adequate for most working jobs. Project FIND, a commercial reference service, advertises training for people with general liberal arts education to make them superior information retrieval specialists. Leadership positions in administration, systems planning and evaluation and research require greater depth of subject training and broader theoretical training than is now offered in library schools. A special librarian reminded the Commission that the Special Libraries Association voted against requiring a professional degree for membership because they saw it as an unrealistic measure of qualification for special librarianship. It was recommended that community colleges develop courses to train library technicians. These could be designed with the aid of local library administrators who could then offer practical experience during the course and jobs after it. It was further recommended that NCLIS consider the issue of library education and appraise present programs remembering that much of the strength in today's total manpower is a result of the diversity of programs now offered.

That retraining, in-service training and continuing education for all staff members are three necessary steps in this age of rapid change was repeated at various times in testimony in relation to many separate problems. In these programs lie opportunities for changing attitudes and improving the quality of service in every department of the library. However, administrators and trustees must be convinced of their value. Released time for training has been unavailable and programs few. To be valuable, these courses must be well planned and specifically relevant to the needs of the participants. For example, a course designed to improve interviewing skills is of more immediate use than a semester of general psychology. Opportunities abound for cooperative approaches to the provision of training, but care should be taken not to make them a mere added responsibility for regional and state administrators whose major concerns are with other matters. Because of financial difficulties in local libraries, Federal and state support of these programs may be necessary either directly or through the provision of fellowships and grants for participation in them.

The delineation of tasks to be performed by professionals, paraprofessionals and clerical workers will help to avoid the misuse of personnel funds that occurs when professionals perform simple procedures in the name of service. The Illinois Task Analysis Project was named as a useful tool for the evaluation of staff assignments measured against the goals of a particular institution. Such task analyses and the hiring of paraprofessionals are viewed as a threat by many librarians. Difficulties continue between librarians, media specialists and information scientists, and now new problems are arising between technicians and librarians involved with automated systems especially where their tasks and responsibilities are not clearly outlined. Some libraries are trying out new concepts of employment-hiring part-time personnel, splitting jobs so that two libraries or departments share the time of one professional person,

hiring people with special skills for limited periods of time for the accomplishment of a particular task, and encouraging professionals to accept temporary full-time assignments in areas that hold new interests for them. Staff re-education programs can add to an understanding of new personnel policies and the benefits that are expected from them.

Trustees, Friends of the Library, Citizen Advisory Boards and other groups are a vital part of the human resources of library and information services. Testimony received from members of these groups showed that their role and effectiveness varies greatly from place to place. Individuals report that boards are sometimes ineffective because members do not know what is expected of them nor do they know where to find materials that would make their role clear to them. Beyond that there is a need for very specific information to help them in making housekeeping decisions. The most effective boards appear to be those that take seriously their role as liaison with the community, learning its needs and guiding library services toward meeting them. They can be knowledgeable spokesmen for library interests before governmental funding agencies. These citizens, the politically knowledgeable and those with personal influence, are excellent lobbyists. Trustees and Friends of the Library must inspire others with their interest to support quality library service for all citizens.

**

6. National Networks and Library Cooperation

Testimony at the hearings revealed a strong, widespread feeling that the Library of Congress should be designated a national library and should be funded for basic services in support of a national network. Commentary on patterns of organization nearly always included a statement to that effect. Witnesses asked for expansion of present service, wider acquisition and cataloging of materials including government documents and technical reports, extension of the machine-readable bibliographic data base to include serials, funding for the input of retrospective catalog records in machinereadable format, improvement of interlibrary loan services, and expanded service to the blind and physically handicapped. They look to the Library of Congress for leadership in developing standards for bibliographic control and in the building of national acquisition plans. There was no dissent from the proposition that the Library of Congress should take on the full responsibilities of a national library.

Following the organizational example of Britain, witnesses advocated the establishment of a national lending library to collect and lend little-used materials. At issue is the number of such centers needed. Some persons felt that communications and mail services are effective and that a single institution utilizing these facilities makes regional libraries an unnecessarily duplicative expense. Others recommended smaller regional banks as more manageable

and better able to give quick and efficient service. Some suggested separate centers for microforms and periodicals and documents. Several library resource building programs already exist in the United States; these might serve as prototypes or nuclei of a national system. Most notable are the Center for Research Libraries and the Associated Colleges of the Midwest.

