PUBLIC LIBRARIES IN METROPOLITAN AREAS 1

The 1960 U.S. census has given dramatic evidence of the rapid urbanization now taking place at an increasing rate throughout the country. It has been pointed out that "two-thirds of our people live in the 192 metropolitan areas; within four decades 85 percent of the country's 320 million inhabitants will live in urban areas ***. Most of the largest central cities have actually declined in population and relative taxable wealth while the suburban cities and fringe areas have experienced huge increases in both population and industrial installations." 2

Anyone living in the Washington metropolitan area has had firsthand experience with some of the social, economic, and political characteristics of this urbanization. Some aspects are purely quantitative; congested transportation, overcrowded schools, mushrooming residential subdivisions, supermarket and bowling alley sprawl, etc. Other factors less overwhelming but possibly of equal significance, may be called qualitative in that individual attitudes and abilities are involved. Several observers have pointed out the loss to the central city of many stabilizing and productive members of the middle class in exchange for the in-movement of persons with little education, few job skills, and little feeling of identity with or loyalty to the city as a cultural and political entity. In this connection, David Riesman has said: "With the continual loss to the suburbs of the elite and the enterprising, the cities remain huge enough for juveniles to form delinquent subcultures; but will our cities be able to support cultural and educational activities at a level appropriate to our abundant economy?" a

One librarian has answered this rhetorical question by saying that certain services can be provided only by a core city institution. In his survey of Toronto libraries, Ralph Shaw notes that "while it is possible and necessary to provide some of the services provided by libraries close to and as an integral part of each neighborhood, and these services cannot be provided in any other way, there are some intellectual levels of service that cannot be provided in each of the neighborhood or regional library outlets and must, in fact, be provided by a central library in the core city which serves the larger area.

"This means that, so far as can now be foreseen, the suburbs will continue to be dependent upon the core city for certain intellectual levels or qualities of service, whether they be on intellectual or financial matters, and that neither complete administrative consolidation nor complete administrative decentralization will necessarily solve these underlying problems."

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A well-known sociologist, commenting on the present and future demands on urban libraries, said: "The library has, of course, from its inception been essentially an urban institution identified with urbanism as a way of life. Library facilities continue to be concentrated primarily in urban areas and especially in the larger metropolitan areas. In the allocation of resources for libraries in the coming decades it is clear that the problem of expansion is, even more than in the past, a problem of keeping up with the tremendous increase in metropolitan area inhabitants ***. National growth will be disproportionately concentrated in our great metropolitan areas and in the suburban ring of those areas including what is now unincorporated rural territory. Libraries will be faced with the necessity of providing services to perhaps 50 million additional Americans who will be located in the suburban ring of metropolitan areas * * *"5

An interesting confirmation of one aspect of the value of the large central library comes from the Author-Scientist Sir O. P. Snow who, in his inaugural address as president of the British Library Association, made the following statement: "I am very impressed at a time, and at a stage of society when we want everything which binds people together, how much good libraries can do in big urban communities. At a time when there are no obvious centers for people to collect in a secular society, where the church has no longer that function, or not very often that function, libraries seem to me, in the boroughs that I know once I came to live in London, to have done an immensely valuable and much underestimated social service in standing there for people to go to, often to meet, sometimes to hear people lecture, and what not. This

1 By John C. Frantz, library extension specialist, Library Services Branch, U.S. Office of Education.

Hamill, Harold C. "The Metropolitan Area and the Library" in Library Quarterly. XXXI: 1 p. 15.

3 Dobriner, William M., ed. The Suburban Community. 1958, Putnam, p. 382.

4 Shaw, Ralph. "Libraries of Metropolitan Toronto." 1960. The author, p. 6.

5 Hauser, Philip M. "Community Developments and Their Effect on Library Planning" in Library Quarterly. XXVII; 4. p. 257.

seems to me a service which probably should be developed, which certainly should be continued, and which is doing quite a lot to keep the community sweet and healthy."

As a tax-supported educational service, the public library is directly subject to various forces now impinging on our metropolitan areas. All governmental services and the governmental units themselves have felt the strain on our social fabric caused by the increased number of people and the radical relocation of people and of industry. "Sixteen thousand local jurisdictions in fewer than 200 metropolitan areas have struggled hard to maintain a semblance of orderly growth and to supply the increasing demands for public service of their area residents. But the unit costs of these efforts have been high; a team of 20 mules is not as efficient as a single diesel engine. And although our local governments have kept things going in metropolitan areas they have failed in one crucial area of public responsibility; they cannot plan, budget, and program ahead for the entire metropolitan region." "

Robert C. Wood has reported on the governmental birth rate as follows: "As the quiet, half-deserted villages and towns on the fringes of cities have filled up and new developments have been incorporated, the number of suburban governments has steadily increased. In 1900 the New York region had 127; by 1920, 204; today over 1,000 exist in metropolitan New York. In St. Louis County, there were 8 incorporated municipalities in 1911, 39 in 1940, 94 by 1952. This pattern is duplicated across the country."

