Mr. FLOOD. It's not in the appropriation language. Mr. FLOOD. But not in your appropriation language you have here. The point is that what you are saying Mrs. MOORE. Shouldn't it be put in there, is that your point? Mr. FLOOD. I don't know. What are you asking us for? Mr. TREZZA. We will give you a revised appropriation language. STATE CONFERENCES Mr. FLOOD. Now, talking about the State conferences, how much of this money is going to the State conferences? Mr. TREZZA. Approximating $1.1 million in direct grants. Mr. FLOOD. How much are the States going to put up to match that? Mr. TREZZA. It depends on the size of the State. For example, Pennsylvania's conference budget is estimated at $70,000. They will get $25,000 from the formula. They will put up $45,000. If you go to the other end, take a very small State like Montana; it will cost them amout $25,000. They will get about $13,000 now from this grant, and they have to put up the $12,000. CLOSEOUT OF CONFERENCE Mr. FLOOD. Why is it going to take 8 months to close out the White House Conference, and how many people are you going to close out the White House Conference with? Mr. TREZZA. That's for writing the report at the end of the Conference. Mr. FLOOD. Why 8 months? Mr. TREZZA. Well, that is based on previous experience in conferences. Mr. FLOOD. Is that good? Mr. MANOLATAS. It's about average time. During that 8 months there will only be a minimal staff on board. Mr. FLOOD. I don't doubt that. That's why I raise the question. Mr. MANOLATAS. About a 4-month period for writing the reports. That is written into the law. Mr. FLOOD. Why? Mr. MANOLATAS. The law provides within 120 days after the conference. Then generally the bills trickle through, it's cleaning up the final administrative arrangements and at that point there will be a minimal staff on board, one or two people at the most, answering responses, sending out inquiries, things of this sort. But it will be a minimal staff on board during that period. Mr. FLOOD. How much is that going to cost to close this out? Mr. FLOOD. Well, how much? Mr. MANOLATAS. We don't have it separated out. Mr. BURKHARDT. We better give you that for the record. We will supply the exact amount. Mr. FLOOD. OK, you do that for the record. [The information follows:] The following is a breakdown of closeout costs as requested by Congressman Flood: Total Closeout Costs-October 1979-May 1980 Printing of 5,000 copies of final report_ Staff costs. Ten staff on board October 1979 through January 1980 to Mr. FLOOD. Thank you very much. Mrs. MOORE. We thank you, Mr. Chairman. $140,000 50,000 70,000 20,000 [The following questions were submitted by members of the subcommittee with the request that they be answered for the record:] QUESTIONS BY EDWARD R. ROYBAL NATIONAL COMMISSION ON LIBRARIES AND INFORMATION SCIENCE (1) In your statement, you indicate that 5 percent of the citizens do not have access to public library services. Are most of these people located in urban or rural settings? This data is derived from a survey conducted under the auspices of the American Library Association and is based on the finding of that survey that 297 counties throughout the country do not have a public library within their boundaries. The statistics gathered do not break this down further to indicate whether the counties are urban or rural. Interpreting the data rather broadly, however, one could conclude that the majority of the unserved are located in rural settings. Four States, for example, each with more than 30 counties not having public libraries, are Indiana, South Dakota, North Dakota, and Missouri. (2) There was an experiment a few years ago called “books on wheels" where libraries were packed on trucks and brought to the people. Is this experiment continuing? Could it help the 5 percent who do not have access to books? The experiment you mentioned, which I believe is the "Biblioteca Ambulante" has now been picked up by local funding, and is, to the best of our knowledge, still on-going. Many other libraries also use the same concept, providing bookmobile service to their constituencies. It is important to remember, however, that the provision of books is just one service libraries can and should provide. Libraries also provide information on where and how to obtain help and services in education, health care, home maintenance, and legal matters. Much of this can be more effectively provided through telephone reference, cable TV, or, for example, teletype machines for the deaf. Thus, our concern is not so much with bookmobiles, per se, but with provision of the full range of information services by a wide variety of means. As was indicated in the response to Mr. Conte, bookmobiles may be uneconomical in sparsely populated areas, but a variety of other means are available for providing service to those for whom access to a library building is unavailable or inconvenient. (3) You indicate that there is a lack of solid data on which to premise the recommendations in your national program. How are you going about developing such hard data. Since you did not have hard data on which to base your conclusions, does this undermine the effectiveness of your conclusions? We should have been more specific in that statement. What we should have said is that our efforts have been hampered by the lack of hard data upon which to base specific recommendations for corrective action. There is more than ample data upon which to base the conclusion that the libraries and information services of the country are in desperate trouble and to identify, in general terms as we have with our eight objectives, what needs to be done. The difficult arises when you want to take concrete steps toward achieving those objectives. Then you have to have very specific information about precisely what the gap is between needs and resources, what resources are available, where are they coming from, how are they being applied, and so on. When the data is not available, and we cannot persuade or cannot wait for-another organization, such as the National Center for Education Statistics or the American Library Association, to get it for us, we contract for a study. The National Inventory of Library Needs and the just-completed study on the Effectiveness of Federal Funding for Public Libraries are typical of this kind of study. Project Mediabase, which will inventory bibliographic resources for nonprint media and propose functional specifications for a common bibliographic record, is another. Our national program document, "Toward a National Program for Library and Information Services: Goals for Action," provides ample support for the validity of the eight objectives of our