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 LIBRARY SCIENCE LIBRARY 
 
 L161 O-1096
 
 ALLERTON PARK INSTITUTE 
 
 Number 22 
 
 Papers Presented at the Allerton Park Institute 
 Sponsored by 
 
 University of Illinois 
 Graduate School of Library Science 
 
 held 
 
 November 14-17, 1976 
 Century Twentyone 
 Champaign, Illinois
 
 Changing Times: 
 Changing Libraries 
 
 GEORGE S. BONN 
 SYLVIA FAIBISOFF 
 
 editors 
 
 University of Illinois 
 
 Graduate School of Library Science 
 
 Urbana-Champaign, Illinois
 
 Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data 
 Allerton Park Institute, 22d, 1976. 
 
 Changing times, changing libraries. 
 
 Includes bibliographical references and index. 
 
 1 . Libraries and societies Addresses, essays, 
 lectures. I. Bonn, George Schlegel. II. Faib- 
 isoff, Sylvia. III. Illinois. University. 
 Graduate School of Library Science. IV. Title. 
 Z716.4.A45 1976 021 78-1283 
 ISBN 0-87845-047-5 
 
 Copyright 1978 by 
 
 The Board of Trustees of the University of Illinois 
 ISBN: 0-87845-047-5
 
 , 7/ 
 
 4 
 
 ^r\xm?XTT-o 
 
 CONTENTS 
 
 Introduction .............................................. vii 
 
 GEORGE S. BONN and SYLVIA FAIBISOFF 
 
 The Last Quarter-Century: Change as Challenge 
 
 or as Catastrophe .......................................... 1 
 
 KENNETH W. THOMPSON 
 Response: JESSE H. SHERA ................................ 14 
 
 Some Causes of Change 
 
 The Future of Government: Trends 
 
 and Emerging Conditions ................................... 23 
 
 CLEMENT BEZOLD 
 Response: EILEEN D. COOKE .............................. 53 
 
 Prospects for Women in the Paid Labor Market ................. 59 
 
 RALPH SMITH 
 Response: JANECOONEY ................................. 70 
 
 Interactive Electronic Media ................................ 81 
 
 BRUCE A. SHERWOOD 
 Response: GERALD R. BRONG ............................. 91 
 
 Some Results of Change 
 
 Project: Knowledge 2000 ................................... 97 
 
 R. LYNN CARROLL 
 Response: JOHN P. McDONALD ............................ 103 
 
 Education in America: The Next Twenty-five Years ............. 113 
 
 HAROLD G. SHANE 
 Response: CRYSTAL M. BAILEY ............................ 126 
 
 Changes in Sexual Identities ................................ 131 
 
 HELENA Z. LOPATA 
 Response: GERALD R. SHIELDS ............................ 140 
 
 Process of Change 
 
 Response: HUGH C. ATKINSON ............................ 145 
 
 Creating the Conditions for Change .......................... 150 
 
 DONALD P. ELY 
 
 Acronyms ................................................ 163 
 
 Index . . 165
 
 INTRODUCTION 
 
 For the past twenty-three years, the University of Illinois Graduate 
 School of Library Science has held annual 3-day institutes on a variety of 
 topics of interest to librarians. In this bicentennial year it seemed appropriate 
 for the institute to look to the future, to the possible social, scientific and 
 technological trends that may shape our lives as the United States enters its 
 third century. With this in mind, a group of distinguished specialists and 
 librarians was assembled to discuss social change and its implications for 
 libraries. 
 
 Lacking a crystal ball, scientists, economists, political scientists, busi- 
 nessmen, educators, and other professionals are nevertheless trying to under- 
 stand and possibly to forecast future developments. Since social change is 
 inevitable, librarians must be ready and alert to understand, explain and 
 cope with change during their professional lives. The specialists invited to 
 the institute were asked to discuss from their own research perspectives: 
 ( 1 ) three major causes of change government, economic conditions, and 
 science and technology; (2) possible results of change in three areas of vital 
 interest humanities (including leisure and morals), education and social 
 institutions; and (3) the process of change and ways to create conditions for 
 change. Librarian respondents were to point out various implications for 
 librarians of the remarks made by each of the specialists, and to be ready 
 with their own views on the topics if necessary. 
 