In the vast majority of cases, one statutory power of a tax-gathering governmental unit is the authority to establish and support a public library. In 1961 there were 8,190 public libraries in the United States. Of these, 254, or about 3 percent of the total, were located in places of 100,000 population or over, and together they served over 80 million people, about 45 percent of the total population. At the other end of the scale, 5,768 libraries, or about 70 percent of the total, were located in communities of less than 10,000 population. The proliferation of autonomous governmental units, characterized by the annexation-incorporation tug of war, has been particularly disadvantageous for the efficient and economical development of good public libraries. In small suburban communities and in rural-urban fringe areas the library is frequently a low priority agency but one in which proprietory interest becomes rigidly vested with astonishing speed. Even to suggest that rudimentary cooperative activities might improve services can often bring charges of empirebuilding, and violation of the time-honored concept of home rule. In other cases the acknowledged economy and efficiency of an areawide library system is buried under the weight of extraneous political issues involving more money and greater prestige than libraries represent. In many parts of the country the gross underrepresentation of metropolitan areas both in State legislatures and in county governments has meant that the metropolitan area jurisdictions have had little real interest shown in their problems by either of the larger units. The fact that urban area problems also affect other services is, however, of little consolation to libraries. Many other public services are concerned primarily with quantitative demands, but the changing characteristics of library users will add another dimension to the library's problems. Lester Asheim, in summarizing a recent conference, stated: "Growth is occurring in those parts of the total population which have traditionally been the greatest users of the book. There are not going to be merely more people in the years ahead, but more educated people, more people in professional and technical positions, more people with leisure, more people involved in some organized activity of continuing education. The implications for the library of this combination of facts about the population add up to something considerably more than just a growth in library use; they point to a more serious, more intensive, more demanding employment of what [Dan] Lacy describes as the purposive rather than the pastime use of library materials. The purposive use of the library demands a much more current and extensive collection and a much more specialized staff than does pastime use."

6 Committee for Economic Development. Committee, p. 5.

"Guiding Metropolitan Growth." 1960, the

7 Wood, Robert C. "The_Governing of Suburbia" in the Suburban Community. William M. Dobriner, ed. 1958, Putnam, p. 168.

8 Schick, Frank L. "Statistics of Public Library Systems Serving Populations of 100,000 or More: Fiscal Year 1960," 1961, Library Services Branch, U.S. Office of Education.

320.

Asheim. Lester. "Summary of the Conference" in Library Quarterly XXVII; 4, p.

The indications are that these qualitative demands on library services are becoming, and will continue to become, greater, more complex, and more expensive. In many areas only the strong, well-equipped and well-staffed urban center library is capable of tooling up to meet these needs. In commenting on the problems raised by multiple governmental units, we are speaking from the library's point of view. The mobile citizen of a metropolitan area couldn't care less. He may work in one community, live in another, and send the children to school in a third. He shops, goes to church, and finds his recreation with no regard for the fact that he may be crossing city, town, county, and even State boundaries. The vast majority of Americans have no patience for arbitrary political lines which, to them, complicate rather than simplify their daily lives. They also tend to show small tolerance for public officials who try to maintain such boundaries for partisan or parochial purposes.

Library users are no exception. They expect to use whatever library facility happens to be most convenient or which seems most likely to be able to provide the materials or services required. The national standards 10 for public libraries, adopted by the American Library Association in 1956, are based on a concept of library systems which would provide the necessary flexibility in library organization. These standards, built up from the needs of the single reader and the local community, define a network of library facilities functioning to make the full range of library services and resources available to every resident. The respective roles of the community library or branch, the regional headquarters or central library, the State library agency, and the Federal Government, are seen as parts of a total program of library service. The most important single concept in this statement of standards is the cooperative approach to adequacy; the joining together of libraries, formally and informally, in groups called systems.

