of service appropriate to the geographical area and clientele served. The program here envisaged would establish just that kind of pattern of interrelation between a local service, a more comprehensive backstop collection for a larger area, and of course, the capstone of the National Library of Medicine. Achieving this kind of network for biomedical literature would be a big step toward the ultimate goal for all library service to research. SECTION 378-REGIONAL BRANCHES OF THE NATIONAL LIBRARY OF MEDICINE The proposal to amend the Public Health Service Act to enable the National Library of Medicine to establish regional branches, similarly, supports the idea of a network of medical library service mentioned above. The concept is consistent with emerging ideas of good library planning and deserves support. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. The CHAIRMAN. Doctor, has your library experienced difficulty in recruiting trained medical library personnel? Dr. LOGSDON. Our experience follows precisely what Dr. Brandon has indicated. In addition we serve as a training agency for other libraries. Persons with a few years of good experience in a good medical library are in great demand. The CHAIRMAN. It presents a little problem, doesn't it. The CHAIRMAN. A key problem. Does Columbia train personnel in medical library science? Dr. LOGSDON. One of the courses in our school of library services is medical librarianship given by the librarian in charge of our medical center library. Here, too, I think we have had hopes through the years of doing more in relation to medical library internships because we need to take the librarian generalist with his good background of education, in his general library school training and then give him not only additional course work but practical work under supervision in an actual library situation. This would help immeasurably in that regard. The CHAIRMAN. Dr. Skipper, is there anything you would like to add? Dr. SKIPPER. Senator, if I may. I operate in the general area of research librarianship of which biomedical activities are certainly an important part. I would like to say that I have been tremendously impressed by the imagination that is inherent in this bill. It will obviously close the gap or the imbalance between the support given for research programs and the support required to make the results of that investigation known to the medical community without delay. Second, I personally look forward to a tremendous byproduct from this program. The National Library of Medicine has been one of the pioneers in developing new programs for repackaging information, getting it out in an imaginative and useful form. I think the techniques they discover, and which would be implemented by this bill, will have a tremendous affect on the library community at large. Taking an overview of the whole situation, the analogy to me is creating a public utility. At the present time, there is a great amount of inefficient generation of electricity in local basements (libraries) all over the country. The thing we are looking for, if you will allow me to generalize, sir, is a central point of generation, an effective transmission system, a network of regional libraries that can regenerate, alter the current, repackage it for local use and make it much more effective for the local consumer. The CHAIRMAN. Get it where the need is. Dr. SKIPPER. Yes, sir. The CHAIRMAN. Is that right? Anything you would like to add, Doctor? Dr. LOGSDON. No. I think not. It has been a pleasure to be here. The CHAIRMAN. We want to thank both of you gentlemen. You brought up another very fine statement, we appreciate both of you being here. Thank you, very much. Now, Mr. William S. Budington, president, Special Libraries Association. STATEMENT OF WILLIAM S. BUDINGTON, PRESIDENT, SPECIAL LIBRARIES ASSOCIATION The CHAIRMAN. Mr. Budington, we are glad to have you here. We will be happy to have you now proceed in your own way, sir. Mr. BUDINGTON. Mr. Chairman, it is a great pleasure to be here this morning to represent two different groups. Officially I am the immediate past president of the Special Libraries Association. This association is composed of some 6,100 members who are librarians and information specialists employed in private and public organizations and institutions, including industrial, academic, association, and independent nonprofit libraries. I am also associate librarian of the John Crerar Library in Chicago which is a nonprofit organization providing free public library services in science, technology, and medicine and is the largest such public library in this country. Our association wishes to express its wholehearted support of S. 597. In its "Declaration of Policy and Statement of Purpose," the bill itself pinpoints very nicely the needs for action. It is hardly necessary for me to speak again of the rate at which scientific research is outpacing itself, in terms of utilization of known facts, old and new. In the health sciences this is especially critical in today's context of concern for our Nation's health and the continuing welfare of our citizens. While we are accustomed to support research activity, we have not provided adequately for dissemination and availability of generated results. To insure prompt and effective use of our new skills and knowledge, it is essential that the creation, recording bibliographic control and availability of medical knowledge be assured; this requires federalized, coordinated support at each phase of the communicative chain in this vital area. Of all areas of scientific communication, medicine is presently seeing perhaps the most interesting advancement, through work at the National Library of Medicine. Through experimentation, and in current applications, we are witnessing application of computer technology and mechanization to the storage and rapid dissemination of data and ideas. The proposed legislation will promote a network of facilities which will be largely autonomous and soundly prepared; yet they will be continually infused and mutually supportive in seeing that the needed, correct, and latest information is always ready, anywhere in our country. Support of libraries and information activity is commonly seen as building more buildings and buying more books. These are indeed basic. But present and future needs reflect even more basic changes. It is not sufficient to buy a book, shelve it, and maintain silence around it. Today's librarians and information specialists are only secondarily interested in a book as a container; they are vitally concerned with its content and, as expressed by our association slogan, with "Putting Knowledge to Work." Creation of such content and knowledge in the biomedical sciences has been spurred by Federal expenditures; in this subject area alone, such support now totals more than $1 billion per year in sponsored research. In virtually no instances have these grants provided for libraries or for increased facilities in the supply and flow of information. Operating budgets and added space for libraries has had to come from institutional funds, and you will be hard put to find much evidence of any such support from local resources. If money wasn't to be had for libraries before the grant, it isn't there afterward, either. The bill speaks-and one naturally thinks of medical schools, local practitioners, and institute researchers as benefiting most. In