Public library needs in Missouri 1. Public library service is needed in 47 counties. 2. Nearly 700,000 people in Missouri do not have public library service. 3. Approximately 1.5 million Missourians have inferior library service, judged by modern standards-both State and national. 4. Missouri needs $6.5 million more each year to bring its present library service up to standard, and $7 million to provide for thoses still unserved. 5. In books alone, Missouri libraries need to buy 2.8 million more books to serve adequately those getting service. 6. Of those being served now, libraries need 61,000 more magazines for adequate service. 7. Missouri libraries need 756 more professional librarians and 140 more are needed each year to replace attrition and to keep pace with needed growth. School library needs in Missouri 1. Of 745,500 children in Missouri schools, only 277,398 have access to school libraries. 2. Of 1,732 school districts in Missouri, only 217 school systems report having librarians. 3. Missouri needs 645 professional high school librarians. 4. Missouri schools need at least 7.5 million books for adequate service, but report having only 1,980,597; 82 percent of Missouri schools do not have adequate books. 5. Only 30 schools in Missouri report spending enough money per pupil for books. Missouri schools report spending only 26 cents per pupil, while the national average is $1.60 per pupil; 93 percent of Missouri schools do not meet standards for book expenditures. College and university library needs in Missouri 1. Twenty-five percent of Missouri college and university libraries do not meet minimum standards for financial support; $885,739 in additional income is needed. 2. Eighty-seven percent of Missouri college and university libraries do not have adequate professional personnel. There is a need for 66 more professional librarians. 3. Only 14 percent of Missouri college and university libraries have adequate book collections. Over 1 million more books are needed to bring these libraries up to minimum standards. Professional personnel needs for Missouri libraries 1. For public libraries, 756. 2. For school libraries, 647. 3. For college and university libraries, 66. I hope these startling facts and figures about the backward conditions in our State will give you cause to exert all possible efforts to promote the passage of this bill during this session of Congress. Sincerely, PAXTON P. PRICE, State Librarian. COMMENTS ON NEEDS FOR FINANCIAL ASSISTANCE TO METROPOLITAN AREA PUBLIC LIBRARIES A study of library service in New Hampshire, 1961 "Since Federal funds administered under the Library Services Act may be used only for communities under 10,000 population, most of our city libraries are not eligible for technical assistance from the State library. Yet these libraries serve more than half our State population and are as much in need of assistance as many of the town libraries. There is danger that continued neglect among this important group will progressively depress the quality of library service throughout the State.” Harold Hamill, Los Angeles city librarian "Two-thirds of our people live in the 192 metropolitan areas of our country; within four decades, predicts Dr. Jerome P. Pickard in his new study, Metropolitanization of the United States, 85 percent of the country's 320 million inhabitants will live in urban areas ***. Most of the larger 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." "For many years our attention has been pointed toward rural districts as the land of the great unserved. Benefits of the LSA are solely directed to low population concentrations. Meanwhile the problems of library service for the teeming millions in metropolitan areas have received relatively little attention.” The metropolitan area: Its implications for librarianship, Mr. Thomas H. Reed "The public library cannot function in a metropolitan area successfully except on an integrated basis. If the many millions of our modern suburban areas are to have the advantages of libraries, they have to be supplied with them by the State or by some form of metropolitan organization." Survey of libraries in the Toronto area, 1960-Ralph Shaw, dean, Rutgers Library School "*** 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 in intellectual or financial matters, and neither complete administrative consolidation nor complete administrative decentralization will necessarily solve these underlying problems." Phillip M. Hauser, chairman, sociology department, University of Chicago "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 rings 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 ** *." Dean Lester Asheim, University of Chicago, Graduate Library School "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 Lacy describes as the purposive rather than the positive 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 positive use." Hannis Smith, librarian, Minnesota State Library "If we are to build these systems soundly, we must build on the existing strength of the better established libraries. Some of the larger city libraries are hesitant about joining the larger systems, since they know that it is impossible to keep their libraries from benefiting indirectly through participation in the system. Such benefit (even indirect) is prohibited by the Library Services Act. That word 'indirectly' is the most serious handicap in the present bill." Changing concepts of the public library's role, Robert D. Leigh1 "Public library leadership has concentrated its legislative efforts on the promotion of public library services for the rural areas. The Federal Library Services Act is specifically limited to this purpose. 