Mr. Coon. In libraries in the high schools.

Mr. LEMKE. There is no high school library that I have ever had access to myself or have known of that comes anywhere near providing an adequate service.

Also we know that when high school students do not have access. to a public library they do find greater difficulty in carrying on their activities in college and advanced institutions of learning. They do not even know how to use a public library, and, therefore, come through their training and never in their lives learn how to use one if all they have access to is a high school library.

Mr. Coon. The word "adequate" would be a little different—the interpretation, perhaps of what is adequate and what is not adequate. Mr. LEMKE. Yes. But, for example, let me put it this way: We know that many libraries, even in the rural towns, are unable to buy as many as a hundred books a year. Now I submit in a day like this, as rich as our country is, that no library that is buying fewer than a hundred books is able to serve adequately the people who have access to it. If you take young people and men and women living in the rural areas where they have to cover many miles to get to a library which is not equipped to serve them, I think that could be put under the category of no library service at all.

Mr. CooN. You do not believe that this program should be a 5-year program, but it should be, instead, a continuing program?

Mr. LEMKE. I think that this is the most promising thing that has come up in the 20 or 30 years that I have been working for libraries. I just contribute my services. I don't engage in a monetary reward for my work.

I would say it is the most significant thing that has come up during these years. I believe that it will give a great stimulus. I believe that on account of it the States will do more for themselves than they have ever done before.

In the event we really go into an age of leisure where we are threatened with an age of idleness I would hope that we could come back to the Congress and say here is a need that is imperative and not make a promise we would have to break 5 or 10 or 15 years from now. Mr. CooN. That is all.

Mr. METCALF. Do you think, Reverend Lemke, that there is any community that is not able to purchase more than a hundred books a year?

Mr. LEMKE. I think this: In communities where I have lived there are people who spend money on cigarettes-and I have no objection to tobacco. And there are people that spend money on theaters, and I have no objection to theaters. There are people who spend money on liquor-I have no objection to the use of liquor. So I say there are people spending money for other things who could, if they would, without even giving up those things, make contributions to the library. But they are not going to do it unless there has been some drive and a way of getting at them and making them aware of the great need and their responsibility. I believe if they could be made to see this thing that they will be willing to do in taxes what they are not willing to do at the present time.

Mr. METCALF. That is our hope—that we can give, as a witness said yesterday, the spark.

Mr. LEMKE. Yes, that is right. It is a stimulus bill.

Mr. METCALF. And then we can get the Federal Government out and demonstrate to the people that a good investment in their tax dollar is to buy not 100 but 500 or 1,000 and get adequate library services.

Mr. LEMKE. Yes.

May I express another thought here?

I don't know, but I think this came up yesterday on the question of Illinois having $300,000 that was put into bookmobiles, demonstration in rural areas.

I happened to be involved in that. I was living in the State of Illinois at that time. And I had served several terms on the planning board of the State library, and had been president of the Illinois Library Association.

The planning board asked me if I would make a sort of cross survey of the service organizations of the State to see how the people of the State of Illinois would react if they were really challenged with the idea of better rural service.

So, with that in mind, I was able to get speaking appointments throughout the State with many, many organizations like the Grange and the Rotary and the Kiwanis and various service organizations, the YMCA, Boy Scouts, and so on. The purpose of it was not to get them to vote, because many of these organizations have a rule against voting or taking a vote on any issue of the kind.

But in every single case-there was not one exception-after presenting the need, there was not one organization but what said "We would like to have a vote on this in an unofficial capacity which you can quote." And it was the will of these organizations speaking that caused the State of Illinois to appropriate $300,000 to set up 6 regions in the State of Illinois in each of which they carried out a bookmobile demonstration.

Now I have a feeling that throughout the United States if we can have the right stimulation, if we can get to the people, this is a service that will be a grassroots service which will be demanded by the people themselves. I think it is something they want. I don't believe anyone living in a rural area wants to be discriminated against. He wants the same advantages that his brothers and sisters have over in the urban areas of the country.

Mr. METCALF. Thank you, Reverend Lemke, for a splendid state

ment.

Mr. LEMKE. Thank you.

Mr. METCALF. The next witness is Dr. Robert D. Leigh.

Dr. Leigh, you may identify yourself and proceed with your state

ment.

STATEMENT OF ROBERT D. LEIGH, MEMBER OF THE GRADUATE FACULTY, COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY, AND DEAN OF THE LIBRARY SCHOOL

Dr. LEIGH. I am a member of the graduate faculty of Columbia University, and at the present time acting as dean of the library school.