The national libraries and lending libraries or banks of less-used materials could be integral parts of a national network. But national networking is an issue complicated at the present time by the numbers of existing regional and mission-oriented national systems that have few connections between them and multiple incompatibilities. Most exist on less than their projected costs; this hampers their efficiency and quashes plans for future improvements. The necessity to plan for system needs years ahead of time requires the assurance that funds will be available as those plans mature. Basic issues must be faced before a national system of networks can be built, said testifiers before the Commission. Principles must be established; successful networks will need protocols and a formal structure.

Encouraged by Federal and state leadership and funding and by the prospect of providing better service at lower cost, cooperative efforts have sprung up across the nation. They include simple communication systems to facilitate interlibrary loan through centralized processing and union catalogs, to shared reference services, in-service training and even shared staff members. Some cooperatives include only one type of library, i.e., public or college; others cross types. Their administrative structures vary as greatly as do their services and membership. The degree of formality in a cooperative appears to be a function of size. Some are more successful than others. NCLIS was asked to survey the various governing structures for the purpose of preparing guidelines for future use. Witnesses reported that strong cooperatives require firm funding, a legal base, a willingness on the part of members to yield some local authority, a structure that will survive changes in personnel and provision for growth and change. The hindrances to success are preoccupation with the needs of individual libraries and the lengthy procedures of the variety of governing bodies involved. Workshops and continuing education programs, particularly those in organizational behavior, may help to bring about understanding of these human and administrative problems.

As cooperatives become increasingly successful, their costs mount-most notably the communication and personnel costs involved in interlibrary loan programs. Shared acquisition and processing programs, however, can reduce individual library costs and even free personnel within the library. Cooperative in-service training programs can assure use of the systems established for service and may provide training in library skills that will result in better service within the individual library and better use of

collections, incidentally reducing the number of calls on resource libraries for service that should be given locally.

Corporate and other special libraries that do or could provide special information services to the public remain an unassessed resource and, therefore, their role in cooperative programs and networking is, to a large extent, uncertain. A registry of their data and materials is needed. The resources of many large special libraries are well known and appreciated but most special libraries are small. Librarians of small special libraries said that organizing networks of those libraries have not been practical because the little ones that would benefit most haven't the staff time available to organize a cooperative and the larger libraries find the benefits not worth the effort. In some areas, however, where geographical proximity makes it logical, industries have shared facilities and resources and benefited by having larger collections available at lower cost. In business libraries cost is a pivotal factor. Library services are not profit-making and, therefore, they often feel the brunt of budget-cutting actions. Witnesses cited a trend toward greater dependence on public library collections, occasioned perhaps by their company's broader occupational interests, by public services that provide ready access to information beyond the local library, and by the public librarians increasing awareness of and satisfaction of corporate needs. Still, administrators hesitate to allow their libraries to participate in interlibrary loan programs because of the overhead costs involved. Fees for services rendered may be the critical issue in encouraging cooperation.

Testimony from state library agencies reveals how greatly they vary in their influence and function. Some are powerful originators and coordinators of state planning while others are principally program expeditors. The loss of the Federal funding programs, the monies from which were channeled through their offices and the new emphasis on revenue sharing distributed both to states and localities will, administrators fear, erode their influence over statewide library development and make it increasingly difficult to establish cooperative programs. State agencies are further hampered by their sensitivity to political pressures, by salaries that are not competitive with those offered by city and university libraries, by the fact that they are asked to divide their efforts between providing leadership or overall state planning and conventional library services, by a historical orientation toward public libraries and by uncertain funding and a low profile within the state government.

This summary of the testimony covers most of the ideas mentioned by witnesses. It cannot convey the excitement that was present in the hearings. Commission members appreciated the sense of urgency and enthusiasm. Much of what has developed in the Commission program has sprung from the hearings or been