must distinguish among the several purposes and publics served by the institution. These contrasting functions, seen in relation to goals of the national life and in relation to legal and de facto responsibilities for services at the several governmental levels, provide guidelines and constraints for defining the financing requirements of this multi-purpose agency.

This statement seeks to identify the main purposes of the public library and to present these in functional rather than social terms, i.e., in terms of services given and not of social goals achieved. As major functions are identified, they will be related to potential user groups. The analysis thus recognizes that there is limited evidence of social goal attainment. It also recognizes that there is an essential element of faith underlying public maintenance of libraries. The same element of faith underlies other governmentally-supported agencies, starting with the schools.

The gap between potentiality and actuality, the failure of the public library to maintain resources and services needed by some people in some localities, while providing these same services for other people in other localities, is a measure of shortcomings under present sources of funds. The inadequacies of the little library upstairs in the village hall, and equally of the large city library seeking to meet regional demands for recorded knowledge, reflect unfavorably not on the public officials and the professionals responsible for service, but on the structure for funding the institution.

There are three major areas of social, cultural and educational needs in modern society which the public library is uniquely designed to serve. They are: (1) specialized and research services, (2) information services, and (3) educational-cultural services. In no sense can the public library meet all, or even a major part, of these needs, but the institution is an essential adjunctive resource accessible to all who seek to improve the quality of life. A description of these services follows.

Specialized and Research Services

The advanced technology, the inter-dependent free enterprise system, the complex governmental structure and the belief in self-realization which characterize the United States all call for a continual search for knowledge. This search has been a driving force in American life, along with the drive for productivity and the drive for individual freedom. Any diminution in the pursuit of knowledge, like any serious reduction in industrial output or individual liberties, may profoundly alter our way of life.

The search for knowledge is not confined to the university campus

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and the research laboratory. Application of new knowledge, relating what is learned to practical affairs, is part of the American genius. This task is carried out by individuals in high places and low, and by practitioners in big city and small hamlet. The specialist may be a person who knows more about steel production or foreign markets or children's disabilities or regional literature than anyone within a thousand miles and yet he must consult the record of knowledge. Or the searcher may rank as "specialist" only because he has somewhat more background than other nearby individuals-the local building contractor, the school principal, the resident historian, the personnel director of a local plant—and he too needs recourse to the accumulated record. The function of the professional-doctor, lawyer, engineer-is to relate established knowledge to specific problems; part of this background derives from the professional's training, but part must be searched out as cases arise. There is even the amateur scholar, not a university professor or a research chemist, who is simply investigating on his own the more esoteric sources a library can provide. His search may focus on the newest discoveries in radio, astronomy or the oldest origins of the American Indian.

Both the pure researcher and the applied practitioner, the national authority and the local specialist, need an organized record of knowledge. The search for the new and the application of the old equally proceed from what is known. Many of the specialized activities of the society start with a visit to the reservoir either as preparation for venturing into the unknown or as preparation for bringing what is known into the daily round of life.

Libraries of various types-academic, private and public-are a primary means for preserving the record. The library is the Delphic Oracle of this knowledge-based society, except that the individual petitioner interprets the signs himself. Even the ancient civilizations had their libraries, and it is their content rather than the pronouncements of oracles that has come down to us.

The public library in one of its guises plays a strategic role in the interpretation and application of knowledge. It is not pre-eminent in supporting pure research, although a few public libraries contribute at this frontier level. But where they have the capacity, these libraries are the resource of the specialist, who in essence is an adaptor and applier of knowledge. This holds not just for the few public libraries of national stature but for agencies with any depth and scope of holdings. dotted in regions across the land.

Such a unique institution as the Research Division of the New York Public Library is focussed at the research level. It is different in kind as well as in size from a branch library in a city or a suburban library or a county library, even though all are termed public libraries; its natural

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associations are rather with major universities and the outstanding private collections (the Morgan Library, for example). City libraries from Boston to Los Angeles, while making only a limited contribution to basic research, are a vital linkage in the spread and application of knowledge by practitioners and specialists. The business executive, the factory manager, the government official, the journalist and the urban planner, the school superintendent, even the amateur scholar are likely to have frequently-consulted sources immediately at hand, but when they must go beyond the routine, or research the exceptional problem, their recourse is to the public library.

Central collections in larger city libraries are able to handle part of the range of such requests. This capacity is enhanced if the agency develops specialized subject departments with staff as bibliographic specialists in subject fields. Performance in Baltimore and Cleveland and Los Angeles and many another center attests to such accomplishment. Libraries of this size and type may function as "city" departments, but actually serve metropolitan regions and in some cases. whole states or inter-state areas. Their financial base is a municipality; their clientele is regional; the effect of their service may be national. Even the more established of the city libraries have difficulty in meeting the full range of requests for advanced and specialized materials, while called on at the same time to serve as the "other" public libraries outlined below. At this "research" level they seek to cooperate with nearby university libraries, and with state agencies, in systems and networks only partially built and poorly financed if funded at all. What of the medium-sized libraries in centers without strong academic or industrial research collections-El Paso, Texas is a suitable example? This burgeoning area may not have as many "specialities” as Philadelphia or Chicago or Los Angeles, but its leaders are seeking to plan the economic and social life for a half-million people. Its specialized and research resource, the city public library, is an agency not much stronger than a well-established suburban library, and it stands virtually alone in its region.