I suppose more relevant to my occasion for being here is that from 1947 to 1950 I was director of the public library inquiry which was

carried on under the auspices of the Social Science Research Council with money from the Carnegie Corp. There were 12 or 15 of us with the single assignment of trying to find out about the present situation of public libraries in the United States and what might be a good program for their development.

I guess that identifies me.

Mr. METCALF. It was your publication that was cited yesterday by Dr. Brownell, the Commissioner of Education.

Dr. LEIGH. Yes, sir, I was the author of the final report of the public library inquiry which was called The Public Library in the United States. And I heard from the president-elect of the American Library Association that the quotations yesterday seemed to indicate an overall point of view which I don't think we intended by this section in our report entitled "Federal Aid to Public Libraries."

What was quoted was exactly true, of course, as far as it went. But it left out the picture as we tried to get it.

This whole section of this book dealt with various acts on the public library and Federal aid which is about 33 pages, and the only way I could say what our inquiry really felt about Federal aid would be to give you all or most of those 313 pages.

Would it be possible for me to read the whole thing?

Mr. METCALF. You may read it or you may summarize it in your statement, and we will have it inserted in the record. Any way you prefer to proceed.

Dr. LEIGH. It might be simpler just to say that the section beginning on page 155 of this book "The Public Library in the United States,' entitled "Federal Aid to Public Libraries," running through the top of page 159, which is the end of that section, is the whole statement.

What it says, in summary, is, first of all, a little of a historical picture of the earlier attempts at Federal aid which were carried on during the 1930's, which, I suppose, we may call the New Deal periods, which were in many cases quite ambitious and asked for a great deal of money. But later on, beginning at least in 1950, what we found was that proposals were made that smaller sums, $5 million to $7 million a year, should be granted State libraries for demonstration projects in 1 or more State areas over a period of 4 or 5 years, and, thus, demonstration for limited periods rather than permanent grants for equalization has become the current program for Federal aid to public libraries. The first sentence of the next paragraph is:

The use of the Federal taxing power for stimulation rather than for substantial equalization on a permanent basis seems to be justified from a fiscal point of view.

Then there is a page which indicates that in our study of what States have substantial expenditures for public libraries we found that the States with the highest degree of common schooling tended to be better, those that were urban tended to be better, and those with the highest per capita income.

It is a rather involved analysis which occasioned a whole book on our part to indicate that the major reason why we haven't public libaries developed for rural areas is not that there is not fundamentally enough money but that people haven't organized themselves to find that it is a relatively inexpensive operation to build very adequate libraries that serve rural as well as urban areas.

Then I said that:

Federal aid for stimulation purposes under present conditions must be carefully designed if it is to achieve its purpose. Under our governmental system Federal grants to public libraries would be administered by the State library agencies. These agencies vary greatly in size, resources, and quality of professional personnel. They vary also in the extent to which they developed mature plans and leadership for building adequate, modern library service units within the State.

The estimate from our survey is not more than half the present State library agencies are developed sufficiently to provide assurance that Federal grants would not be frittered away in activities yielding no permanent results.

The library leaders promoting the current bills for Federal aid are fully aware of this situation. Their efforts are turned toward setting standards and allocating funds to be granted so that the State library agencies will be stimulated and improved in the process of demonstration.

That is the general tenor of our remarks. We were attempting, as a result of our studies, to make a very honest, objective statement of the place that Federal aid would have. And our conclusion was that this stimulation concept, over a limited period of years, is precisely the kind of aid that seems to make the most sense in the American scene because, fundamentally in the long run, the States, stimulated and developed, can, I think, develop adequate library service for everybody within those States.

I hope it is clear that the findings of our study were in favor of this stimulation, 5-year or 4-year type of grant.

Mr. METCALF. Mr. Leigh, do you want to insert that entire article in the record at this point?

Dr. LEIGH. Yes. It is a section from the book, and I would just like to have it inserted because it contains our conclusions regarding the position on Federal aid.

Mr. LANDRUM (presiding). Is the book identified?

Mr. METCALF. The book is identified, I believe.

Would you provide a copy for the reporter?

Dr. LEIGH. I will leave this with you.

