ACRL News Issue (B) of College & Research Libraries


231

LIBRARIANSHIP TRAINING
The Institute Program for Librarianship 

Training is authorized by the Higher Educa­
tion Act of 1965, Title II-B. The purpose of 
the Institute Program is to provide opportunity 
throughout the nation for upgrading and up­
dating the competencies of persons serving all 
types of libraries, information centers or in­
structional materials centers offering library 
type services and those serving as library edu­
cators.

An institution of higher education which has 
an established library education program or is 
planning to begin such a program in the aca­
demic year 1969-70 is eligible to apply for 
funds to conduct an institute during the sum­
mer of 1969 or during the academic year 1969- 
70. Institutes must supplement rather than be 
a substitute for an existing librarianship train­
ing program.

Although funds have not been appropriated 
for fiscal year 1969, institutions have been in­
vited to express interest and intent to submit 
proposals for library institutes. The Policies 
and Procedures Manual to be used in the prep­
aration of proposals will be sent to the des­
ignated authorized official as soon as possible 
after the expression of interest has been re­
turned. It is anticipated that the deadline date 
for submitting proposals will be October 15, 
1968. ■ ■

NATIONAL LIBRARY 
SERVICE

A new British National Library Service 
should be a direct responsibility of the govern­
ment and administered as part of the Depart­
ment of Education and Science, says the Li­
brary Association in evidence it has submitted 
to the Dainton Committee, set up by the 
government to study the problem of a national 
service.

The association says that the library depart­
ments of the British Museum should be di­
vorced from the antiquities departments. These 
library departments, the national central li­
brary, the national lending library for science 
and technology—together with the British na­
tional bibliography, the copyright offices and 
a new national bibliographical and information 
service—should together form the new Nation­
al Library Service.

It would have two principal divisions, one 
as a national reference library and the other 
as a national lending library. It should be di­
rected by a professionally-experienced director- 
general, with a status not less than that of a 
deputy secretary in the Civil Service.

To advise the Secretary of State, the state­

ment goes on, there should be a library services 
council and within the Department of Edu­
cation and Science there should be a libraries 
branch. The service should recruit staff with 
appropriate academic and professional training 
and should make some contribution to pro­
fessional training at an advanced level.

The association argues for a site in central 
London for the National Reference Library and 
the bibliographical headquarters of the Na­
tional Lending Library, adding that the site 
area of seven and one-half acres envisaged by 
the British Museum trustees would not be ex­
cessive.

Among the many other detailed recommen­
dations are that the national libraries of Scot­
land and Wales and the university libraries 
at Oxford and Cambridge should be brought 
into relationship with the National Library Serv­
ice, but that it should not include the Science 
Museum library; and that the reference library 
and the Public Record office should be housed 
close together and a national policy on archive 
collection formulated. ■ ■

LIBRARIANS OF PUBLIC 
HIGHER EDUCATION

At a meeting of the Council of Massachu­
setts State College Librarians at Provincetown 
on May 10, attended by representatives from 
the libraries of the state colleges, community 
colleges, Southeastern Massachusetts Techno­
logical Institute, the University of Massachu­
setts in Boston, and addressed by Richard M. 
Millard, chancellor of higher education for the 
Commonwealth, it was decided by unanimous 
action of the librarians present to form a group 
to be known as the Massachusetts Conference 
of Chief Librarians of Public Higher Educa­
tional Institutions. The group was formed in 
response to Chancellor Millard’s presentation 
of the problems facing the libraries in those 
institutions, and the discussion which followed. 
The conference will meet at least three times a 
year, and its mission will be to identify prob­
lems common to all the libraries and to per­
form appropriate research in order to bring 
forth recommendations for their solution.

The recommendations will be presented to 
the councils of the state college and the 
community college libraries, and to the tech­
nological institute and university library staffs 
for their approval and adoption. It is hoped 
that out of this action will come a handbook 
of recommended standard library practices 
which will help the individual libraries solve 
some of the problems outlined by Chancellor 
Millard and the discussants. Some of the most 
pressing problems concern the building of ad­
equate basic book collections in the public ed-