And what of the almost one-third of the American people living outside of metropolitan areas? Are the industrial, governmental, health, educational, and cultural needs and problems of Ticonderoga, New York and Bisbee, Arizona necessarily so simple that the application of recorded knowledge is not needed? These and other nonmetropolitan areas are part of a specialized society but they lack even the semblance of specialized library service. If technological publications are maintained at public expense in the public library for the steel industry of Pittsburgh, should they not also be maintained for the paper industry of upper New York State and the mining industry of southern Arizona. If a diversified collection on pedagogy in the Los

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Angeles Public Library stands behind the school systems of that metropolitan area, should not comparable back-up be provided for the school systems in Ticonderoga and Bisbee and a thousand smaller centers? If the answer is yes, the next question is not how this can be achieved-modern communication technology can bridge great distances but the question is from what sources it can be financed adequately.

The public library started as an agency "... to keep the people out of the saloons." Localities, even in early days, saw fit to put public money into such an enterprise. The institution has developed, in one of its metamorphoses, into a source of advanced knowledge for specialists in a complex society. Even in smaller places it is approached for this purpose, though it is seldom able to respond. The individual making the request, in large city and small, may be from outside the local jurisdiction or even from a distance. There is hardly a public library in the country that stops the user at the door if he does not live in and pay taxes in the locality. What started as a neighborhood social agency has evolved-for lack of any other source to appease the demand for knowledge-into an outlet for a national commodity that underlies all aspects of modern life. Yet, its financial base has remained the local property tax. Small wonder that the reservoir of recorded knowledge is dry in too many parts of the country, and insufficient to meet growing needs in most. We are trying to carry out our business— economic, social, and personal-without providing sources of the intelligence on which sound decisions must be based. This is not from lack of interest or even from lack of effort—indeed, various commercial, partial and temporary services have sought to fill the void in accessible recorded knowledge-but rather from lack of a financial base appropriate to the demand. This holds true in Baltimore, Cleveland and Los Ageles, as well as in Ticonderoga and Bisbee.

Two alternative approaches are open to try to meet the needs of American society for specialized and research resources through medium-sized and larger public libraries. One is to expand their collections as rapidly as possible, so that El Paso will come to have a public resource as strong as that in Baltimore, and Baltimore as strong as that in New York. The other alternative is to tie the local library into a regional or national network that permits it to draw rapidly on resources over a wide area. The objective is to exploit and capitalize on the special quality of the printed page. This is a resource that is not depleted no matter how often consulted.

The first approach of expansion is the policy that has been followed for the last half century, and it has resulted in uneven and inadequate facilities at advanced and specialized levels. The second alternative depends on intra- and inter-state networks which do not exist and for which the financial means are lacking.

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ALTERNATIVES FOR FINANCING THE PUBLIC LIBRARY

Information Services

Knowledge and information are closely related, and in fact overlap. There would be little point in trying to distinguish between them except that demand for factual information, extracted from the larger body of knowledge, has prompted another of the functions of the public library-that of information center in the community. The demand has come not just from a minority of researchers and specialists but from a wide segment of the population.

At this level the public library is turned to for what may be called specific information rather than organized knowledge. The data sought may be the amount of cholesterol-producing ingredients in eggs, the tensile strength of copper, the voting record of a candidate for political office, the date of a symphony concert, or the price of a stock on the market five years ago. For the student it may be the date and details of the Battle of Austerlitz or the rate of response of B. F. Skinner's pigeons.

If extensive knowledge is needed by specialists to apply theory and principles to the working world, information is needed by all individuals to live and function within that world. They may not know exactly what the terms for the ingredients in eggs mean, they may not contribute to any further understanding of these ingredients, but they will decide whether to control their intake of a given food on the basis of information about it. As the knowledge about cholesterol, or any other subject that affects him, is built up by research, the individual wants the facts so that he can act in an informed way.

Information may be needed more by the under-educated than by college graduates precisely because they have not acquired the information from a long period of formal education or a superior home environment. The under-educated person is disadvantaged, not because of inferior intelligence or weaker willpower, but because of limited information for dealing with life situations as they arise. Adequate information channels are needed at least as much for the inner city and depressed rural areas as for the more "literate" society.

In providing information, as in the support of specialization, the public library does not have a monopoly but shares the function with many sources. Newspapers, radio, and television report immediate events and a flow of periodicals reinforces this current distribution. Commercial interests present their story through advertising and governments maintain a voluminous flow of information. People turn for information to other individuals, including specialists who are wellinformed and friends who may be as uninformed as the inquirer. Some people have encyclopedias or other sources in the home or office which, like the specialist's own special library, aid them in more