program; where we need additional, more detailed data is in implementing these broad objectives. (4) What are you doing to increase resources and community services which are geared toward the needs and interests of persons of Hispanic origin, blacks, and other minorities? Have you developed a program to meet the unique needs of bilingual Americans? The Commission, in its national program document, states as one of its major objectives: "The need to provide adequate service to special constituencies, i.e., the poor, the illiterate, the blind, the physically handicapped, ethnic minorities, American Indians on reservations, senior citizens, the blacks." Funds to stimulate and support programs in these areas are only available through the Library Services and Construction Act. The Commission is on record as strongly favoring the extension and revision of LSCA. For example, the need for a new title to help the libraries in the urban cities is essential if we are to improve resources and community services to those special constituencies described above. WHITE HOUSE CONFERENCE (1) What will the White House Conference on Library and Information Services accomplish that couldn't be accomplished by your conference sending out a letter or questionnaire? The White House Conference on Library and Information Services has, essentially, three purposes: (1) To develop a consensus on the nature and extent of library and information needs of the Nation's populace; (2) to increase the awareness of the populace to services already available; and (3) to bring to the attention of municipal, State and Federal legislative and fiscal bodies the vital nature of information services, and the need for their adeqaute financial support. While the first of these objectives might be met through an iterative Delphi-like exercise, obviously neither a letter nor a questionnaire would be as effective in achieving the second and third objective as will the impact of interactive dialog shared among the many constituencies expected to participate in the conference. Moreover, the White House Conference will be preceded by conferences in each of the 58 States and territories. The importance of these to the success of the White House Conference cannot be overstated; to achieve the purposes of the White House Conference, it is imperative that direct and personal involvement be as extensive as possible, and this can only be achieved by providing participation to our constituency at local level-within the States and territories. To be effective, the findings of the White House Conference must be publicly arrived at through broad collective interaction. Since we are not seeking finite data, questionnaires will not achieve our purpose, and form letters sent to individuals simply cannot generate the sense of shared community commitment so essential to the success of our conference. (2) I note that the biggest expense for the Conference is airfare, and I wonder if what we'll get from personal testimony is sufficient to justify the cost. The amount given in our budget to cover the expenses of the delegates includes airfare for hotel accommodations. The interaction by the delegates on issues that were originally identified and discussed at the State conference will make it possible to develop suggestions for solutions to library problems, not only by legislative means, but through existing agencies and institutions. (3) I note on page 3 that you talk of State conferences. Does this imply that each State will hold its own conference? What will these conferences hope to accomplish and how will they be different from the national conference? For this White House Conference the State conferences will provide the most important ingredient. Each State is being asked to hold a State conference at which it will discuss the problems in library and information services which affect that State. They will use their 5-year long-range program plan which they have developed over these past few years. They will then try to relate the State problems with the proposed national network. At the national conference, the delegates who attended the State conferences will come together and try to help develop a program which will be closely coordinated between the local, State and Federal level. If a national program is to be viable at all, it must have local and State input and should not be imposed from the top. QUESTIONS BY CONGRESSMAN CONTE (1) Who comprises the delegation to the White House Conference? Are they librarians? Only one-third of the delegates to the White House Conference will be librarians. The other delegates must represent individuals in the public and private sector including, among others, industry, business, law makers at the local and State level, consumer groups, parents, homemakers, etc. (2) Will the $288,000 earmarked for travel expenses be used to transport all of the 500 delegates? Why haven't the local communities taken any of the responsibility for these expenses? The $288,000 is divided between travel expenses and hotel rooms. It is estimated that the average cost of travel will be $350 and the average hotel cost will be $225 for a total of $575 for each of he 500 delegates. The local community, along with the State, will assume the major share of the costs for the delegates attending the State conferences. (3) Will the Federal Government also be footing the bill for boarding these delegates? Yes. This amount is covered in the $288,000 figure discussed above. (4) What are some of these pilot programs you have initiated and what progress has been made with them? The model for our pilot programs might be the Continuing Library Education Network and Exchange (CLENE). Several years ago, we recognized that one of the more pressing needs of the library community was updated education on new technology and management techniques for people who are already working in the field. Since these are the people who will be operating the libraries and information centers of the National Network for the next 10 to 15 years, it is important that they be kept up-to-date on new developments. We commissioned a study to develop a design for a mechanism to accomplish this, and when it was complete, we circulated it for comment and sponsored an implementation conference, to which representatives from all concerned constituencies were invited. This conference endorsed the proposed mechanism and immediately begun putting the mechanism together. The following year, we sponsored an organizational conference, which finished the work started by the first. With the help of a planning grant from the Office of Education, a staff was assembled, memberships solicited and