An event coinciding with the publication of national standards was the passage of the Federal Library Services Act. This program (Public Law 597, 84th Cong.), first passed in 1956 for 5 years and extended through 1966 by the 86th Congress (Public Law 86-679), allocated funds to the States for the promotion and development of public library services to areas of under 10,000 population which have no such service or which have inadequate service. These funds are paid to the States for use in accordance with a State plan for rural library development. The majority of the States have incorporated the basic concepts of library systems as contained in the standards as part of their method of defining "inadequately" served areas.

The unfortunate result of this situation is that a basic premise of the standards is in almost direct conflict with a basic provision of the Library Services Act. That is, the Federal grants-in-aid must go to areas in which the achievement of locally supported adequate public library service is economically unwise and inefficient. On the other hand, more than 12 million urban persons have no library service at all and over 50 million urban persons have only inadequate service. There people are specifically excluded from any benefits under the Library Services Act program.

The States have attempted to resolve this conflict by building library systems out of political components, each of which is rural according to the Library Services Act definition. The far simpler and more practical method of building systems on the existing strengths of urban libraries has not been fully or freely explored because the law forbids urban libraries to benefit directly or indirectly from Library Services Act expenditures.

Lowell Martin, in a paper not yet published, recognized the problem by saying that, "one of the most promising and not necessarily new forms is the building of county units upon strong city libraries, the possibilities of which I hope can be fully opened by adjustments in the unreal urban-rural distinction that has existed in the Federal act." In a later context, Mr. Martin indicates that what is needed is, "to build our foundations first, to add to strength rather than combine weakness, even if this means that we will not start as many new library units in the next 5 years * * * to look freshly and imaginatively at the possibilities for new forms of coordination so that we will consolidate our strength rather than extend our weakness."

Speaking in 1957 of the present needs of urban libraries, Robert D. Leigh said, "Public library leadership had concentrated its legislative efforts on the pro

10 "Public Library Service: A Guide to Evaluation With Minimum Standards." ALA.

1956,

motion of public library services for the rural areas Although justified as a necessary concession to the traditional motivations of the earlier library extension movement, such an exclusive emphasis no longer fits all the needs for public library development * * *. The time has arrived for public library leadership to devote the same energy and resources toward revising the concepts of metropolitan library organization * * * building library systems in contemporary terms needs to be seen in its totality, neglecting neither the metropolis, the smaller cities, the villages, nor the forgotten areas in between."

The foregoing statements tend to suggest that urban and rural libraries have become compartmentalized and seem to be treated as different agencies with different objectives and functions. If this was ever true, it would have been in the 19th century and not in an age of ubiquitous mass communication and rapid transportation. It is true that public library collections should and do differ in order to meet the needs of their differing constituancies. A library which is closely integrated with the community it serves will be, to some degree, a unique institution, but its differences will reflect the whole complex of its social, political, and economic environment and not merely its physical size and location. The Library Services Act has had undeniable success in helping to bring library service to millions of Americans who were without public libraries. The evidence suggests, however, that the need for assistance is no less great in the urban areas and that some Library Services Act projects would already have attained a higher level of adequacy and effectiveness had urban libraries been able to benefit from full participation in such projects.

Librarians and governmental officials in several metropolitan areas have begun systematic attacks on these problems. Special surveys of specific metropolitan areas have been conducted and frequently implemented with good results. The two which are most closely related to broad-scale areawide planning are those done in Toronto, Canada 12 and Dade County, Fla.13 Other recent studies which have come to grips with the problems of metropolitan growth include the Cuyahoga County report on Metropolitan Cleveland," the Nashville Tennessee Survey.15 and the studies of libraries in the Washington, D.C., area. A comprehensive study of core city library services is now underway in Baltimore. Financed by the Deiches Fund, the study will include research into the human environment of the Baltimore area, experimentation in new service patterns, and a library program based on long-range future planning.1

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In addition to these local studies many statewide surveys, notably Pennsylvania,18 Wisconsin,10 New Hampshire,20 and Hawaii " have given some consideration to the needs of urban-area libraries and their importance in building adequate library systems. The various findings and recommendations of both the local and statewide surveys do not, for the most part, contain information or techniques which are radically new or different from traditional concepts and methods for the improvement of library service. Their value lies partly in suggesting which of the traditional library activities might best be ap

11 Leigh. Robert D. "Changing Concepts of the Public Library's Role" in Library Quarterly. XXVII; 4. p. 233.

12 Shaw, Ralph, op. cit.

13 Sessa, Frank B.. et al. "A Survey of Public Library Service in Metropolitan Dade County," 1959, Miami, Fla.

14 Theuer, Arlene A., "Public Libraries in Cuyahoga County," 1959, Cleveland Metropolitan Services Commission.

15 Nashville City Planning Commission and the Davidson County Planning Commission, Advance Planning Division. "A Plan of Branch Libraries for Nashville and Davidson County, Tennessee." 1961, Author.