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 1 Then dean of the Columbia Library School. to devote the same energy and resources toward revising the concepts of metropolitan library organization and translating the concepts into action that during the generation past have been concentrated on library service to rural areas." Facing the 1960's: The public library in Wisconsin, 1960-Bureau of the Government, University of Wisconsin "An area of weakness in the provision of public library service from the State point of view *** is that Federal aid had been used to equalize public library service in the rural areas of the State. This has tended to deemphasize the importance of the need for assistance of the more populous southeastern section of the State." Ralph Blasingame, Pennsylvania State librarian, as quoted by a USOE-OC regional representative "He offered as one suggestion for the improvement of the Federal Library Services Act, the elimination or modification of the 10,000 rural figure as the point below which services are designated as rural *** he believes that the problems of suburban libraries are just as much present and just as hard to solve as they are in rural areas. He said that in very many suburban towns the population has exploded * * * and libraries have a tendency to be neglected." New York State Progress Report, 1961 "The structure of cooperation is almost complete; the work of over a decade of organization is almost done, but the attainment of structure does not yet mean the attainment of quality service. A new phase begins, when effort can be placed on the improvement of reader services." Cuyahoga County, Ohio LETTERS TO THE PRESIDENT-1961 "The one medium that can do more to educate all people is being sorely neglected ***. Each of my visits to the branch library has left me with a feeling of disappointment and a thought sa to what was wrong. It seems incongruous that a community as large as ours cannot do better in providing a more suitable and better equipped home for the advancement of knowledge." Nassau County, N.Y. "We are mostly parents who came to this area to better the lives of our children. In many ways we have succeeded. But we have come to a blind alley in obtaining a library." Statement on school library services—council of chief State school officers "In urban and other nonrural communities the recent tremendous increase in the number of students using the resources of community libraries has pointed to the need for cooperative planning by school, college, and public library administrators concerning library services to students within the same geographic areas." California-Library group has been designated to examine interlibrary relationships with the following specific charge "The Whittier Area Library Development Committee as presently constituted shall study the library facilities, county, city, elementary and high school, junior college and/or any special libraries within the area (Union High School District to study and assess facilities and services and) to recommend solutions to the reference, lending and usage problems of the libraries as well as suggestions for new facilities that may be needed." Ralph Blasingame, Allerton Park paper "*** in this respect, I should like to express my belief that Federal funds in the future should be granted so as to make possible even more experimentation than has been carried on so far. The Library Services Act has made us focus on the weakest point of public library service. Experimentation at the strong points might, in the long run, be more successful." Sam Prentis, Allerton Park paper "Since it is becoming increasingly difficult, if not impossible, to separate the problems of large libraries from small libraries, or urban libraries from rural libraries, even as it is becoming less and less feasible to separate the basic interests of public libraries from academic, special or school libraries, the research program should concern itself with all kinds of libraries.” Lowell Martin, Allerton Park paper "And, to my mind, 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.” "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 these 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." Mel Scott, lecturer in city planning, University of California, Berkeley (Source: News Notes of California Libraries, Summer 1961) "I believe, however, that in the not too distant future there should be such aid. other than that provided by the Library Services Act. The metropolitan problems of California—and our most serious problems are metropolitan problems are created by exactly the same nationwide forces that have produced our rising national income. If the Federal Government, taxing income as its chief source of revenue, is going to be the main beneficiary of an expanding income base, then it should assist to an even greater extent with the solution of metropolitan problems, including the library problem. The Congress acknowledges a responsibility of the Federal Government to encourage the construction of homes. It should by all means bear some of the financial burden of providing the community services these thousands of new homes require, among them library service * * *.” Mrs. Gretchen Schenk, paper delivered at New York State Systems Staff Conference, March 1961 "The