Furthermore, it is seeking ways to communicate information to users in the most usable forms. This document summarizes the year's activity of the Commission toward these ends.

Information As A National Commodity

Information for the user is an end product worthy of considerable effort. The libraries and information facilities that provide access to information must be understood in three roles; each role has continuing and increasing importance.

The educational role of the school and academic library is largely unquestioned. The public library has, since the nineteenth century, been called the university of the common man. As off-campus education proliferates, all types of libraries will be used for access to assigned and collateral library materials. The educational role of the library and information center must be strengthened and enlarged as this occurs.

The informational role is not new to libraries, but its importance is heightened because society demands that the individual and the corporate group be knowledgeable on a broader front than previously was expected. As society changes, better informationsupplied more quickly-is needed in order to cope with events and trends. Information is of paramount importance to world economy and individual well-being. Information, a prime product of government and of private industry, has become the basis for improved functioning of industry, agriculture, trade and services.

One goal of information is to produce consistently a better yield at a lower cost. In industry the requirement for information may be a need for market forecasts or tariff data or the machinability characteristics of an alloy. Improved productivity as a result of current and valid information is the goal. At all levels of experience and activity the pressing requirement for trustworthy information is a critical and universal feature of our times.

Productivity in all sectors of the economy has become so dependent upon the development and use of information that information has taken on a new level of importance. It is a commodity that must be the concern of government, business and industry because the production of information in forms suitable for the marketplace of the future will be the best basis for continuing growth in the gross national product.

The recreational function of the library is too frequently undervalued. Important but unmeasured values come through the reading of books and the perusal of other library materials. So-called recreational reading can profoundly affect the life style of the reader or it can provide a stepping stone to improved living conditions. Library access to nonprint recorded materials-records, films, tapes,

pictures-may be a threshold for individual development along new lines of thought and activity. In the effort to understand the benefit of a library to its users, it is important to realize that the material in the library that is solely recreational for many users will be instructive and educational for another-and perhaps larger-group. Collections of popular paperbacks in supermarkets and drug stores do not fulfill the demands that are met in a people-centered library. This recreational function of the library is sometimes wrongly named "'entertainment.” While people may be entertained by the matter they see or hear in library books, entertainment is not the goal. Recreation-"to make again"-is one of the suitable goals for the library and for the materials it collects and provides to users.

THE NATIONAL PROGRAM

Information, a commodity with a price, must be acquired, organized, preserved, distributed and put to use without waste of effort, time, energy or money. In the interest of this goal, the National Commission on Libraries and Information Science has been working this year toward a new national program of library and information services. An initial draft of the program has been circulated to those whose constructive criticism can assist with the first revisions. The notions in the current early edition are unlikely to survive unchanged in the final recommendations, but it is important for the reader of this report to know that the hearings, meetings, studies and conferences held this year have provided the basis for the ideas in the draft document. Six major points are made in the document:

1. A top-level agency in the Federal Government should be designated or created to develop, guide and lead the nation's effort to coordinate its library and information services.

2. A policy establishing certain encyclopedic and specialized library and information collections and national resources must be developed and implemented.

3. Bibliographic services that cover wide segments of the printed or nonprinted literature and that serve extensive groups of users with the means to identify and obtain it must be designated and supported as national information utilities. 4. National telecommunication linkage of information service facilities including computers must be extended and subsidized to provide nationwide access to national resource library collections and to national information utility services from any inhabited location that has telephone service.

5. Improved efforts must be made to select, train and retrain information system managers to deal with the complicated problems in this area of endeavor.

6. Existing state and regional library and information programs can become the building blocks of a national program. The partnership of Federal-state-local services must be developed to make the best use of resources, reduce duplication and accomplish at each level the tasks best suited to that level.

State programs that mirror the Federal program in organization and operation can contribute greatly to a unified attack on this important problem.

During the next year some of these points will be expanded, modified, amended, multiplied or perhaps eliminated. Their enumeration here should be considered as preliminary and informational.

REGIONAL HEARINGS

Early in its deliberations the National Commission on Libraries and Information Science recognized the need to learn more about library conditions throughout the nation. Regional hearings were planned and announced as timely opportunities for people from all sectors to place before the Commission their views on library and information science services. The hearings would also give the Commission an opportunity to present its own recommendations and plans for criticism and review by the people most affected by them. The hearings would foster an understanding of the Commission's role and enable the Commission's planning effort to derive the regular benefit of the thoughtful critique of concerned witnesses.

Plans were made for a mid-West regional hearing in Chicago on September 27, 1972; a far-West (including Hawaii and Alaska) regional hearing in San Francisco on November 29, 1972; and a Southeast (and Virgin Islands) regional hearing in Atlanta on March 7, 1973. Written testimony was solicited in advance from legislators, professional leaders, trustees and friends of the library; from state and city administrative personnel; and from businessmen, lawyers, writers, students, retired people and from other users and nonusers of libraries within each region. More than 450 testimonial documents were received. Respondents were invited to be present on the day of the hearing to answer questions put to them during the 9-10 hour session by the Commission. A two-hour block of time was reserved each day as open time to permit anyone present to give ex tempore testimony.

Each hearing had its distinct character dependent, it seemed, on the nature of the region and the regional library resources, on the progress of Commission activities and on the state of Federal

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funding for library activities. Chicago witnesses were asked for their views on the future of libraries, on the need for regional and national services and the possibility of a national plan to provide themincluding the role NCLIS might play. The hearing produced discussion of the need for standards by which to judge library services and library education. Speakers from rural areas described rudimentary services that were in sharp contrast to those of regional resource centers in populated zones. Minority groups sought attention for their special needs, including that of having foreign language materials for adults and children.

The emphasis in the San Francisco hearing testimony was on regional cooperation to satisfy the needs of people in both densely populated areas and across the sparsely populated distances of the far-West. Statewide library cooperation was inspiring public interest and attention. Services for special groups were much discussed and speakers attested to the information needs of Indians, migrant workers, prisoners, Chinese-Americans, Spanish-Americans and Blacks. Balancing these pleas for attention were descriptions of the dilemma faced by city and university librarians who are trying to satisfy the demands of their local public and also meet the needs of more distant persons who look to the larger libraries as regional centers for materials not available locally. The resources of the West, they testified, are unequal to the task.

Southeastern area speakers anticipated dire effects from the Federal decision to end categorical funding. Speakers testified to the need for library expansion in the Southeastern region as a resource for growth for individual citizens and for the region by attracting business and industry to it. The area lacks widespread research resources, but plans are in a formative stage for a regional network to connect and reinforce available facilities. The view received from testimony was one of earnest attempts to overcome the disadvantages of widespread population and low budgets through cooperative arrangements. Much attention was given to the provision of adequate service for the general public, including the illiterate and the disadvantaged, who until recently had not been served. The lack of trained librarians and of funds for salaries high enough to attract them was seen as the greatest hindrance to the provision of adequate service.

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In preparation for the hearings each of the invitees was sent a copy of the National Commission on Libraries and Information Science's enabling legislation and additional information relating to the Commission's early actions. The role NCLIS could play in proposing and coordinating library and information science programs on a national scale received much attention in responsive testimony. Generally, the Commission is looked to as a muchneeded body, one having the mandate to provide leadership in national planning, to set priorities among possible courses of action and to coordinate its efforts with state agencies and other national bodies for common purposes. The willing response to the Com