ROLE AND FUNCTIONS SERVED BY THE PUBLIC LIBRARY 19

predictable searches but are inadequate beyond a certain limited scope. There is also an increasing information need to evaluate or confirm the tremendous volume and variety of sponsored communication designed to establish certain viewpoints or courses of action. Such communication may contain selected facts and sometimes distorted facts. This need for information and objectivity arises in sensitive areas such as politics, religion, consumer products and community affairs.

Given this ever-present need for information, and the uncertainties of other sources, some people turn to their public libraries. Libraries have responded with the "reference" desk staffed by information librarians and with "reference" collections containing publications of a more specifically factual nature. The count of reference questions handled has continued steadily upward in most public libraries, even where statistics of books circulated for home use have recently declined. Where libraries have organized to handle inquiries by telephone, the rise in demand has been considerable. The Enoch Pratt Free Library in Baltimore, for example, handles over one million inquiries per year, more than half by telephone. At its central unit, this library. maintains a specially-trained staff to respond to telephone inquiries. Reference sources are available at arm's reach by means of an ingenious series of rotating shelves.

It would be an exaggeration to claim that public libraries meet all or most unfilled information needs. Repeated studies have shown that people, in general, do not think of the public library as an information center. Libraries, on their side, too often confine themselves within the limits of their collections. They provide data if it has moved through the process of publication and appears within hard covers, but not if it can be obtained only from reports or journals or directly from organizations or experts. This is another of the partially realized functions of the public library.

Some libraries have been reaching back to gain access to wider information. This may be achieved by linkages with other libraries and information centers, or by establishing direct contact with verified. sources. In a few instances computerized data banks are being established. The urban information program in Brooklyn is an example. Other libraries have been reaching forward, not only gathering information, but taking steps to disseminate it by means of bulletins, reports to agencies and organizations, and communication through mass media. One view of reference service stresses not only information per se-where to obtain a government service, how to get medical help, sources for particular kinds of training-but also advocates follow-up service to be sure the assistance sought is actually obtained.

Unified organization and centralization of information in a pluralistic society is not feasible and would not be desirable if it were feasible. The

public library is one among a miscellany of information sources. But a recognized and ready-to-serve entry point to the information matrix is desirable when specific sources are not known to the inquirer, or when other sources fail for whatever reason. The public library essentially serves this role: it has at least part of the great welter of facts, and it could stock more. The library has identified and opened contact with various sources of unrecorded information. It should make and maintain more such contacts. Part of its data is organized for retrieval, and additional systems are within reach. The public library has a considerable way to go before it can properly be called the strategic access point to information sources, but it is the most promising conduit that exists. The decision to be faced is how an information agency providing this essential service for the American people is to be financed.

Educational-Cultural Function

The public library was advocated by its founders as an informal educational agency for lifelong learning. Many viewed the library as a continuation of the common public schools established early in the 19th century. Others viewed the public library as a means for all to get the benefits of advanced education that were then only open on a formal basis to the few.

Explicit educational aims and programs, slow to develop within libraries, were stimulated by the waves of immigrants before and after the turn of the century and, later, by the adult education movement in the 1920's. In cities the community libraries served as "schools" for newcomers seeking citizenship and jobs. For more established and educated residents, the larger public libraries developed structured "reader advisory" services, providing planned reading for everything from ancient Egypt to modern art, from child development to salesmanship. Book discussion groups proliferated in libraries, and lectures and film showings were the order of the day.

All this was in response to a search for cultural background on the part of some adults, and to ambitions for economic advancement on the part of others. The collection was the educational resource and the librarian was the guide to its use, thus providing both the "curriculum" and the "instructor" in a form suited to out-of-school adults. In the phrase of the period, the public library was "the people's university." The educational potential of the institution was thus demonstrated.

In recent decades, during which time the formal educational programs and facilities have expanded, the educational aim has become

less distinct and explicit. Library staff attention has shifted more to reference or the kinds of information services described above. The largest libraries were able to build subject staffs and collections to serve specialists, the first function outlined above. The readers' adviser, as a separate position, has disappeared; what reading guidance is provided is given by the information librarian or by the subject bibliographer.

Readers have found a large part of their intellectual and cultural interests increasingly satisfied by a deluge of widely available popular publications, in both book (paperback as well as hard cover) and magazine form. The publisher appealed directly to a growing public that had earlier turned to the public library. Pervasive cultural-educational communication, in many media, now characterizes our social matrix.

The library, in turn, responded to the proliferation of print by itself stocking these same popular publications, and it retained part of its adult public by this means. In the middle-class sections of cities and in suburban areas, the agency continues to be used heavily for this purpose-in some cases so heavily that planned educational services are never launched. The contemporary public library, in its provision of popular reading, serves much as does a well-stocked bookstore, providing titles in greater demand, duplicating copies when its budget permits. Some people prefer to get such general reading from commercial sources, while others prefer the cost-free selection of the public library.

