tain that if Federal grants are available within the next 5 years, most of these counties will appropriate sufficient funds to provide library

services.

The Maryland State Library Extension Division reports there are more than 160,000 people in the rural areas of the State who have no public library service at the present time, and about one-half million men, women, and children in the rural areas in my State who have inadequate library service.

In my opinion, the Federal aid funds are vital to the continuance and development of library services in the State of Maryland, and I feel this must be true over the entire Nation. Therefore, I earnestly request this committee's approval of the extension of the Library Services Act for another 5-year period as provided in H.R. 9812 and similar bills now before this Congress.

Thank you kindly for the opportunity of appearing before your committee.

Mr. ELLIOTT. Thank you very much, Mr. Brown, for a very fine statement of the operation of the Library Services Act and the local efforts as applied to your area and as they have fallen under your observation. We appreciate your testimony and the information you have brought us. Thank you very much.

Mr. BROWN. Thank you very much.

Mr. ELLIOTT. The gentleman from New Jersey.

Mr. DANIELS. I shall forgo asking any questions, Mr. Chiarman, in view of the fact that we are due on the House floor at 12 o'clock, and we would like to hear the next witness.

Thank you for coming, Mr. Brown,

Mr. BROWN. Thank you.

Mr. ELLIOTT. Our next witness is Mr. Chester B. Ostrander, president of the library board of the Southern Adirondack Library System, South Glens Falls, N.Y.

Mr. Ostrander, we are happy to have you. We have your statement. You may proceed in such manner as you see fit.

STATEMENT OF CHESTER B. OSTRANDER, PRESIDENT, BOARD OF TRUSTEES, SOUTHERN ADIRONDACK LIBRARY SYSTEM, SOUTH GLENS FALLS, N.Y.

Mr. OSTRANDER. Mr. Chairman and members of the committee, I would like to say that I had the pleasure this morning of meeting Congressman Wainwright and, though we come from different parts of the State, I am sure he and I share a common interest in libraries. Mr. WAINWRIGHT. I would also like to say, Mr. Chairman, that the name Ostrander is a Long Island name, very common out in the rural area I come from.

Mr. OSTRANDER. My name is Chester Ostrander. I am supervising principal of a central school district of 2,000 students at South Glens Falls, N.Y., just 200 miles due north of New York City. I appear today in behalf of legislation to extend the Library Services Act for a 5-year period. My interest in rural libraries comes from my position as chairman of the board of trustees of a multicounty library system in upstate New York. I have a longstanding interest also in the welfare of rural people, since I served for two terms as master of

a subordinate grange and at one time owned and operated my own farm.

My occupation with the public schools gives me a very proper concern with the quality and extent of libraries. The school does not do the complete job of education, of course, even for the children of America. As I well know, the most scholarships are not won by students who learn only what is in their textbooks, even though they pay close attention to the teacher. What is required is the opportunity to tap a large stock of cultural information in a community where knowledge is appreciated. In such an atmosphere, intellectual curiosity is most often stimulated, and students go beyond classwork to broaden their sources of information. A few of the able, talented, and brilliant, to be sure, may do so without materials at hand, but many more come to the front when culture is within easy reach. Libraries in individual schools cannot have enough diversity to meet this need and the public library, in performing this function, can serve outstandingly. That it is doing so in many good communities is proved by the number of young people who are regular borrowers of books and users of research materials.

In view of the essential part that libraries play, it may seem strange that the advanced and populous State of New York does not yet have libraries within easy access for everyone. The fact is, however, that upward of 5 million people, or 1 in 3, live in areas where service is rated either inadequate or nonexistent. I might say that in my own area that is particularly true. These are in communities of under 10,000 located in more or less remote sections where only book stations or bookmobiles would be effective or where the poorly supported library has insufficient funds to get above a simple book-storage or neighbor-book-exchange level. Within my own area of 4 counties and 160,000 people, the number unserved by accepted libraries prior to 1958 was 80,000, or 50 percent. The development of new cooperative library systems is rapidly improving this situation and can continue with the help of Library Services Act funds.

