand in making my argument for this legislation. I thank you. Dr. BAKALIS. Thank you, Mr. Hansen. Mr. BRADEMAS. Dr. Bakalis, I would echo what Mr. Hansen has said. Your testimony has brought a rather different perspective to our hearings. I, for one, hope that your State legislature here in Illinois will take another look at the budget you have submitted for educational research so that this great industrial State can be a pioneer among the States in the country, as I think its traditions entitle it to be. This would show us that State governments can give leadership in investing State's tax dollars in the kind of an educational research enterprise we are talking about here with Federal tax dollars. We are very grateful to you for your having testified here. Mr. BRADEMAS. Mr. Parton, would you mind, sir, resuming your place at the table with Dr. Feldzamen and we will now put some questions to you. I was particularly interested in the stress you placed upon the involvement of working teachers and administrators in the programs to be supported by the National Institute of Education. I wonder, therefore, if you could give the subcommittee any comment on the ways in which you at Encyclopaedia Britannica Education Corp. has found it possible, you as a private corporation, to involve teachers and administrators in the research and development of education. Mr. PARTON. I have a few comments I could make. We have a number of consultants one of whom, Mr. Willis, was a superintendent of schools in Chicago and he is an active consultant to us and forms not only a bridge between our technicians and staff here and the school communities of the Nation, but also has helped us test various pioneering programs out in the field, most notably the one on reading. He is in Florida where there are large migrant populations who have special problems of reading education, similar to those that would be in say, Idaho. That is one example. Another example is right here in Chicago. We have the Britannica Reading Achievement Center in which we have spent nearly $2 million this past year trying to develop a remedial reading program for children between 7 and 12 with all sorts of new techniques: ear phones and a mixture of audiovisual devices and materials, as well as standard workbooks. We have had a number of consultants who have gone around the country picking the brains of all the alleged authorities we could find on reading and trying to find out how best to meet this particular problem. We also found that when they do come up with a program that is innovative, we then have to teach the teachers. You cannot really program genius. You cannot design a Maria Montessori in the abstract. I am not sure we have done so. Some of our efforts have been failures, even with the best of consultation. Al, would you like to add to that? Dr. FELDZAMEN. Let me just add that most of our people-writers, planners, producers and marketing people come from the ranks of those who have taught and administered in the schools and have therefore gained first-hand experience and knowledge. Some of them return periodically to school as students, or go back to teach themselves in school. In that sense there is a connection between our company-and I am sure most of the companies engaged in the production of educational materials and textbooks and reference books, films, filmstrips and people who work on educational television as well-a close and continuing association between the private industry centers and the schools themselves today. Mr. BRADEMAS. One of the criticisms we have heard in the subcommittee from other witnesses is that it is terribly difficult for the consumers of the products of textbook manufacturers and audiovisual materials manufacturers to measure the educational effectiveness of the products. What do you have to say on this point? You are familiar with the criticism, I take it. In other words, how can the schoolteachers, school principals, and school superintendents and parents and others know that they are not being bilked by fast talking textbook salesmen? Mr. PARTON. Well, even the best textbook can be ineffective if it is used by a bad teacher. Sometimes a great teacher can make do with practically nothing. I recently visited P.S. 33 in New York which is experimenting with the open classroom in the British fashion. It was an utterly fascinating experience where the materials are so diverse you would need a telephone book to list them all. I do not think the creators of the textbooks are the ones who should measure their effectiveness. They have an ax to grind. Salesmen naturally want to sell; a publisher naturally wants to see his book or film win a market and win applause and also teach, educate. This I might think should be an appropriate function for the NIE to apply the calipers to accomplishment. Mr. BRADEMAS. I agree with that observation very much. It is a very complicated area. But it seems to me, and this may be an expression of an idealistic and naive judgment, that in the long run it is better business for private industry to produce materials and processes that can be insofar as you can measure these matters-objectively shown to be effective in teaching people. I take it that you have no disagreement with that judgment. Mr. PARTON. No, I do not disagree, but I am not sure it is scientifically measurable so precisely. Mr. BRADEMAS. Well, I think I entered a qualifier when I made that observation. Where Senator Benton suggested in his statement that the Institute explore the wasteful duplication between the educational television and educational film organizations, what does that sentence mean? Mr. PARTON. I think it would be better for Dr. Feldzamen to respond to that. Dr. FELDZAMEN. Thank you. We have a large, and I think in the main, successful industry in the educational materials producing area providing motion pictures, film strips, slides, and