 At the opening session Kenneth Thompson reflects on the sometimes 
 catastrophic effects of change on our society in the last quarter-century. In 
 his opinion the major predicaments besetting our society include: (1) the 
 decline and breakup of long-established social and political institutions (re- 
 
 vti
 
 CHANGING TIMES: CHANGING LIBRARIES 
 
 suiting in a loss of old values without new ones to replace them, and thus 
 in the lack of a relevant framework in which to understand rapidly-moving 
 events) ; and (2) the fact that education, which should be in the vanguard, 
 is too often just holding up the rear. 
 
 Jesse Shera notes that libraries can accept either the catastrophe or the 
 challenge, ominously suggesting that libraries, as the creation of society, 
 could also be destroyed by it unless they are willing to assume greater 
 responsibility. Libraries must not only be the memory of society, but must be 
 prepared to communicate knowledge and to serve other needs of all their 
 users, by definition, the library "elite." Librarians must know their commu- 
 nities and be trained to provide the resources to enable people to make edu- 
 cated decisions about solutions to present and future problems. Librarians 
 must be "lantern bearers." 
 
 Government as a cause of change is discussed by Clement Bezold and 
 respondent Eileen Cooke. Bezold views the future of government for the 
 next ten to twenty-five years from the perspectives of budget and of images 
 taken from the major futurist works on government. He feels that both 
 aspects raise questions about how the agenda of government will be shaped 
 in the future. In an extremely penetrating analysis, he discusses policy impli- 
 cations of the shift in our "societal paradigm." He notes a growing concern 
 in government for the future, and the need for citizens to participate in deci- 
 sion-making and to anticipate problems before they become critical. In her 
 response, Eileen Cooke urges librarians to become familiar with govern- 
 mental processes and particularly with those laws affecting themselves, e.g., 
 copyright, the Education Amendments Act of 1976, etc. 
 
 Ralph Smith, an expert on women in the labor market, and respondent 
 Jane Cooney discuss the role of women in the paid labor market. Smith notes 
 that women will continue to enter the labor market at a rate faster than that 
 of men, and comments on the continuing narrow range of occupations exist- 
 ing for women, patterns of segregation, and lower compensation. Cooney 
 discusses predictions about the composition of the future library job market. 
 She also foresees continuing demand for certain types of library professionals 
 and a need for library schools to prepare new courses of study to emphasize 
 new skills and specialties in demand. 
 
 Unfortunately, the graphic display of PLATO's capabilities as an in- 
 structional tool, demonstrated by Bruce Sherwood during the institute, can- 
 not be reproduced in this volume. His presentation, however, confirms the 
 capability of electronic media such as PLATO to strengthen individualized 
 self-instruction, as well as to serve as an electronic communications device. 
 He also comments on the future uses of video discs as media for print storage. 
 
 Gerald Brong is somewhat less optimistic and far more cautious than
 
 INTRODUCTION 
 
 Sherwood in advocating the use of electronic media. He notes that most li- 
 brarians are not taking full advantage of the current technology, and ques- 
 tions whether they are ready for PLATO or video discs. He emphasizes 
 cautious use of video discs (noting their high production cost), the need 
 for the right person to handle the material, and familiarity with content. 
 He also touches briefly on the use of the minicomputer, and considers as 
 does Sherwood the problem of copyright royalties. 
 
 R. Lynn Carroll opens discussion on the results of change by summariz- 
 ing the proceedings of Project : Knowledge 2000, the National Science Foun- 
 dation project to define knowledge needs and requirements of the country 
 in the next quarter-century. Carroll notes the movement from a sacred to 
 a secular society and its implications for the change from religion and family 
 to communication and education as sources of indoctrination and socializa- 
 tion. He notes the need for nontechnological knowledge, the growing interest 
 in intuitive knowledge, and the need to increase levels of public participation, 
 commenting that the creation of knowledge does not necessarily imply its 
 use. He also notes that society is intrinsically involved with the manipulation 
 of symbols and words, and stresses the problems of values. 
 
 John McDonald is concerned with the effect of these changes on li- 
 braries, noting that the technology developed primarily serves the needs of 
 science and technology rather than the needs of the humanities or social 
 sciences. He predicts a major shift in the needs of universities, a deemphasis 
 on doctoral programs, and a shift toward in-service training. He notes the 
 need for cooperation rather than competition among libraries, stating that 
 "information must be viewed as a national resource." 
 