The social result of meeting the readership need can be characterized more as cultural than educational. Culture is here defined, not in the sense of being limited to literature and the arts, but in the sense of reflecting the interests and concerns of educated people and represented by the popular presentations, analyses and commentaries. A substantial biography of Eleanor Roosevelt is issued, an analyst presents his views on the rate of change under the title of "Future Shock," a popular book on diets appears, or an analysis of a recent presidential campaign; these are the types of books which many people obtain from their library. By this means cultural exchange is maintained and prevailing ideas and values shared. The net effect of this part of the public library's program is similar to that of a well-edited magazine of broad interest, or of a book club that caters to the followers of the more substantial popular literature. In its less focussed form, this service by the library shades off into purely or primarily recreational fare, not sharply distinguished functionally from the images on the television tube.

One group of public library users goes well beyond the best-sellers and uses the public collection to survey the range of contemporary

22

ALTERNATIVES FOR FINANCING THE PUBLIC LIBRARY

ideas and problems. This is neither the specialist, nor the person seeking specific facts, nor the reader of a best selling book. In one sense this is the alert, responsive adult par excellence, carrying on a dialogue with fertile minds on all topics that touch his needs and fancies. For these individuals, use of the public library is not primarily an economic consideration-borrowing a book without charge that they would otherwise have to buy-but rather a matter of intellectual supply and access. The public agency is the only source that has the range and level suited to their inquiring minds.

Another segment of users pursues utilitarian ends. Water-proofing a basement, exploring a different field of employment, planning a vacation, preparing a talk for a community group-these and other practical endeavors call for consultation of the record. In such use, the nonspecialist is using knowledge in much the same way as the specialist, albeit at a less advanced level.

The formal student, in school and college, turns to the public library. Some children in the early school years use the community agency as the door to the world of reading. More advanced students do their kind of "research" in the public library. It is worth noting that resources for students within their educational institutions, in school media centers and in college libraries, have been markedly strengthened in the past decade, and these in-school resources can be integrated into the instructional program. The public library functions more as an auxiliary than as a primary source for the student, serving him when he reaches beyond his school resources and ventures into the larger world of recorded knowledge.

Two educational strains have lately appeared, or re-appeared, in public library programs. One is reaching out to non-users, particularly in the inner city. Part of this effort seeks to relate traditional library resources and references to the particular problems confronting the poor and the undereducated; part aims to modify both the content and the form of the collection and the service role of the librarian to suit this potential user group. A second current effort depends on the library as the locus of "independent study" at the college level, in self-study programs pursued by individuals seeking degrees without attending formal classes on campus. The librarian in this plan becomes an educational counselor and the collection the body of learning materials.

The extent to which the educational-cultural function of the public library can and should be expanded depends on the quality of life that people will be seeking and on the extent to which provision for that life is considered to be a public good worthy of financial support. Many individuals are searching for purpose and values. Others seek mental and sensual adventure. These are positive experiences for which peo

ROLE AND FUNCTIONS SERVED BY THE PUBLIC LIBRARY · 23

ple aspire, and they result in a different kind of educational-cultural use of libraries than the solving of an immediate problem, or preparation for future accomplishment. We have tended to see education as a means to an end—the competent worker, the informed citizen, the effective parent. As life values and life styles are revised, we may come to see the play of the mind and the play of the senses as worthwhile experiences in themselves. At that stage the public library would become not only the people's university, to be used when they want to learn something, but also the people's cultural center, to be used as part of a full life. Use of media in all forms-aural and visual and tactile as well as graphic-would be seen not just as a solemn preparation for living but as an aspect of living itself. The librarian in this conception would serve, as do other professionals, as experts in use of resources, not so much to solve problems and attain ambitions, as for selfrealization and self-expression.

To the extent that the United States has lost its sense of direction and its citizens face a long period of uncertainty and frustration, this prospect is visionary. But if we are going through a transition period, groping beyond affluence to meaning, a public agency providing the richness of cultural experience may be for adults as important as the school is for children—and it may even be more fun.

Technological Applications:
Scope and Limits

Advances in computer handling of data and in new forms of telecommunication will facilitate each of the functions of the public library. Potential applications will be touched on here, but only to the extent that they involve funding sources in support of new and emerging patterns.

The first problem confronting the specialist and researcher is to determine what has already been issued on his problem and where it can be consulted. This is a bibliographical question. To answer it requires first a record of what has been published, analyzed as to subject content and indexed under terms that the searcher is likely to use. The record must show where the material is located. This index must be available in some form directly to the specialist. MARC tapes being issued by the Library of Congress takes the first steps in this direction. Extension of the existing network of bibliographical information is feasible technically, but will call for funds for research and development. Public libraries, if tied into a national bibliographic system, would then have the capacity to inform specialists of what exists in their fields and where it can be obtained.