need for improved library service even in areas that have been enjoying good quality service for years is a problem faced by administrators in many places today ***. The need for extending library service in depth, the need to improve the quality of such service as we have, is becoming more and more insistent particularly with the increased level of our general education * Libraries for Florida, May 1962 "In the field of economic development of the community," says Governor Farris Bryant (Florida), “the public library is considered by business and industry to be as essential as an excellent school system. It is recognized that a good public library is included in the making of a good community and an alert citizenship." PARENTS' MAGAZINE & BETTER HOMEMAKING, June 28, 1962. Hon. CLEVELAND M. BAILEY, Chairman, General Subcommittee on Education, House Committee on Education and Labor, Washington, D.C. DEAR CLEVELAND: I am writing to express my approval of your bill, H.R. 11823. to amend the Library Services Act. While supporting this legislation in general I particularly commend title II which extends the provisions of the act to public elementary and secondary school libraries. Enclosed is a statement on this by the American Parents Committee, of which I am chairman. Will you please see that this is placed in the record of the hearing. I am personally most appreciative of your leadership in behalf of improved educational services and congratulate you on sponsoring this legislation. Sincerely yours, GEORGE J. HECHT, Publisher. THE AMERICAN PARENTS COMMITTEE, INC., June 29, 1962. Re the Library Services Act-H.R. 11823. DEAR MR. BAILEY: The American Parents Committee has for many years worked to improve educational services and facilities for all age groups and has supported sound legislation to attain these goals. We wish to express our approval of H.R. 11823 and related bills, because of the need for more and better formal and informal education and the relation of library services to this need. The American Parents Committee is a nonpartisan, nonprofit organization working for Federal legislation on behalf of the Nation's children. Our officers, directors, and national council members are leading citizens throughout the United States concerned with the welfare of children. We have had the opportunity to observe the results of the Library Services Act in spreading and improving public library service in the rural areas of the United States and in stimulating State and local support for this service. Last session we were gratified to have the Congress extend the life of this act for another 5 years. At the same time we were distressed by the evidence of inadequacies not only in rural public libraries but in public libraries in America's increasingly populous suburbs and in the city centers as well. The sheer number of library users which our population explosion is generating minimize the effectiveness of those resources which exist. Also, the diversified demands of all segments of the public, more reliant than ever today on the information which books and related materials can supply, place a heavy burden on these services. In addition, more than 60 million Americans outside the rural areas are served by inadequate public libraries or none at all. An expansion of the Library Services Act to stimulate State and local support of public libraries in all areas is desirable. We are particularly interested in expanded library services for public, elementary, and secondary schools. Good instruction must be accompanied by reading materials which the school libraries provide, yet nearly half of our public schools have no school libraries. This means that currently more than 10 million American children go to public schools which completely lack school library facilities. This condition will be aggravated by an increase in the number of children in schools and the increased emphasis on reading and individual study. The dearth of school libraries is a critical situation which is recognized by the parents of school-age children as well as educators and those interested in improved elementary and secondary education. We also recognize that other essential types of libraries have serious deficiencies. The 4-year and 2-year institutions of higher education have grave inadequacies which threaten to become greater as the enrollments increase. The lack of trained staff members is prevalent. This legislation embraces an ambitious program which, if enacted, will provide for a coordinated plan of library services. If it is found that all titles cannot be approved at this time, we would highly recommend the extension of the coverage of the Library Services Act to include titles I and II of these bills. We would appreciate having this letter expressing our views made a part of the hearing record on H.R. 11823, and related bills. Respectfully submitted. Mrs. MARGARET K. TAYLOR, Executive Director. EXCERPTS FROM STATE REPORTS ON PROGRAMS UNDER THE LIBRARY SERVICES ACT, FISCAL YEARS 1957-61 Alabama: We should have an accelerated program and an improved picture— we have so much more to do with. Because of the Library Services Act the whole program has been strengthened. State funds for rural services have increased 50 percent. Alaska: Library service to a handful of individuals in 1955 has increased to over 300 borrowers. Subscription libraries have become free public libraries. These and the newly organized public libraries have expanded their services to |