 In his discussion of education in the next twenty-five years, Harold 
 Shane first outlines the methodology used in futures research and presents 
 the views of outstanding educators and futurists on the role of education. 
 Shane observes that we are reaching the end of the hydrocarbon age, but 
 are doing nothing about it; that we are faced with a "postextravagant" so- 
 ciety in which material gains have not solved human anxiety. He urges an 
 awareness or reappraisal of the notion that growth is necessarily good. In 
 her response, Crystal Bailey comments on an earlier idea of Shane's recom- 
 mending elimination or artificial divisions of learning experience for elemen- 
 tary, junior high and high school students. She observes that children's 
 libraries are paradoxically protective and discriminating against children 
 as well as adults. She cites a need for understanding the information needs 
 of children and for greater moral and financial support of children's library 
 work by administrators. 
 
 Helena Lopata and Gerald Shields address the problems of effects of 
 change on social institutions. Lopata examines the results of social change
 
 CHANGING TIMES: CHANGING LIBRARIES 
 
 for social institutions such as the community and the family. She takes a 
 historical approach to change, noting the evolution from a relatively stable, 
 urban and industrialized world to a postindustrial, middle-class society ex- 
 hibiting growing duress and the breakup of the family unit. She stresses the 
 dramatic changes in the lives of Europeans and Americans in the last few 
 centuries as social roles and interpersonal relationships have undergone con- 
 siderable change. Responding to Lopata's presentation, Shields indicates that 
 librarianship must be reduced to humanism. He believes that to say that 
 libraries are solely institutions of education or recreation is to misapply what 
 society asks of librarians. 
 
 An unscheduled change took place in the final session of the institute. 
 Hugh Atkinson, the respondent scheduled to comment on Donald Ely's 
 presentation, was asked to speak first; his remarks were then followed by 
 Ely's discussion of the nature of change. Atkinson introduces three concepts 
 of change: quick change (things that are available now), small change (i.e. 
 routine changes), and loose change (things unknown now that will never- 
 theless affect libraries in the future). He points out that the challenge to 
 change is survival. Following Atkinson, Ely states that change should be eval- 
 uated so that both the individual and the institution can participate "in help- 
 ing to create the future rather than be shaped by it." He emphasizes the 
 responsibilities imposed on librarians by change, the need for leadership, the 
 importance of readiness and persuasion in effecting change. 
 
 A great deal of interaction took place during the conference and be- 
 tween sessions among institute speakers, respondents and participants. All 
 had an opportunity to air ideas, ask questions and offer suggestions for future 
 action. The participants understood that the purpose of the institute was to 
 stimulate thinking and to identify issues rather than to provide answers. It 
 was the hope of the planning committee that at the end of the conference, 
 participants would be more aware of the inevitable impact of social change 
 on librarians during their lifetime. 
 
 Program planning was directed by George S. Bonn and Sylvia G. Faibi- 
 soff (cochairpersons), James Divilbiss, Herbert Goldhor, and Kenneth 
 O'Malley of the University of Illinois Graduate School of Library Science, 
 and Alan Knox, the university's Vice Chancellor for Academic Affairs. 
 Thanks are due to students of the library school who took notes during oral 
 presentations, including Richard Blue, Linda Lucas, Larry Auld, Amelia 
 Bernal-Rosa, Anders Dahlgren, Nat Davis, and Tille Krieger. Linda Hoff- 
 man coordinated editing, revision and publication of the papers in this 
 volume. 
 
 GEORGE S. BONN 
 
 SYLVIA FAIBISOFF 
 
 chairpersons
 
 KENNETH W. THOMPSON 
 
 Commonwealth Professor 
 
 Government and Foreign Affairs 
 
 University of Virginia 
 
 Charlottesville 
 
 The Last Quarter-Century: 
 Change as Challenge or as Catastrophe 
 
 Because most of us are "little conservatives" or "little liberals," we 
 are baffled, divided and troubled by change. Most of our judgments about 
 change reflect in some measure our varying temperaments and styles. Either 
 we function best with things as they are in familiar surroundings where 
 stimuli and responses are predictable and routine, or we demand bold new 
 challenges and large opportunities to make life worth living. It is the begin- 
 ning of wisdom to recognize that in our response to change we are not the 
 same, and we do not help one another by blind insistence that we are. There 
 is no such thing as one objective response to change; each of us responds 
 from the ground on which he or she stands. 
 