work begun. At this point, the Commission stepped back, and CLENE is now a separate, self-supporting entity and growing rapidly. We have maintained a continuing liaison with the CLENE Board of Directors. A second program we have actually gotten underway is a Management Seminar for heads and senior staff of State library agencies. It is a more targeted continuing education effort with leaders who have the basic responsibility for developing multitype library systems in each state. We are now in the process of setting up initial operations of the National Periodicals Access Program, working with the Library of Congress, and that will be, we hope, our next pilot program. (5) Explain the duties of your task force. Task forces are used where the problem to be considered requires very broad input and participation and a much wider and higher level of expertise than we could hope to assemble inhouse or have a contractor provide We try to bring together the very best people from all of the concerned communities on a volunteer basis. We pay only expenses. We arrange for a discussion leader, who may be a Commissioner, a member of staff, a consultant, or someone borrowed from another agency. We provide a statement of the problem, which may be taken from a report, as in the case of the Periodicals Task Force, or from work which has been started by someone else, as in the case of the Computer-toComputer Protocols Task Force. Their task then is to bring their particular viewpoints and expertise to bear on the problem and develop recommendations for a solution. They meet as often as necessary to get the task accomplished with a specified period, usually about one year, and produce a report, which the Commission evaluates and uses as a basis for further action. This action may be a pilot operation, such as the National Periodicals Access Program, mentioned earlier, or in the case of the Computer-to-Computer Protocol Task Force, it will probably be a referral of the results to national standardization organizations, such as the American National Standards Institute and the American Library Association. The value of the task force approach is that by using interested volunteers, we can obtain better participation on a much higher level than we could afford to buy. 41 - 77 pt. 2 4 (6) It seems that you are waiting for the close of the White House Conference in 1979 to make your major requests for amendments in library resources legislation. If this is true, a major decrease in funding may be difficult to provide all at once. What can you do about proposing an annual program request which may be a little easier to swallow? The Commission is not waiting for the close of the White House Conference to make recommendations to amendments in present library legislation. We have, for example, recommended specific changes in the current discussions on the extension of LSCA. We also recommended the changes which were considered by the Congress in the last session for the Higher Education Act. (7) Will you explain the workings of the National Periodicals Program and how the country's libraries will benefit from its implementation? The purpose of the National Periodicals Program is to provide an efficient means for making articles from the periodicals available to those who request them, regardless of the location of the requestor or of the issue of the periodical within which that article is printed. It is no longer plausible-if, indeed, it ever was-for even the largest libraries to obtain, and provide service from, the burgeoning universe of periodicals today being published throughout the world. This is due both to the soaring costs of periodicals and the proliferation of new titles being published-as well as to the ever-increasing costs of space, staff, maintenance, and so forth. Thus, to meet the needs of the information seeker, new alternatives to the out-moded concept of the "well-stocked" library must be found, and this is exactly what the National Periodicals Program proposes. (8) On page 4 of your justifications, you refer to "increased activity." What are your increased activities? Also on that page you refer to increased support in task forces and pilot projects. Where will these increases be going? We can answer both of these questions together. A good part of our increased activity will be undertaken by the task force method. During this fiscal year we expect to have task forces operating in the areas of School Library/Media Centers, Service to Native Americans, and the Public/Private Interface. More task forces require more support. One current project is a small study directed toward developing the methodology for what will probably be a major study to be undertaken late this year or early in 1978. What we do each year is based upon what we accomplished the previous year, and until the results of some current efforts are available and until we know what resources will be available— we don't know precisely what all of our activities will be next year. (9) How many people in this country are out of reach of a well-equipped library, in your estimation? Have you done anything along the lines of a mobile library or bookmobile? According to the figures available to us, about 10 million persons are unserved by a local library and another 40 percent are inadequately served. This does not necessarily mean they are “out of reach;” some of this 5 percent may be quite close to a library, but not be eligible to use it because they are not members of the community the library is franchised to serve. While bookmobiles do fill a need for recreational reading and for some informational needs, they simply cannot meet the increasing demand for the many new information dissemination services libraries are being asked to provide. And, of course, there are many sparsely populated areas of the country in which the use of bookmobiles is not economically viable. We view the use of bookmobiles as a local library option and believe that the local library is in a far better position to determine the utility and practicality of a bookmobile (or any other service) program than the Commission. We believe our mission is to insure that the local libraries receive adequate and continuous funding to enable them to provide whatever services they deem most appropriate to the need of their clientele. (10) What recent legislative recommendations have you made? Thus far, the Commission has limited its current legislative suggestions by making recommendations for the amendment of LSCA, HEA and ESEA. The new title C of HEA, for example, is based on the Commission's recommendation. On February 16, the Commission will be testifying on the extension of LSCA. |