In this same period, New York State has not neglected its duty. Since 1956, it has appropriated $4 million to bring learning materials to rural areas. To this amount has been added money from the local communities and the $645,000 provided by the Library Services Act in the same period.

I would like to take a few minutes to relate the rather remarkable effects which have come from this three-way cooperation in supportlocal, State and National.

As of now, all or part of 42 counties in New York State, out of a total of 62, are organized into library systems chartered with the explicit understanding that they will build up present libraries and extend new service to residents of rural sections. Eighteen systems are in operation. Five were founded before 1950, two between 1950 and 1957. But after the Library Services Act began to take full effect and new State legislation was passed in 1958, 11 more have been founded.

Recruitment of trained personnel to staff new library development has been recognized as an obstacle and well over 1,000 New York State people have been involved in training programs, both to add new personnel and to train others for better service.

Money provided by the Library Services Act has allowed the Library Extension Division of New York State to plan ahead in a way it could not do before, set up demonstration bookmobile projects and try new methods, such as rapid interlibrary communication through telephone and teletype. By means of teletype, it has been shown in my own system that, at low cost, book and fact requests can be relayed from outlying villages to the central reference source in a matter of minutes and answers obtained the following day.

Perhaps it will give you a greater understanding of what we are doing if I describe briefly the activities of the library system with which I am associated. It is called the Southern Adirondack Library System and has its headquarters at Ballston Spa, N.Y. Twenty community libraries of Warren, Washington, Saratoga, and Hamilton Counties belong to the system. Bookmobile and book deposit stations reach out to cover residents of 4,200 square miles of farming and resort land.

Our system operates on a current budget of about $100,000.

Mr. WAINWRIGHT. May I ask you where that money now comes from?

Mr. OSTRANDER. It is State aid. The local contribution is in support of the local library. It is all State aid. It covers, as I said, four counties and is based on population and area. It purchases and processes books at the request of local libraries, maintains a large reference collection through the Crandall Library at Glens Falls which before long will include 100,000 volumes, operates a loan collection of books and films, programs regular inservice training for rural librarians, routes a large bookmobile into over 32 remote hamlets and villages, and, in general, stimulates new and better educational activities.

For example, our bookmobile in slightly over a year circulated 54,000 books. The system ordered at special discount 3,800 volumes for community libraries, circulated 7,900 volumes from its book pool for use in local communities. Over 2,500 people viewed educational films from our collection during its first 3 months of service. A delivery truck visits each of the 18 member libraries every week.

Our system, during its first year, had a loan, a New York State bookmobile, which had been purchased with Library Services Act funds. At the end of the loan period, our board of trustees was convinced that it must purchase its own vehicle and continue the service. I quote from a report issued at that time:

At a recent countywide Grange meeting one staff member was amazed and pleased by the spontaneous testimonials to the bookmobile which arose during general group discussion. One elderly lady with her arm in a sling said she was able to borrow materials on genealogy with a speed which surprised her— materials she wouldn't let out of her kitchen if they were her own. A teacher described a slow student in her class who was beginning to read for pleasure and whose work in school was actually improving all because he was getting attractive, interesting books from the bookmobile when it stopped in his village. The Grange lecturer remarked that her 10-year-old granddaughter's biggest concern this summer was whether she would get to the bookmobile every 2 weeks. A county school superintendent tells how he was touring his area one day and suddenly came upon cars halted and people running across the road. He suspected it was a fire-but discovered they were going to the bookmobile. As a layman in the library field, I frequently assess what is happening in my area in terms of the amount of public financial effort

going to it. It seems to me that for a relatively modest appropriation at local, State, and Federal levels we are getting a very large return. In New York State the impact of new developments in libraries is clearly evident and the tempo of growth is rapid. To continue this progress is essential, particularly outside of cities. A recent New York Times editorial says that, "The multiplicity of libraries in the great urban centers dulls the senses to the want of the rural areas." A recent report from the division of library extension in Albany, N.Y., states that failure to extend the Library Services Act beyond 1961 would reverse the progress we have been working for. In spite of strong State library extension leadership, such action would impede further development of library systems in New York State. And it is through these systems, such as my own, that libraries and the rural people of our counties pool their resources to render effective and economical service. As I have pointed out in relation to my own southern Adirondack library system, this grouping of communities in a joint effort is proving most successful.