 In the late 1960s, a whole generation, not given to modest formulations, 
 confronted the rest of society saying that they were not, and did not intend 
 to be, merely their fathers' children. Given the excesses and self-indulgences 
 of some phases of the youth movement, we are tempted to view this rebellion 
 as a rather unhealthy aberration not in keeping with the untroubled advance 
 of the civilization. Our response might be more constructive if, for this some- 
 what painful era, we could separate the wheat from the chaff and use it to 
 gain an important lesson. Confronted with change and coping in various 
 ways with the contradictions and inconsistencies of our culture, we are pil- 
 grims striving to hold to an uncertain and essentially uncharted course. As 
 Lincoln put it, "We would know better what to do if we knew whither we 
 were tending" but for today this seems largely denied and beyond us. 
 
 It is, of course, a truism that change for all men is the first law of the
 
 CHANGING TIMES: CHANGING LIBRARIES 
 
 universe. The histories of those of our parents and grandparents who were 
 immigrants refute the proposition that the past was a succession of known, 
 predictable and settled events. These people made their way across a con- 
 tinent with its languages, customs and people as strange as its vast expanse 
 and unexplored frontiers. Some triumphed over suffering and adversity and 
 are celebrated as "giants in the earth"; others, including those who had 
 known success in other lands, fought valiantly to cope with change only to 
 succumb to forces beyond their control. They went to their graves with un- 
 fulfilled hopes and the dream of a promised land which, for them, had 
 proved too harsh and demanding to realize. They were victims of a new 
 world for which they were unsuited, unlucky and unprepared; they left to 
 their successors the rewards of achieving "life, liberty, and the pursuit of 
 happiness." For both those who found success and a new life and those who 
 failed to do so, existence was grounded on certain fixed points and assump- 
 tions. Most of them had faith that hard work would bring both material and 
 spiritual rewards. They prayed to the same God; read the same historical 
 texts; held to the same attitudes toward church, state and society; and 
 struggled to preserve family loyalties and community structures. Their doubts 
 centered more on the capriciousness of nature than on the unpredictability 
 of human nature. They knew enough to respect the violence and destructive- 
 ness of winds and weather but not so much that they were immobilized 
 and helpless before man's uncontrolled passions and the fury of storms un- 
 leashed in civilized mass societies. They knew the pain (if not all the possible 
 causes) of individual breakdowns, but not the cataclysmic effects of society's 
 breakdown in holocausts, total wars, thermonuclear peril, and worldwide 
 economic disruptions. The immigrants grew to have national pride, but not 
 that degree of fanatic national self-righteousness which justified the whole- 
 sale slaughter of millions of German Jews or Russian kulaks to further a 
 single national cause. There was wrongdoing, blood spilled, and lives were 
 taken of native peoples who blocked their march across the continent, but 
 their cruelty was less rationally organized or totally sanctified than nazism or 
 Stalinist communism (in which religion, historical inevitability, and national- 
 ism were inextricably joined) . "If we had done for ourselves what we did for 
 the state, what scoundrels we would have been," wrote an Italian nationalist. 
 In earlier generations, countervailing powers kept imperial conquest and na- 
 tional ambition in check. More importantly, men's lives were anchored in a 
 set of unchanging beliefs and convictions. 
 
 Some of us have known the majesty of such a faith in our parents and 
 grandparents. My mother ended her 95 years this summer, and having spent 
 42 days at her hospital bedside I wrote the following lines :
 
 CHANGE AS CHALLENGE OR AS CATASTROPHE 
 
 Her joy was in service to others service given with such selfless- 
 ness and grace that no one could say she made them dependent the 
 curse of so much self-conscious giving. . . . She became a brilliant con- 
 cert pianist performing in Europe and the United States. The success 
 of her pupils, though, gave even more satisfaction. She was unsparing 
 of them and herself as they prepared for recitals, but when they faltered 
 she shielded them from crippling disappointment. Her discipline was 
 painless because her love was so vast. 
 
 When she was ill, friends came to cheer her up, but left having 
 been cheered up by her. She knew how to forgive, hundreds and thou- 
 sands of times. I know, I led the list of those forgiven. 
 