16 Maryland-National Capitol Park and Planning Commission. "Preliminary Master Plan of Libraries Montgomery and Prince Georges County." 1959, Author. Wheeler, Joseph L.. "Arlington County, Virginia Report of a Survey of Department Libraries." 1956, Arlington County, Va.

17 Martin, Lowell A. and Castagna, Edwin. Library" in Maryland Libraries 28: 2. p. 15.

"Deiches Study of the Enoch Pratt Free

18 Martin, Lowell A. "Library Service in Pennsylvania, Present and Proposed." 1958, Pennsylvania State Library. 19 Baumann, Ruth., "Facing the 60's-The Public Library in Wisconsin." 1961, University of Wisconsin.

20 Ford. Joseph P. and Holden, John T., "A Study of Library Service in New Hampshire." 1961, University of New Hampshire.

21 Leigh. Robert D.. "Governor's Study of Public and School Libraries in the State of Hawaii." 1960, Hawaii Department of Public Instruction.

plied in certain specific situations. An equally important function of these surveys has been to call to the attention of government officials and the general public the complexities and increasing costs of modern library service.

The types of library system organization have normally followed the pattern of metropolitan government-federation of separate units, creation of a metropolitan county, city-county consolidation, creation of special-purpose or multipurpose metropolitan districts, and the extension of functions by intergovern. mental contract. Whatever the method, the goal has been to achieve more effective and more economical service. The motivation has been to increase the tax base, to obtain grants-in-aid, or to distribute costs more equitably.

A basic reason why progress has not been faster in some areas is inadequate financial support. This lack seems to be caused not so much by an areawide inability to pay for needed public services, but rather to the sharp differences in ability to pay among specific local jurisdictions, and the inadequacy of the local real property tax as the prime source of local revenue. The State, with its richer variety of revenue sources, can do much to equalize the cost burdens of local governments but this advantage has not been widely applied to public libraries. If rural-urban reapportionment provides equitable representation or urban areas in the near future, it is likely that States will become more responsive to the problems of metropolitan areas, including their libraries. Adequacy may indeed be only a matter of dollars, but if this is true, a larger proportional share of these dollars will probably have to come from revenues collected at the State and Federal level. The static or declining tax base of the core city has produced the suggestion that one use of State grants-in-aid would be to compensate the core city for the cost of services to suburban areas.

The gap between the scope of the problem and the effectiveness of present attempts to cope with it continues to grow. There is immediate need for more research, for new and imaginative attacks on the underlying causes, and for systematic evaluation of present and future efforts to make good public library services available to our metropolitan areas. These needs have been considered by a Committee on Metropolitan Areas Library Service of the Public Library Association. Harold L. Hamill, city librarian of the Los Angeles Public Library, is chairman of this group.

The purpose of the committee is to make recommendations for programs which will lead to uniformly good library service throughout metropolitan areas, including sharing of resources, forms of mutual cooperation, division of responsibility, avoidance of unnecessary duplication, and provision of adequate support. Late in 1961 this committee submitted a proposal for a study of library service in metropolitan areas to the Council on Library Resources. The proposal called for a study of all types of libraries, school, university, and special, as well as the public libraries in the central city and its suburbs. The study would also set forth the salient facts and appraise the conditions which surround library service in metropolitan areas and make specific recommendations for improvement. No conclusive action on the proposal has yet been taken by the council. Conference and workshop consideration of the problem on a statewide or national basis has not been extensive. The University of Chicago Graduate Library School Institute in 1960 devoted to: "Library Trends" included this topic and a statewide workshop on metropolitan area library service was held in California in 1958.22 Although the individual State libraries and State library associations have undoubtedly included the urban library in their conference and workshop programs, it would seem desirable to have additional activity at the interstate and regional levels.

The fact that many of the basic problems are beyond the direct control of librarians should not discourage the profession from doing everything possible to improve metropolitan area library service. More research is needed to give sharper definition to the existing situations; more objective evaluation of present patterns of urban-area library organization and service is needed; and more intensive study and discussion of the problem by librarians and others is also highly important. Such activities are now essential if good public library service is to be made available to all the people.

22 "Proceedings of a Workshop on Problems of Library Service in Metropolitan Areas," in News Notes of California Libraries, 53: 3 pp. 261–298.