(The material referred to follows:)

FEDERAL AID TO PUBLIC LIBRARIES

Despite the gain to taxpayers and to library users claimed for larger library units fostered by State aid, progress in this direction has been slow. As a means of accelerating the movement, library extension leaders have looked to the National Government. They began to think of Federal aid to libraries at least 30 years ago, became officially committed to it in the 1930's, and since then have sponsored a series of definite proposals for Federal grants of funds to the States to be used for local library purposes. During the 1930's the proposals were attached to bills for Federal school aid in large amounts to be granted to State school systems. The library proposals themselves in these years were ambitious in size and shared in the philosophy behind the educational proposals: that Federal taxing power should be used to equalize funds available in the States and to rectify State inequalities due to differences in per capita income. But in the early 1940's, with the transfer of Federal spending to enormous outlays for military purposes (an impetus that still continues) and the failure of the educational groups to obtain passage of a bill for Federal aid, the postwar library leadership revised its plans.

A separate proposal of smaller sums-5 to 7 million a year in the 1950 billto be granted State libraries for demonstration projects in one or more State areas over a period of 4 or 5 years, has been introduced in Congress at each recent session. Thus, demonstration for limited periods, rather than permanent grants for equalization, has become the current program for Federal aid to public libraries.

The use of the Federal taxing power for stimulation rather than for substantial equalization on a permanent basis seems to be justified from a fiscal point of view. Our studies of variation in per capita income between counties in the same State and between the 48 States reveal that differences in income do not account for many of the existing variations between counties and States in amounts of actual public library support. Two other factors are equally significant and together carry more weight than per capita income in explaining the local, State, and regional differences in public library support. One is the average level of formal schooling attained by the population in an area. The studies reported in chapters 3 and 6 show that children, young people in high school, and adults who have been through college or through high school only, are proportionately the greatest library users. Where schools are flourishing and have flourished, there public libraries tend to flourish.

The second factor that influences library support is urbanism. As we have seen in earlier chapters, public libraries in this country have developed largely as municipal institutions. The framework of public library organization and financial support has only lately been adopted to rural services, and as yet to only a small extent. It is not surprising, therefore, to find that the per capita financial support of public libraries tends to be high in States having a large proportion of urban dewellers; low in States with large rural population.

These three factors influencing public library financial support interact upon each other to some extent. States with a low average per capita income have usually not built and maintained a high level of schools. In such States, because of economic circumstance, more children drop out of school at an earlier age and go to work. Thus low levels of both income and of formal schooling conspire to reduce the number of potential public library users. Also, though not without exception, States which have a large industrial and consequently large urban population tend to have a higher average per capita income.

Grants of Federal funds over a period of years to States with a comparatively low standing in per capita income, schooling, and urban population would undoubtedly cause more public libraries to appear. They may do a great deal to energize the State's whole public library program. But the major function of the grant is to stimulate rather than to equalize through use of Federal taxing power. Our studies show that any one of the States has enough taxable wealth to provide itself with an adequate public library service. As in the case of the municipal library's slice of the total municipal budget, State expenditures in aid of public libraries could be much larger than at present and still constitute a very small place in the State's budget.

The present State library extension outlay is a little less than 0.02 percent of the State's total expenditures. If State public library aid were expanded so as to provide half of the present total public library revenues of the country ($50 million of the $100 million total) it would still be less than 1 percent of State disbursements for all purposes. State aid rather than large Federal grants for equalization purposes, therefore, would seem to be the major reliance for public library development in the decade ahead. And grants to the States to equalize and expand formal schooling as well as ingenuity within the States to create a successful operating framework for rural library service may be as important as Federal grants for libraries in promoting the demand for and the use of modern public library service.

(Our analysis of the comparative statistics of State library support revealed another factor probably explaining generous or niggardly public library support in some States. This is the existence or absence of restrictive tax ceilings bearing upon public libraries. We found States with high per capita income, high average of schooling, and a high degree of urbanization, with comparatively low levels of public library support. Other States with these favorable factors equally present had high levels of library income. In the former, severe tax limits exist. In the latter, the municipal tax limitations are not restrictive or, as in Ohio, alternative forms of local taxation have been opened up.) Federal aid for stimulation purposes under present conditions must be carefully designed if it is to achieve its purpose. Under our governmental system Federal grants to public libraries would be administered by the State library agencies. These agencies vary greatly in size, resources, and quality of professional personnel. They vary also in the extent to which they have developed mature plans and leadership for building adequate, modern library service units within the State. The estimate, from our survey, is that not more than half the present State library agencies are developed sufficiently to provide assurance