 She praised God, not by words but through the example of her 
 life. . . . She taught that anything worth doing was worth doing well 
 from perfecting a concerto to counseling a child. . . . Her sympathy was 
 boundless. ... By the power of gentleness and kindness, she drew out 
 some of the pain from raw open wounds; her love was a poultice, her 
 concern a source of healing. Whatever the problem, she listened and 
 understood and, for me at least, the warmth of her living room took the 
 place of the minister's study or the psychiatrist's couch. 
 
 Trust was for her a way of life. . . . She spent less time questioning 
 intentions and motives, more time looking for good works that needed 
 doing, good thoughts that needed thinking. . . . Yet all her gentler vir- 
 tues could never explain her 95 years. She was driven by an inner fire. 
 Her determination had roots in deep-seated spiritual resources and her 
 tireless heart sustained a frail body until the very end. . . . She remained 
 busy even in her final reveries, concerned for others when confused, 
 aware of human pathos when perplexed about her own. 
 
 What crowned all her hard work, patience and sympathy, trust and 
 determination, and made her loneliness tolerable was her love of God, 
 family and friends, life and music. 
 
 Love led to service to others, to the search for worthy ends, to doing 
 for herself by doing for others. 
 
 A very wise physician who called on her two or three times a day during her 
 final illness observed, "They don't make them like that anymore." He might 
 have added that the structure of faith and values that nurtured her and pro- 
 vided the fixed points in her life had also died for most of the culture decades 
 before her passing. The serenity she felt in life and death, which gave her 
 the will to live, is not present today for most of us and this, as much as 
 the kaleidoscope of change, is the major source of our problem. Neither cyni- 
 cism about values nor easy moral rhetoric can remove the predicament. It 
 is a predicament which can lead either to a sense of catastrophe or to a
 
 CHANGING TIMES: CHANGING LIBRARIES 
 
 heightened awareness of challenges to man's innermost resources. Quiet re- 
 flection and intellectual honesty prompt the recognition that most of us, at 
 one time or another, experience alternately quiet desperation and renewed 
 resolve in facing the future. It will not do for educators either to teach op- 
 portunity and ignore the crisis or to talk only of the crisis. It is vital that we 
 see the problem of change through the eyes of both those who anticipate 
 catastrophe and those who are awakened to new and unprecedented chal- 
 lenges by change. 
 
 CATASTROPHE 
 
 The most poignant moment of the 1976 Republican national convention 
 was a late-evening conversation televised from Kansas City between Vice- 
 president Nelson Rockefeller and Senator Barry Goldwater. Bitter political 
 foes through the 1950s and 1960s, they found themselves embracing one an- 
 other in 1976 and on most major issues were in substantial accord. Probing 
 for an explanation for their new-found unity, Walter Cronkite asked Rocke- 
 feller to explain the reasons. The former governor of New York, whose ad- 
 ministration had brought the powers of government forcefully to bear on 
 the economy, education, public works, and the building of a vast transpor- 
 tation network for the state, acknowledged rather plaintively that most, if 
 not all, of these interventions had failed. It was his experience, he confessed, 
 that government lacked the know-how, the resources, and the will to solve 
 or even to mitigate the great intractable problems of the day. What flashed 
 through the mind of at least one viewer was another political convention in 
 Chicago eight years earlier, at which lines of young protesters chanted that 
 the system was not working and at best should be given only one more 
 chance. We hear that "the government is not working" too often for those 
 melancholy words not to give us pause. 
 
 If partisan political declarations were the only indicators of crisis and 
 catastrophe, we might have less cause for alarm, but the root causes run 
 deeper. They extend from the first signs that the nation's civilization may be 
 going the way of past civilizations (about which historians from Gibbon to 
 Toynbee have written), to the breakup and decline of long-established social 
 and political institutions, such as the nation-state, the family and the church. 
 When Secretary of State Kissinger in a moment of political indiscretion noted 
 that America's position as the one preeminent world power might be passing, 
 he unleashed a small army and navy! of critics. Yet Kissinger may have 
 been more prophetic than those who denounced him. 
 