reality, the influence is much broader. The membership of my own association includes but 580 members in its biological sciences division. In the space sciences, nuclear sciences, technology, chemistry, and similar areas are another 2,800. And all of them have need of medical information ranging from casual to constant. Recall, if you will, such topics as aerospace physiology, radiation hazards, toxicity of materials, air pollution, and the like. An aircraft company may have a good technical library; it must depend on other sources for medical documents and information. While such industry naturally turns to, say a local medical school, this library is seldom equipped to serve these demands in addition to its own staff and students. Provision of regional medical library centers will thus benefit industry in addition to existing medical school facilities. It will also insure such resources in areas where no topflight medical libraries of any kind are now to be found. To some extent, the present bill is aimed at curing present ills. We need better libraries, library facilities now. We need better trained staff now, grounded in the subject matters of medical science and library or information science. We need radically new techniques now, to cope with a present flood of information and publications. But if we need these things now, and badly, what is in store for the future, as our research effort and our support climbs literally astronomically? Above all, we need action now so that we will not be completely engulfed and eternally helpless. Today's preparation, as em bodied in the provisions of this bill, will provide tomorrow's resources. Resources for efficient medical research, resources for adequate education, resources for use in all fields touched by medical implications and advances. Information at the right time, at the right place, for the right person and in the right form will be vitally needed. If we make no provision for these resources, we had better save our current research outlay, for its results will be permanently and irrevocably buried. A particularly important feature of this bill is that its implementation, while including educational institutions is not restricted to them. In our current concern for maximum advancement of educational programs at all levels we may overlook the fact that information needs and flow and learning occur throughout our economy and our geography, not solely in the teaching process and institution. I have mentioned the needs of industry. One must remember also the needs of scholars in other fields than medicine, at nonmedical institutions. One must especially remember the practitioner and the hospital. These people may be far removed from a medical school; yet their daily needs are increasing. The doctor must continue his education. His practice, and the work of this hospital staff, need more than ever the close contact with the latest laboratory developments and the new clinical or surgical techniques. The regional medical library can best serve their needs, with services developed on a very broad scale. These services may include support of teaching and medical education, indeed. But they go far beyond, in providing a tailored, automatic, prompt, and continuing flow of information to all who need it. This also requires specialists in medical information work, who are trained for this specific field and have not just drifted into it. The curriculums of librarianship and information science are reflecting these needs. Attention is now given in several professional schools to thorough training in medical librarianship. We cannot find enough such specialists now; the supply must be stepped up. In conclusion, I wish to reiterate the support of our association for this bill. We believe it provides sound elements for expansion of facilities, available personnel, and improved medical communications. Thank you, sir. The CHAIRMAN. We thank you for a splendid statement. Let me ask this. The John Crerar Library has a fine reputation as a library serving the many educational institutions in the Chicago area, that whole area, really. To what extent does your library serve as, you might say, a regional library. Mr. BUDINGTON. We serve as a regional library due to some extent to the accumulated size and the growth over a number of years. Our collections actually constitute one of the largest, if not the largest medical library in the country, west of the Atlantic seaboard. We number somewhat in the order of a quarter of a million volumes, in medicine and our holdings make it unnecessary for many of the medical school libraries in our area to build large back files of older materials, the most esoteric languages, which may be needed only occasionally. But we are depended upon as such a resource to have the material available whenever a research person or student has need for this. The CHAIRMAN. It is available to anyone that may be working in the smaller library or medical school or any other institution where they are seeking knowledge, is that right? Mr. BUDINGTON. Yes sir, that is true. The CHAIRMAN. May I ask, what was the genesis of your library? Mr. BUDINGTON. This was founded through the terms of a bequest of an industrialist in the Midwest who specialized in railroad construction equipment in the last century when the railroads were expanding, and his funds came from this source. He died a bachelor and left the bulk of his money to establish a free public library to carry on the education of that region. The CHAIRMAN. He must have left a pretty good sized gift, did he not? Mr. BUDINGTON. Approximately $2 million at that time. The CHAIRMAN. At that time. But you have had other sources of funds, have you not, since then? Mr. BUDINGTON. We depend at the present time for approximately 25 percent of our operating funds on contributions from industry which we must go out and raise every year. The CHAIRMAN. What year was your library established? Mr. BUDINGTON. 1894. The CHAIRMAN. Well, you certainly have a splendid reputation, I will say that. Mr. BUDINGTON. We hope to continue that. The CHAIRMAN. And the service that you render that great area out there. We want to thank you very much. As I say, you brought us another splendid statement. We certainly appreciate it. Mr. BUDINGTON. Thank you. The CHAIRMAN. Dr. William M. Hubbard, Chairman of the Board of Regents of the National Library of Medicine, dean, University of Michigan Medical School, Ann Arbor. Doctor, we are happy to have you here. We would be delighted to have you proceed in your own way. STATEMENT OF DR. WILLIAM M. HUBBARD, JR., CHAIRMAN, DEAN, UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN MEDICAL SCHOOL, ANN ARBOR, MICH. Dr. HUBBARD. Thank you very much. I thank you for this opportunity to express my support of this legislation. If I may, I would like to leave with the subcommittee the prepared statement that I have submitted and in deference to the hour, makes some comments, sir, and then respond as you may ask. The CHAIRMAN. All right. We will have your statement appear in full in the record and then you proceed in any way to make any supplementary additional statement you see fit, sir. (See p. 49.) Dr. HUBBARD. Thank you, very much. I would like to emphasize, Senator Hill, that the libraries are a integral part of the means by which we are going to see that health service is brought to all of the people. They are an essential part of |