other so-called audiovisual materials for the schools today. These materials are produced for the most part by companies such as ours and others-in this city, Coronet-McGraw Hill, Learning Corp. of America, and others covering a wide variety of scholastic topics and for people of all ages. I think that due to the national evaluation process which has been conducted through the years by the millions of teachers and administrators, the good materials are accepted and used, and the poor ones are in the main, rejected. At the same time there is a system largely publicly supported, either by Federal or State funds, and to some extent by foundations, of instructional or educational television organizations. Most of the material they put on the air they make themselves, rather than attempt to collaborate with the private producers in instructional films. Very often the same types of topics are produced by both organizations. And in the case of television duplicated and reproduced by many stations and organizations. Further, instructional and educational television has a delivery mechanism to the pupil, capable of giving the best kind of an education the country can produce using motion pictures. But it does not use the motion pictures-or hardly at all-produced by the private industry that produces and sells them through another system to the school. Why make several television programs with Federal or State funds when the same topic is already available in material that can be readily used? I think this is merely a failure of organization and administration throughout the country rather than any conscious attempt of ignorance of the other person's product. A small change in organization could probably rectify this situation and combine the resources of these two groups. Mr. BRADEMAS. I just have a final question and maybe you can give me a brief comment on it. What do you perceive as the impact of two developments on education, video-cassettes and microfiche? Mr. PARTON. I think I had better explain what ultramicrofiche is. It is a method of reproducing a book on a film so small it becomes the size of your little fingernail. So, a thousand pages could be put on a card the size of a library index card. A library the size of this big room could be compressed to the size of a small trunk. This is at a time when every university is crammed and unable to find book space, book shelf space, for many books. This new technology offers all sorts of economies. I was in California at Mills College at a trustee meeting one morning and one of the fellow trustees, the dean of Stanford, said that the Stanford library no longer has a single inch of shelf space. It will take them 3 years to raise the money to build more room and the books come in at the rate of $50,000 a year. Where are we going to put them? Well, microfiche has this marvelous capacity of compression. It is an inexpensive process. But it is easy to use. I think it is an enormous technological advance. Mr. BRADEMAS. I should like to ask Mr. Parton if you are able to send us a memorandum or some further statement explaining the implications of microfiche for education both in this country and abroad. I think the subcommittee would find that most valuable. Mr. PARTON. We would be delighted. Mr. BRADEMAS. Thank you. (The material referred to follows:) STATEMENT SUBMITTED BY LIBRARY RESOURCES, INC., A SUBSIDIARY OF ENCYCLOPAEDIA BRITANNICA, INC., CONCERNING THE LIBRARY OF AMERICAN CIVILIZATION, A MICROBOOK SERIES For over 200 years, Encyclopaedia Britannica has been involved in service to education. Most recently, Britannica has formed Library Resources Inc., a subsidiary company that will publish a major series of library collections in Microbook form. After concentrated study of educational requirements and technological possibilities, Britannica concluded that one critical factor in the learning function is an adequate library facility-one that provides, through its resources, the broadest and most objective record possible of our cultural heritage, and the most efficient and accurate means of access to that record. The library cannot be small nor can its materials any longer be stored in a way that permits only the professional scholar to find and use them. More campuses than ever before require even freshmen and sophomores to consult original sources after reading textbook accounts, and to pursue their own investigations. Today, the rate of scholarly publication is so rapid that few libraries can afford to keep up with new books and, at the same time, systematically augment their collections of older books and periodicals. Library requirements may represent to a newly formed institution the most difficult obstacle to achieving accreditation. In short, adequate library facilities at the college and university level have become such a problem that, in many instances, only a major change in library technology can hope to solve it. This change is exemplified by the Microbook Library Series which permits the collections of the world's most distinguished libraries to be photographically reproduced in miniature form with great precision. The first series from Library Resources, Inc. is The Library of American Civilization, Beginnings to 1914. Composed of 6,000,000 pages, approximately 20,000 volumes, and over 12,000 titles, the library ranges over all aspects of America's culture, treating every field and reflecting every important point of view. Subsequent libraries will cover other cultures and fields of study with equal thoroughness. This series makes it possible for every college in the country to have the library resources of a great University at a fraction of the usual cost. The program can provide every student and faculty member with his own portable reader. And it is expected that eventually it will be possible for users to acquire Microbooks for a small fee so they