service area. The strength of the public library is its democracy, its service to all the people across age, ethnic, economic and cultural lines. It caters to children, to young adults, adults, and to senior citizens; and it is a major educational force in American life. Public libraries, including the smallest, are the backbone of the library system in America, and are the potential windows on any future nationwide network. Therefore, a great deal depends on the strength of their human and material resources and on their ability to undertake new programs of value to their constituents. Most public libraries are well below the minimum American Library Association - standards and are inadequate to meet the information needs of the public. The public library, particularly in large metropolitan centers, is in a state of flux, and major changes in its funding and operating philosophy must occur, if it is to serve its community effectively in the future. Financial studies indicate that local sources of revenue alone will be insufficient to meet the public's demand for new programs, new construction, and new staff. Moreover, recent developments give disturbing evidence that public libraries are seriously threatened by deficit budgets resulting from cuts in municipal budgets or failure to get Federal revenue sharing funds. Balanced intergovernmental funding at the local, state, and Federal levels is essential to achieve the content and quality of public library services commensurate with the needs of modern society." Special Libraries and Information Centers Special libraries and information centers make an important contribution by supplying information needed by Americans. Typically, they exist to serve the interests of the organizations of which they are a part, whether in the private or public sector. Special libraries are found in businesses, industrial corporations, government agencies, museums, hospitals, newspapers, radio and television stations, and professional and trade associations. Some concentrate on specific materials, such as maps or pictures. They vary in size from large installations compar emphasize up-to-dateness in the information they collect and disseminate, provide a capability for quick response, and often use automated techniques for data storage and manipulation. Many special libraries in the United States have collections of material, or in-depth files of information, which are the most complete and the best organized of any resources on particular subjects in the country. Because of their identification with their parent organizations, they may be less familiar to the general public than public and academic libraries. Lack of knowledge of the location and availability of these specific collections has been a barrier to their use beyond their own jurisdiction, as has the inclusion in them of certain materials proprietary to their respective organizations. The Commission believes that a great many citizens with complex, work-related information problems are not now being served by such specialized information services. If meeting work-related information needs is as important as the Commission believes, then devising a mechanism by which selected holdings and services of special libraries can be made available to more people throughout the country would be extremely beneficial to the nation. Every effort must be made to include the resources of special libraries in the development of a nationwide network. School Libraries and School Media School libraries, public and private, are important in the personal, intellectual and social development of the American child. They house the many materials required by the child for formal teaching-learning activities, and they represent the primary access point in school to which the child comes to find recorded knowledge. The school library often gives the child the first exposure to information resources and molds the child's information behavior for the future. Thus, the school library plays an essential part in readying the child for an adult role in society. In addition to acquiring and making available books and magazines, school libraries are also becoming media centers. Audiovisual materials of every description-slides, films, filmstrips, audio and video cassettes, etc.-plus the equipment on which they are played, are a new responsibility of the school library. Presently, school media programs daily serve over 40 million students, administrators, teachers and staff, and in some communities provide service to parents and the public as well. Despite its fundamental role in educating the child and in shaping his future information habits, the school library is deficient in many ways. In most cases, school libraries are operated far below American Library Association (ALA)/ Association for Educational Communications and Technology (AECT) standards. Generally, they do not have enough books and audiovisual materials to support the varied facets of the curricula; many do not have professional personnel and must rely on volunteer assistance. Innercity schools are usually too crowded to even have space for a library. School librarians, where they exist, usually do not have any clerical help or supportive staff which is technically trained to take full advantage of the new educational technology. The Commission endorses existing media standards and encourages all schools, both public and private, to work toward their implementation as soon as possible. Within recent years, school libraries have begun to devise new programs for sharing resources and coordinating media activities. Although many boards of education and school librarians see the potential benefits clearly, recent reductions in Federal funding have slowed down this trend. The proposed consolidation of categorical aid programs for elementary and secondary schools would have a further negative effect upon cooperative efforts. Local resources at the school library level will always be needed to serve the child and support formal education. For this reason, it is important to strengthen the school library and school media centers, so that they can meet existing standards and function effectively as integral components of the school environment. Access to the broad resources of a nationwide network would provide added value by increasing the child's opportunity for independent study and adding to his ability to become a literate, well-informed citizen, capable of lifelong learning in a rapidly changing world. tion's research effort. They participate actively every day in the distribution and exchange of books and other materials to sister institutions all over the country. Collectively, these institutions serve students, faculty, scholars, and researchers who are engaged in work in the sciences and the humanities, as well as the general public. Like the universities in which most of them are situated, research libraries are confronted today with rising costs, a rapidly changing set of educational objectives, and the impact of new technology. With the publishing rate increasing and the dollar shrinking in value, research libraries are finding it increasingly difficult to cope with their work loads and are unable to meet all of the varied demands placed on them. As a group, however, they have begun some cooperative efforts to improve their own operational efficiency (e.g., streamlining interlibrary loan procedures, standardizing approaches to computer use, developing coordinated and/or cooperative acquisition programs, and sharing resources). They have also defined a long-range program for collective action to help overcome existing problems by: introducing new means for extending access to re- ensuring a natural capacity for continued develop- initiating research and development activities of common concern; creating a national bibliographic data base in ma- developing a national program for the preservation Research libraries in the United States have combined resources of over two hundred million volumes. They are prepared to share these resources with others; indeed they are now sharing them through a growing system of interlibrary to help them correct sharing imbalances and permit them to serve more users than just their primary clientele. Many research libraries have collections of unique scope and quality. The maintenance, preservation, and development of these collections are responsibilities that must be shared if they are to continue to serve as a national resource. Research libraries must deal with the effect of rapidly rising costs upon all of the services they customarily provide. The present costs of supporting instruction and research are such that most libraries are without the necessary means to undertake more innovative and effective programs. If the Federal Government could provide sufficient research and development funds, it would permit these libraries to experiment with various forms of collective activities that would serve, not only local needs, but state, regional, and national needs as well. Although the major research libraries have evolved independently, there is a trend today toward greater interdependence among them. Their combined resources represent an asset of great value to the nation, and the Commission believes it is in the best interests of the country to assist these important institutions in forming a stronger set of working relationships that will permit them to serve more, rather than fewer, people. Federal assistance in establishing centralized bibliographic services, in developing technical standards for computer and communication usage, and in helping to sustain a select number of unique collections, are among some of the actions the Federal Government can take toward making research libraries active participants in a nationwide network. While the Commission does not advocate total subsidization of collections by the Federal Government, it does see the need for developing criteria by which certain repositories of information, both publicly and privately supported, are partially nourished by the government in exchange for their wider availability to the general public. The Commission believes that the problems facing the research libraries cannot be solved by the individual institutions acting alone, or through local or state jurisdictions alone. Some |