Mr. FRELINGHUYSEN. Mr. Chairman, I too have enjoyed listening to Mr. Miller's testimony and having had the pleasure of going to his district not so long ago. I know something of the nature of the district.

My question is with respect to the bill, the companion bill to Mr. Bailey's you have introduced, Mr. Miller, and that is whether you feel that this proposed extension of the Library Services Act is not going to detract from the valuable work which has been carried out in rural areas. You point out that title I of this bill will give California something like five times as many dollars for public libraries as they are presently getting for expansion of libraries in rural areas. I might add that there is no assurance that as much is going to be made available in California for rural libraries, let alone anything for the proposed expansion which you envisage in your own area.

I am wondering whether you would agree with me that perhaps we should at least consider requiring that a certain segment of this allocation be continued and made available for the rural areas of every State or whether you feel it should be left entirely at the discretion of those who are going to decide how this money is to be spent.

Mr. MILLER. I would like to leave it discretionary, frankly, Mr. Frelinghuysen. You say there is no assurance that the rural assistance will be the same as it has been in the past. I might turn that around and say there is no assurance that library aid to rural areas will not be continued in roughly the same amount.

Mr. FRELINGHUYSEN. There is no distinction between rural areas and anything else. Nothing else has been eligible. There certainly is every likelihood that the demand for this money is going to be shared by a lot of communities other than rural. The bedroom communities in your own district are surely going to demand a slice which otherwise would be made available for the rural communities.

Mr. MILLER. Since the gross amounts are being increased this need not make any difference in the amounts which might be released to the rural areas, but more than that

Mr. FRELINGHUYSEN. But it may also, you will agree with me; there is no assurance that the rural areas aren't going to get the short end of the stick if there is this tremendous demand which does result in inadequate service in suburban populations.

Again, you have got more voters, I might add, in the suburban populations. The pressures will be on somebody to provide assistance in that area rather than in the somewhat remote areas where perhaps less people are being served, but where, in my opinion, the Federal Government may have a more direct responsibility than they would for the general problem.

Mr. MILLER. I would answer that in two ways. One, what I said before, the assurances one way may not be any more valid than assurances another way. In the case of my own district, I have been assured that service to my own rural areas will be extended further under the proposed amendments. The second point is an extension of the remarks that I made in response to Mr. O'Hara's questioning. It is that these problems of book distribution and libraries are becoming more and more interrelated between rural areas and suburban areas and that this removal of a ceiling would give the administrator more flexibility in planning a library system which includes both rural and suburban areas.

Mr. FRELINGHUYSEN. Who is going to make the determination, in your opinion, as to the adequacy of library services under this proposed expansion?

Mr. MILLER. I suppose the State library administrator would. But I would say this, that I know of no library that can claim to be adequate. Therefore it is going to be relative inadequacy rather than adequacy which will have to be the judgment.

Mr. FRELINGHUYSEN. That is my next point. If that is the case, do you feel that it should or will be someone other than the local community or perhaps the county who will make the determination? Is that right?

Mr. MILLER. I am not sure that I understand the question.

Mr. FRELINGHUYSEN. Who is going to make the determination? The answer may be difficult. Who is going to determine the adequacy of library services prior to a distribution of what admittedly are going to be inadequate funds to meet all the needs of California for adequate library services?

Mr. MILLER. The State will.

Mr. FRELINGHUYSEN. The State library administrative agency is the language in the bill.

Mr. MILLER. I intend to always, where possible, give as much administrative latitude as possible rather than hedging it with legislative restrictions. I can see this working out in a number of specific projects; the projects I dealt with in my testimony. Greater administrative flexibility is going to make for a better program on these two projects than if we had hedged it about with legislative restrictions.

Mr. FRELINGHUYSEN. What worries me quite frankly, in connection with giving a State agency the control of the distribution of these funds, is that the local prerogatives which normally have been accepted as customary and right will be completely eliminated.

Mendocino County will no longer have the say as to whether or not they think services should be provided. It will be a State agency making the determination and, for example, Mendocino would not have any claims on the funds available. Unfortunately, the neighboring county will get it.