can form personal libraries for permanent value. The high quality of Microbooks provides for the first time the opportunity for extended reading of Microforms with comfort and ease. Microbook technology is neither an extension of the low-reduction procedure developed chiefly for government reports, nor a modification of the ultra-high-density technique designed for mass storage of technical information. Such systems were not designed for extended book reading. What is a Microbook? A Microbook is a photographic reproduction of materials at very great reduction on a small transparent film card. The film card is called a microfiche, a form of document storage and retrieval now in wide use in government and in commerce and industry. Microfiches (an extension of the microfilm concept) generally contain 60 to 100 page images per card; however, the Microbook card contains up to 1,000 page images in the same space, at reductions up to 90x. The choice of fiche format and reduction ratio for the Microbook libraries was determined in part by a decision to limit each fiche to one title, save for pamphlets and other very brief items. This, along with economic and technical considerations, dictated a fiche size of 3 x 5 inches and a format that allows for a maximum of 1,000 pages arranged in 50 columns and 20 rows. It is expected that these specifications will become standard for book production in microform. How a Microbook is Produced A Microbook is produced by a four-step process. Material is first reduced to standard microfilm size on special film. The microfilm is then reduced once again, and images are arranged in rows and columns on a glass plate. From this glass master, the final dissemination copies are printed by contact photography. Final prints are laminated on both sides with a thick layer of tough, protective plastic. This lamination gives Microbook several advantages over standard microfiche or microfilm; it protects the image from scratches, fingerprints, and dust; it makes the fiche sufficiently rigid so that no additional mounting is required; it renders the fiche almost impervious to deterioration and wear. Advantages of Microbook 1. The acquisition cost of a library in Microbook, including the necessary high-quality readers, is a fraction of the cost of the same collection in book form, often as much as 15 to 1, including accession costs. The total cost of the Library of American Civilization is $19,500, less than $1 per volume. 2. The space requirement for Microbook materials is far less than for book storage. (The ratio is approximately 1 to 250.) 3. Centralized selection and pre-cataloging and indexing make possible higher than normal library standards at much less than the usual cost. Readers and Reading With the use of a Microbook reader, the image is projected from inside the reader onto its viewing screen at normal (or, as is often the case, at larger than normal) page size. The reading room need not be darkened. The user is easily able to find and read any page by moving the fiche until the page number is located, or he can simply browse through the pages. He can also move back and forth through the book-from the text to the index, from the index back to the text, and so forth. A table reader is available with an 81⁄2" x 12" screen. A lap reader is available with a 7" x 10' screen. This reader weighs less than 5 lbs. and will be comfortable and convenient to hold in the lap and read like a book. Both these readers are capable of displaying on the screen the extraordinary quality of the Microbook fiches. These two readers will be followed by a reader-printer to enable library users to make hard copy printouts of any page in a Microbook. Library Content and Organization The Library of American Civilization, the first in the Microbook Library Series, contains 6.000,000 pages and approximately 20,000 volumes. It is made up of carefully selected materials on all aspects of American life and literature, covering every period up to the outbreak of World War I. It includes the important points of view reflected in American writing-from those of the framers of the Constitution to those of Indians, Negroes, and other groups that have played such an important part in the shaping of American society. American civilization is a singularly appropriate subject for the first Library. All colleges in this country, and a growing number abroad, recognize the importance of teaching American history, social and political organization, and literature. Although abundant source material for the study of the United States exists, much of it is rare, and no one has ever assembled, organized, and made available a comprehensive collection for college use. Furthermore, the current upheavals in American society clearly indicate the need to restudy the past, reassessing the work of well known authors, and seeking new perspectives from lesser known authors who may represent unpopular but vitally important views. The Library will be extremely useful in courses on the history of the United States. It is designed to bring out every aspect of this history-political, economic, social, cultural, scientific, and technological. The Library will also find heavy use in departments of English and American literature. In other subject areas, the Library will help to maintain links with the past: in government, economics, and law, by showing origins and development of our modern system; in drama, dance, music, and other arts, by reminding the student of older themes and treatments. For future teachers the Library can provide a strong foundation in American studies and the history of the development of American education. Duplication between the Library of American Civilization and current holdings of colleges and universities will not, in most cases, be appreciable. Studies show that in the case of a general collection of 100,000 or so volumes, duplica |