In view of the foregoing, I urge a 5-year extension of the Library Services Act to continue the strides now well begun.

Thank you very much for the privilege of appearing before your committee.

Mr. ELLIOTT. Thank you, Mr. Ostrander, for a very helpful and enlightening statement. You bring us the same story we are hearing from other parts of the country, of the great good this program is doing and which it is capable of doing. We appreciate your courtesy. Mr. OSTRANDER. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Mr. DANIELS. I would like to compliment Mr. Ostrander for his personal interest and the effort he has put into this type of legislation. We are happy to see you here today.

Mr. ELLIOTT. Mr. Wainwright.

Mr. WAINWRIGHT. Mr. Ostrander, I wonder if I could ask a couple of brief questions. Does the community you live in or the adjacent community have a free library?

Mr. OSTRANDER. An adjacent community has one.

Mr. WAINWRIGHT. How far is that, 8 or 10 miles?

Mr. OSTRANDER. Very close by. The particular community in which I live is South Glens Falls, and the city of Glens Falls does have its own library.

Mr. WAINWRIGHT. Is there a very good free library?

Mr. OSTRANDER. Yes; I would say so. It has about 50,000 volumes, and it is rapidly increasing in size. My own students, however, from my school are handicapped some in reaching it. It is not as if we had our own library in our own community.

Mr. WAINWRIGHT. One of the things I am not clear about is what happens in a situation like this: Suppose you were a teacher and assigned a particular project to your class, and the class has to do a research paper. They want to go beyond the school library to get additional materials. This happens to Congressmen. We receive letters from students and constituents requesting special material. From time to time, I write back and tell them they ought to write

their own papers and do original research, rather than coming to Congress.

More specifically, I suggest that they go to their own public library; that this information is there, and it would do them good to go to the library and get their information.

Under the Library Services Act and a mobile library unit, how does the mobile library assist, we will say, the school or particularly the individual teacher in providing reference material for his own class or his own students on a paper that he might assign?

Mr. OSTRANDER. Of course, the teacher ought to give the assignment enough in advance so that the children have an opportunity to get it. If the bookmobile was visiting the community, if they were given a little advance notice they could get that information in good quantity for the student. He needs to get into the habit of getting it in that fashion. Our bookmobile can take a request for materials. Then it returns it to the Ballston Spa center and can teletype that request to the State library, and in a matter of a day or two have that information.

Mr. WAINWRIGHT. In other words, the source of the material of the bookmobile is the State library itself?

Mr. OSTRANDER. We do have a pool of our own, and we have our own central reference library in Glens Falls. So those two sources are available to the system-the central reference library and the State library.

Mr. WAINWRIGHT. This is the sort of thing which will come up on the floor and which Congressman Elliott, Congressman Daniels, and I will have to answer. Specifically, suppose a class or an instructor wanted an annotated volume of the Constitution, such as we all have in our offices, but the ordinary library may not have it. It is quite a volume. He might need it for research he might be doing for your class. Could the bookmobile help him on a specific case such as that? Mr. OSTRANDER. Yes; they would have that available in the central reference library and could request it from there.

Again, they would not be expected to have enough copies for everyone in the class so the teacher would have to take that into account in asking for the assignment to be done.

Mr. WAINWRIGHT. How long could something like this go out on loan before the central library starts to scream?

Mr. OSTRANDER. We usually follow a month's procedure.

Mr. WAINWRIGHT. I have nothing further.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I think Mr. Ostrander has made an excellent witness.

Mr. ELLIOTT. I agree with the gentleman from New York.
I also thank you, Mr. Ostrander.

Without further testimony the subcommittee will stand adjourned and testimony on this bill, so far as I know, has been completed.

We will try to meet soon for the purpose of considering this legislation in executive session. We will consider proposed amendments with a view to getting a bill voted out at the earliest possible date. The committee will stand adjourned.