Mr. MILLER. I do not see any way out of this dilemma if we are going to allocate Federal funds to the States. The localities do not have to come into the program if they do not care to.

Mr. FRELINGHUYSEN. It is not a question of not caring to. They want to come in. That is completely irrelevant. We assume they will want to get money that has not been made available. The question that worries me is the degree to which they are going to be deprived of their ability to choose books. if it is a question of enlarging the number of books in an existing library, or their ability to determine whether or not rural services should be provided to some community. The State will make that decision. I do not think there is any argument.

Mr. MILLER. I would respectfully disagree, in part. The city library of Healdsburg refused to come into the North Bay cooperative system because they said they wanted the right to select their own books, and to this day they are out of the project, getting only their own books. Of course, the cooperative system is a supplementary

service; it does not limit any member library's right to select its own books.

Mr. FRELINGHUYSEN. You are underlining the very point I make, there will be those who feel they do not like this determination, by some agency other than themselves as to whether they have got adequate services and in which way they should expand.

Mr. BAILEY. Will the gentleman yield?

Mr. FRELINGHUYSEN. I will be glad to yield.

Mr. BAILEY. The question raised by the gentleman from New Jersey is not an important one. He raised the question that possibly under the present Library Act, since it is concerned with services to rural areas, the latter might suffer as a result of enactment of this new act in that they won't receive the same consideration. But the bill itself provides protection by increasing the appropriation. Mr. MILLER. I would agree with what Mr. Frelinghuysen says, that it does present a problem and dilemma.

In many of these Federal questions we are presented with a problem of how to allocate the funds. We could be as critical of a system which dispensed funds directly to counties or directly to individual libraries as we could to a program which dispenses them to the States. We have this in the Federal highway program where we dispense the funds to the States.

Mr. FRELINGHUYSEN. Highways are not normally a responsibility of a local community where I would think libraries are. My main point, and I think I understand you, is that you do not feel there should be specific protection for rural library services. The program which presently exists can be contracted, not expanded under this bill. I would like to ask Mr. Miller about this proposal to provide money for public school libraries. I quoted Mr. Simpson, whom you also relied on in preparing your testimony, about the needs of the State for more adequate public school libraries. I will agree with you that we need more adequate public school libraries. My question is again with respect to the role of the Federal Government and the amount of money which we are planning to provide under this program. You point out that we are going to provide about $2,500,000 in Federal funds to public libraries. Well, as your own testimony points out, the needs of the State are for almost 200 public school libraries each year in California alone and each of those libraries to be adequately stocked would cost $3 million. I am wondering how, as small a sum as $2,500,000 is going to do much more than create a lot of dissatisfaction in California, with the amount and the way in which the Federal money is made available. Do you think it is going to accomplish anything except create an expectation that Uncle Sam is going to foot most of the bill at some point and lead to a further dragging of the feet in the community or the county or the State which might otherwise do the job itself?

Mr. MILLER. My testimony did not reflect the extent to which I feel we can go in this matter at all.

I do not see that just because there is a great need for books in each of these new public libraries in our California schools that the total Federal allotment we might receive under this would have to go for the purchase of books. There is no reason at all why some of this allotment, which is totally inadequate for the purchase of books alone,

might not go for the development of systems, and means of increasing greater library efficiency, such as point cataloging and processing, as we are doing in our present library assistance project in the North Bay counties of California.

In other words, to summarize, just because we are allotting this $212 million for public schools does not mean it cannot be used wisely and well to perfect systems of libraries rather than solely for the purchase of books, which would indeed be a drop in the bucket.

Mr. FRELINGHUYSEN. But your bill does not provide such pinpointed assistance. The bill is not pinpointing a problem such as improving library systems. It is simply saying money is to be made available.

Mr. MILLER. I will say again I have great confidence in administrators in this cases professional librarians. Possibly this is unfounded confidence. But I have great confidence in their ability to choose and select wise use of public moneys. They would naturally and normally gravitate in this direction when they have such inadequate amounts of money to solve the physical problem of supplying books.

