24 ALTERNATIVES FOR FINANCING THE PUBLIC LIBRARY

The next step is to establish access to the documents themselves. In the past some researchers have traveled to the source of reference materials; others have obtained use of material through inter-library loan which entails a delay and sometimes is impractical.

Long-range projections envision the library-in-the-computer with electronic access from a distance, but it is one thing to store and gain rapid access to a finite number of datum involved, for example, in a bibliographical index or an airline reservation system in an electronic memory. It is quite another to store all the concepts and relationships contained in a library of several million volumes and similarly retrieve what is needed on demand. The earlier step will likely be facsimile telecommunication which will permit consultation of a document at a distance. However, unlike extension of the bibliographic information system, this will involve not only further research and development but very substantial investments in equipment.

Computer storage and new communication channels will shortly also affect the information function of the public library. One important prospect is cable TV. The significance of this is not simply that images can be carried to viewers—standard TV already does this. The significance is that a much larger number of channels will be opened, permitting informational as well as entertainment messages. Also, the communication between the source and the receiver can be two-way. This development will replicate the telephone, except that with cable TV the image is visual as well as aural. The cable itself, however, will not generate information; it will have to connect some source with some seekers. The public library will stand in a strategic connectinglink position in this chain of information. Realization of this project calls not so much for mobilization on a national level, but more within states and metropolitan regions. This prospect involves additional levels of funding sources, between the national and state levels on the one hand and the local tax base on the other.

It must be emphasized, however, that by no means can all needs and problems of access to recorded knowledge and information be solved by new technology. It would be a mistake to put substantial sums into computerized networks without reviewing and improving the total knowledge-exchange system, including intellectual and human components. No computer can make content available until it is first acquired, and we are short of acquisition programs that assemble all the material that is needed. Nor can the computer reproduce material on demand unless it is first bibliographically organized in a way that dovetails with use, and here again any known scheme falls well short of perfection. This is not a problem of machine capacity but of insight into how knowledge is used and how it should be organized for retrieval.

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Limitation in technology as the solution to knowledge-information utilization can be illustrated with the example of tele-communications. We have had two-way communication between information source and information searcher and multiple channel capacity since the invention of the telephone. Yet, neither the library nor other information sources have been fully utilized. Cable TV, it is true, will add the visual image but this may not be the heart of the matter. The human factor as well as machine capacity must enter into the equation.

Education-cultural experience is mental and emotional. Fresh communication channels and information banks can stimulate response and promote understanding in some cases where older forms are not effective, as they have to a limited extent in the classroom. Nonetheless, it would be a mistake to depend on hardware to deal with problems that are rooted in human motivation. Rather than the computer, or long-distance transmittal of communication, it may be that familiar media forms-art, film, recordings, models, games-may retain the greater impact on adult response. The public library has been print-oriented in the past, and it has served that portion of the lives of people that can be captured on the printed page. As it becomes a media center in the community, providing a multi-media environment, the public library will relate to the full range of experience of people as they seek self-realization. Here again any significant advance runs into the question of the sources of funds-fully developed multi-media libraries cost most than single-media libraries. We have built up an agency for the public provision of books—where is the agency for similar provision of other forms of communication?

Conclusions

The public library is a multi-purpose institution with divergent, but not unrelated, functions. It is also a partially-realized institution; its aims are consistent with American needs and aspirations and the public, in general, accords it a degree of respect. But, as with many other educational and social programs, performance of the institution is not in line with expectations. As concern grows with the quality of life, the past tolerance of a gap between professed goals and actual accomplishments is being challenged on various fronts. The challenge comes from persons outside and within the establishment. A financing base realistically designed to close the gap would have impact on a wide spectrum of the American people.

The public library is a unique institution which can thrive best in a free society. If one could somehow combine the research division of the New York Public Library, the central unit of the Enoch Pratt Free

Library in Baltimore, and the most active of the suburban libraries in California, then attach the structure of the most developed county libraries of the South in order to reach small towns and rural areas, he would have a bulwark of knowledge at the several levels-specialization, functional information, cultural education-equal to the needs of the economy, of the public life, and of personal aspirations. But the average public library, the usual agency serving people across the land from metropolis to remote crossroads, is a pale shadow of a research source a fragmentary information center and a pallid educational force. We have invented a potentially powerful institution and have demonstrated, here and there, that its potential can be realized. But we have tried to nurture this national resource within the confines of a highly circumscribed local fiscal base and inadequate financing measures. We have taken functions that are national, state-wide, regional, and local in impact, and sought to sustain them all with public monies collected primarily to provide distinctly local services.

The belief is emerging that, in a democracy, one cannot educate the child in one locality at one level and the child in another locality at another level, and long maintain the democracy. People affect not just the block on which they own a house and the town in which they live, but they affect the body politic and the entire social fabric. Similarly, knowledge is not a local convenience commodity, like public swimming pools, that can be provided at a high level in one sector and not in another, and long maintain productivity and freedom. The United States must look to its knowledge resources as it looks to its human and natural resources. It has a public agency for the purpose, but it has not worked out a rational financial structure for that agency.

CHAPTER 3

Analysis of Fiscal Factors and Intergovernmental Financing Patterns

Purpose and Background

With the advent of Federal general revenue sharing and the consequent curtailment of Federal categorical grants for libraries, there is considerable concern regarding the future of the public library system. It is the purpose of this analysis to review the present system of public library financing within the general framework of state and local government finance. In this context, general conclusions can then be drawn regarding alternative means of financing the public library function.

It is, however, a difficult time to draw general conclusions and formulate definitive alternative recommendations applicable to the field of intergovernmental finance. The passage and implementation of general revenue sharing has introduced pervasive factors and forces of unknown potential in basic intergovernmental fiscal arrangements. Some would argue that the concept of revenue sharing was never intended to be linked with a wholesale elimination of Federal-statelocal categorical aid programs. Certainly, there appears to be rising opposition in the library finance field, and in other program areas, to such a linkage. The effort to revise and combine categorical grants as block grants under the revenue sharing program is now being debated in the Congress. Certain categorical programs have been restored or continued and, as discussed elsewhere in this report, a new Federal funding initiative in public library finance is being discussed and may soon be submitted to the Congress. Details of the new initiative, described as a Federal Library Partnership Act, have not yet been fully developed nor made public. However, President Nixon in his education message of January 24, 1974, has defined a new and broader Federal role as follows:

"While I continue to believe that state and local authorities bear the primary responsibility for the maintenance of public libraries, I also believe that the Federal government has a responsible role to play."

28 ALTERNATIVES FOR FINANCING THE PUBLIC LIBRARY