May 12, 1969
Page 12053
LIBRARY SERVICES AND CONSTRUCTION ACT
Mr. MUSKIE. Mr. President, President Nixon, in proclaiming April 20-26 as National Library Week, declared:
Libraries are the banks of our educational system.... Never have we had greater reason than this year to celebrate National Library Week. For never have our libraries played a more prominent role in our campaign against ignorance and for fullness of educational opportunity.
Yet I find that in his proposed budget for library programs, President Nixon has eliminated entirely funds for library resources in the Elementary and Secondary Education Act. He has eliminated entirely funds for construction of new public libraries. He has reduced by one-half funds for library services.
When we in Congress enacted the Library Services and Construction Act in 1966, we did so with the express purpose to promote the extension of free public library services to areas without such services; to assist communities in the construction of public library facilities; to establish interstate or regional cooperative networks of libraries; to improve library service to the physically handicapped; to provide library services to State institutions.
In Maine our small rural communities have been unable to maintain adequate library service. With the aid of Library Services and Construction Act funds, eight bookmobiles served 133,000 rural residents in 1968 who otherwise would have had no access to public library services.
Mr. Edward Y. Blewett, president of Westbrook Junior College in Portland, Maine, recently wrote on the state of the public library in Maine. I commend his article to Senators and point out that without Federal funds the South Portland Public Library could not have been constructed; without Federal funds the model high school libraries of Waterville and Brunswick would not have been implemented; without Federal funds thousands of public and parochial school children in Maine would have been denied cultural and educational enrichment through books, visual aids, and recordings.
Mr. Blewett called to the Maine communities:
What have you done to help your library lately?
I call to President Nixon:
What have you done to help the Nation's libraries lately?
I ask unanimous consent that Mr. Blewett's article, published in the Portland, Maine, Sunday Telegram of April 27, 1969, be printed in the RECORD.
There being no objection, the article was ordered to be printed in the RECORD, as follows:
YOUR LOCAL LIBRARY: A HUB OR BACKWATER?
(By Dr. Edward Y. Blewett, president, Westbrook Junior College)
Probably you can remember, as I do, opening the door and entering a large room where sunlight came only from a distant window and the air was heavy with an atmosphere of circumspection and tiptoe quiet – this was the library.
The emphasis should be on the word "was". Because libraries, like so many of our other institutions, must reshape themselves if they are going to be meaningful in these times. What is the new image? What constitutes the "new library"? For Maine, the answer lies in the model school libraries in Waterville and Brunswick. There students flock to the library. There, the library is an exciting place that "turns them on". There, virtually modern technology has been focused in the library. These tools help to reveal to many students the fact that education need not he dull; and that the adventures of the mind can be the most exciting of all.
Paperback books, film making, photography, tape recording, microfilm, speed reading, informal discussions, filmstrips, movies, videotape recorder, graphic arts, loans of paintings, tapes and records, exhibits – the Waterville Senior High School Library uses these and many other modern tools to really reach the student and really involve him in the learning process. On the elementary and junior high school level the same type of effort is being made in Brunswick.
School libraries are not the only ones that are sensing the need for change. Public libraries are seeking to expand their services. In communities such as Freeport, Presque Isle and South Portland, new facilities reflect the new library image of informality, enjoyment and widespread use.
At the Bowdoin College Library a microfilm printer allows instant copying of any of the thousands of pages of periodicals compactly recorded on film. Today, even in remote parts of Maine, a request for a book can be telephoned directly from a local public library to the State Library, and from there relayed to the nine-library teletype network which makes more than two million volumes available to any Maine resident.
But I think we might stop and ask ourselves the very basic question, "What do we mean by a library?" It is too easy to get involved in comparisons of hours, staff size, buildings, equipment, number of books loaned and fail to answer the basic question "Why a community needs a library at all?"
Any library has two major and unique functions. First, it makes possible meetings of mind and idea which are not limited by normal boundaries of time, space, and social or economic level. An effective library allows us to use the power of our human awareness to become more than we were; to increase our individual stature; to add to our public effectiveness to move to the far side of the world, to the fifth Century B.C. or into the company of prophets and princes.
The library encourages the extension and active generation of ideas. The technical means may be a book, a tape, a film, a record, a print-out, a video-tape or some other system not yet invented.
Yet the emphasis must be on people and not on things. A library should not be defined by its space, equipment and collections alone; but by the adequacy of its people. In addition to technical and professional skills, the librarian must have skill with people. The librarian is a teacher whose subject is learning itself.
The public library is an essential social and educational institution in a community. It is a municipality's investment in popular education; in information services, in aesthetic values and in the recreation needs of its citizens. Its success is based on how well it fulfills three needs: (1) The need for skilled and sensitive people to staff it. (2) The need for bold and imaginative use of all available technical means. (3) The need for support from all sectors of the economy and every level of government.
I wish we were in the forefront in meeting library needs in Maine. Unfortunately we are not. The unpleasant fact is that Maine libraries do not adequately serve the needs of Maine people.
The following are just a few of the unpleasant facts concerning Maine libraries: More than half of Maine's public libraries offer only token service. They are open less than 10 hours a week. More than 70 per cent of the public libraries are open less than 20 hours a week.
About half of the public libraries added less than 100 books to their collections during 1967 and 70 per cent added less than 200 books.
An average per capita expenditure of $4 is recommended but 45 per cent of the libraries spend less than $1 per capita and 75 per cent spend less than $2 per capita.
The libraries of the University of Maine are dangerously inadequate. The main library at Orono is seriously deficient in the number of volumes it should contain. The total shortage of books throughout the University system is 770,000 volumes. Only the Law School Library is up to par.
A Maine School Library Survey released in March reveals the "appalling" state of our school libraries. Libraries are either nonexistent or are largely under-staffed and under-equipped. For instance, the survey shows that only 59 Maine high schools and only 13 junior high schools have even one full time librarian.
This low level of library service in Maine results in substantial cultural and educational deprivation for half a million Maine people. We have failed in reaching to get across clearly the role that libraries play in a complete community; to show the need of all people of all ages for good library service; and to make clear the social and educational interest that can be reaped on each dollar invested in our libraries.
Yet the situation in Maine is not unusual in the nation, but typical. The Advisory Commission report to the President last October states:
"The public library reaches the entire population as does no other aspect of library service. For all men and women, it is the one place through which they may reach the world's collected informational and intellectual resources.
"Yet as important as the public library is, there are few social services so unequally provided to the American people. Residents of some cities can command the resources of enormous institutions holding many hundreds of thousands, or even millions of volumes. At the other extreme, some 20 million Americans, largely in rural areas, have no public library service at all, and some 10 million more have access only to very small libraries with very inadequate collections and little or no service from professional librarians.
"Even where public library service is available it is usually far below any reasonable standard of adequacy. More than two thirds of all public libraries fail to meet standards for size of collections and only one in 30 meet standards for per capita financial support."
These deficiencies which have "truly serious consequences for our entire system of education" Were labeled a "national disgrace" by former Commissioner of Education Francis Keppel.
The recommendations of the National Advisory Commission on Libraries as well as numerous studies in individual states including New Hampshire, Vermont and Massachusetts indicate a few of the answers to this state, local and national problem. Better communications systems, inter-library cooperation, regional libraries, more effective use of all technological changes, upgrading of staff in number and training, a higher level of financial support and numerous administrative and technical operational changes are among the recommendations.
The Maine National Library Committee is cooperating with the Community Betterment Program of the Department of Economic Development to help make more communities aware of the full value of their libraries as a vital social and economic resource. But all future library improvement rests on this base of citizen awareness. What have you done to help your library lately?