 What is unique about the present crisis, whether seen as a whole or 
 only as it touches specific institutions, is that old values and patterns appear
 
 CHANGE AS CHALLENGE OR AS CATASTROPHE 
 
 to be losing their hold, although new ones are not taking their place. The 
 nation-state for all practical purposes is inadequate if not obsolete in an 
 interdependent world; but neither world government (of which ones hears 
 less and less) nor strong regional political systems are having much success. 
 The family is in decline, or is being bent and reshaped to a point that scarcely 
 resembles its basic and integral character. As one young man observed, the 
 trouble with the alternatives is the almost total absence of rules and depend- 
 able mutual responsibilities. Religion and tradition, across a broad spectrum 
 ranging from art to reverence for life, have been brought into question or 
 recast in postmodern terms where anything goes. Art without standards, how- 
 ever, is no better than life without values, not because goals and worthy pur- 
 poses are ever fully realized (this was the fallacy of the mass indictments 
 leveled by middle-class young people against their parents in the late 1960s), 
 but because human potential is realized in some measure only in the tension 
 between the ideal and the real. 
 
 According to an ancient Indonesian saying, it is a terrible thing to have 
 a reasonable father. For young people, the need has never been greater to 
 test their ideas against firmly held parental ideals, not against a moral and 
 intellectual vacuum. Because there has been too much authoritarianism in 
 contemporary society (whether exhibited in the imperial presidency or the 
 authoritarian father), we have tended to assume that no one need ever be 
 in charge. Instinctively, we know that a leaderless society brings little happi- 
 ness and peace of mind. When a president such as Truman takes charge and 
 makes decisions, he grows in stature as historians review and reassess his 
 administration. Because society has lost faith that it can solve its problems, 
 it celebrates those who rise to meet the challenge. 
 
 For most Americans, however, the moments of celebration are few and 
 far between. Kenneth Clark tells us that the heaviest toll taken by the ghetto 
 in American cities is the destruction of all hope for its inhabitants. The sense 
 of impotence to effect change is, however, no monopoly of black people in 
 urban areas. If there was political apathy in the 1976 presidential election, 
 it stemmed in part from doubts that anyone in high office could make a 
 difference. As one journalist observed in the Washington Post after the elec- 
 tion, the best efforts of the last four presidents had ended in disaster, disgrace 
 or defeat. What reason was there to expect that a successor, whatever his 
 promises, could make a difference? Society was out of control and it seemed 
 that nothing could be done to bring it under control. 
 
 If we look beyond both the election and individual leaders to the more 
 general causes of despair and apocalyptic thinking, other factors are con- 
 tributory. Some may continue to elude our best thought and imagination, 
 but others are not beyond repair. One has to do with what Rene DuBois
 
 CHANGING TIMES: CHANGING LIBRARIES 
 
 calls the autonomy of science. Science by its own momentum makes policy 
 decisions for mankind. Technology provides the means for building larger 
 and faster airplanes, automobiles which demand more gasoline and high- 
 ways and produce more pollution, and armaments increasingly lethal and 
 destructive. Physicist Herbert York explains that for armaments, the line 
 separating research and development from procurement and production is 
 virtually indistinguishable. Once scientists have demonstrated that the latest 
 armaments are feasible, they will have begun their procurement. The ability 
 to produce new weaponry becomes tantamount to its production. It becomes 
 more and more difficult for the citizen decision-maker to break into the 
 process and arrest the building of new defense systems once scientists estab- 
 lish their feasibility. The SST decision by Congress may be the exception to 
 what has seemed to be an irreversible chain of events. The decision whether 
 or not to build the B-l bomber may prove to be another test case, the results 
 of which now remain open to speculation and the weight of contending ex- 
 perts and interest groups. 
 
 Another contributing factor to the public's sense of impotence is the 
 lack of a relevant framework for understanding the rapidly moving events 
 that whirl around bewildered citizens. For the future it will not be enough 
 to say "trust the people," and then to bury them in a blizzard of reports of 
 seemingly unconnected and unexplained events. Political messages in elec- 
 tion campaigns, as well as the daily barrage of rapid-fire evening news items, 
 are delivered in 30-second capsules interspersed with 45-second commercials, 
 leaving context and background to the citizen's ignorance, uncertainty and 
 prejudice. What is needed at every point are anchors for the culture, and 
 neither politicians, newsmen, nor model-building social scientists or philos- 
 ophers are filling the void. Consequently, society, tossed about by the winds 
 of change, is bereft of moorings and grounding. 
 