Mr. FRELINGHUYSEN. I noticed that California, in order to qualify for $2,500,000 would have to put up $4 million-$3,851,000. I would like to ask two questions: One, has there been trouble in raising matching funds under the existing program; two, do you feel that the matching requirement on the part of your bill is a good one in order to stimulate additional action at either State or local level in order to qualify for these funds?

Mr. MILLER. The answer to the first question is "Yes." There has been some difficulty but not as much as there has been elsewhere. And the answer to the second question is that I frankly do not feel that the matching-funds approach is the sole answer to our problems. I adopted this because it conforms to the bill introduced by the chairman of this subcommittee. If I were left to my own devices and the best of all possible worlds could exist I would not as a rule adopt a matching fund approach.

Mr. FRELINGHUYSEN. There are those who feel that the basic justification for the rural library program is that it has stimulated and necessitated action at other levels of government and that that is the main reason why we should expand in this area, because there has been an unfortunate apathy or disinterest with respect to what we consider a serious problem.

Granted, we can get into an argument, I do not mean to. I think the point of view is interesting but in my own opinion it seems to me that a matching provision is ont only reasonable but also a very beneficial part of the overall project.

Mr. MILLER. I myself have said such things and will undoubtedly say such things again in the future but I do not think that the lack of local interest has been due to apathy. It has been due to what I said in my testimony at the beginning, that libraries are sometimes regarded by hard-pressed local officials as being one of the most easily dispensed with tax expenditures that they can do away with. The problem has not been apathy. It is a low priority among some of those who govern locally.

I feel that this interest would be stimulated even if these grants were direct. The local government would see the benefits and then

proceed. We have ample proof. There is Butte County in California, in Congressman Harold Johnson's district. They refused vehemently to participate in one of these rural projects under the Library Services Act. When they saw how successful the program was in a neighboring county or two they clamored to get in and since then the county supervisors have been running for office on the basis that they were in favor of getting into this project. They were being reelected because they were for a program that they heretofore had rejected.

Mr. BAILEY. May the Chair interpose that we have a number of other witnesses. Mr. Miller, we have enjoyed your appearance here. We hope we will be able to get legislation that will be helpful and useful to all of the elements in here.

Mr. MILLER. Mr. Chairman, I regard it as a great privilege to have been permitted to appear this morning. Thank you.

Mr. BAILEY. Our next witness will be Rutherford D. Rogers, Acting Librarian of Congress.

Mr. Rogers, you may further identify yourself and proceed with your testimony.

STATEMENT OF RUTHERFORD D. ROGERS, ACTING LIBRARIAN OF CONGRESS

Mr. ROGERS. Mr. Chairman and members of the general Subcommittee on Education, I am Rutherford D. Rogers, Chief Assistant Librarian of Congress, and, in the temporary absence of L. Quincy Mumford, I am serving as Acting Librarian of Congress. I speak today for both Dr. Mumford and the Library.

Because the Library of Congress has a vital concern in the welfare of libraries at all levels and throughout the entire country, we are keenly interested in and endorse the proposal to amend the Library Services Act as embodied in H.R. 11823 and the several other bills to amend the act that have been introduced. Any program that improves the library situation anywhere in the Nation is of benefit not only to those it serves directly but also to other libraries of the country which are linked through many cooperative programs and services and are, to a considerable extent, interdependent.

We have seen the dramatic impact the Library Services Act program has had in the States and in other territories where it has operated. Its phenomenal success has been recognized and appreciated not only by the librarians but by Members of Congress (as the widespread sponsorship of the bill now being considered attests), State officials, and most of all by those citizens in rural areas who, for the first time, have received new or greatly improved library services. The program, circumscribed though it has been, has demonstrated what can be done through Federal, State, and local cooperation. It has also demonstrated, however, that there are library needs in many areas that cannot be met under the present legislative authorization. The proposals being considered would remedy that situation by broadening the base of the Library Services Act in several significant areas and would strengthen the library services in the Nation immeasurably. At the same time, the proposed amendments would permit the continual application to library problems of a pattern of administration that has shown itself to be effective without the imposition of Federal control of State programs.