 Finally, education, which for most of mankind has been its last best 
 hope, is itself contributing to the present malaise. In the 1960s, a leading 
 American foundation announced it was prepared to assist scholars who pro- 
 posed to study major foreign policy problems anticipated two to five years 
 ahead but which were not currently on the agenda of the secretary of state. 
 The announcement brought less than a handful of responses in contrast 
 with a flood of proposals on simulation studies, model-building and decision- 
 making theories. 
 
 In moments of candor, we educators who feverishly pursue our interests 
 need to admit that no area of human endeavor is more dominated by fads 
 and fashions than ours, more controlled by old and new establishments and 
 cliques, and more swept along by currently acceptable dogmas and method- 
 ologies. We need to recognize that there is a perfectly astounding amount
 
 CHANGE AS CHALLENGE OR AS CATASTROPHE 
 
 of intolerance in the scholarly world. I have repeatedly observed the process 
 at work, whereby the "outs" became the "ins," and heterodox and unortho- 
 dox thinkers created their own new orthodoxies. Once they had influence, 
 those who were long denied entrance to the corridors of power slammed the 
 doors to others coming after them. Indeed, it is difficult to name more than 
 a very few academic thinkers whose influence on public policy, broadly con- 
 ceived, has made a difference. The fragmentation of education and research 
 leads to the isolation of one aspect of a problem and to the pretense that 
 understanding it means understanding the whole. The rash of investigations 
 of human sexuality (some undoubtedly long overdue), which equate statisti- 
 cal evidence on the percentage rate of sexual gratification of white urban 
 females aged 23 to 27 with long and happy marriages, is only the latest ex- 
 ample of such fragmentation of knowledge. 
 
 It is not surprising, therefore, that from no group more than the edu- 
 cators have lamentations been greater concerning the impending catastrophe. 
 One publicist wrote that while scholars have fiddled, the cities and bomb- 
 packed world are burning. Although this indictment is probably too severe, 
 those of us who live our days in the cloistered academic world need to ac- 
 knowledge that, all too often, major initiatives for response to change come 
 not from intellectuals but from the man on the street. Education, which 
 ought to be in the vanguard, often brings up the rear. The great issues of 
 values, of justice and peace, equality and order, are evidently too large for 
 academics to chew. Although there are signs that the prevailing school of 
 value-free social science is dispirited and divided, its numbers and influence 
 persist. Paging through the journals will quell any doubts. The scholarly 
 world stands fragmented and divided, atomized and quantifying, and count- 
 ing and refining in the face of life-and-death decisions that call for profound 
 value choices. 
 
 There is deep pathos in education's tragic failure to see change as chal- 
 lenge rather than as catastrophe. The root cause of man's problem in coping 
 with change is one for which educated thinkers have what economists call 
 a comparative advantage. We tend to see the apocalypse in each new expres- 
 sion of change because we are crippled by a sense of powerlessness. The 
 great choices which lie before us seem to require some form of collective 
 action. Faced by this, the solitary individual resigns himself to a sense of 
 impotence and inertia. Our problems are so immensely complicated and diffi- 
 cult that individuals conclude there is little or nothing they can do. Ques- 
 tions of justice and a just society lie beyond the reach, for instance, of logical 
 positivism and linguistic analysis; for the contemporary philosopher, in com- 
 parison with William James or Reinhold Niebuhr, justice loses its sense of 
 urgency. Once-hallowed issues of moral reasoning are pushed aside in the
 
 CHANGING TIMES: CHANGING LIBRARIES 
 
 practical management of large hospitals, prisons and schools, to say nothing 
 of big government. Apathy and inertia thus take the place of compassion 
 and social conscience. Educators put the capstone on a moral and intellectual 
 atmosphere which accepts the possibility of catastrophe. Reality is too large 
 for microtheory. Nevertheless, it is precisely in the area where mind and 
 spirit meet that classical education has traditionally made its most lasting 
 contribution. 
 
 CHALLENGE 
 
 Fortunately, the failure of education and of society in general to meet 
 novel and apparently insoluble problems of change is not universal. Often, 
 on the periphery of establishment groups in education and public policy, 
 there are signs of a qualitatively different approach. Harvard's greatest legal 
 scholar, Paul Freund, calls for a return to the ancient tradition of moral 
 reasoning. John Rawls through his Theory of Justice has stirred discussion 
 and controversy reminiscent of the debates that went on in the Harvard of 
 James, Hocking, and Royce. The literature of the past several decades in 
 international relations has thrown the spotlight on the conflicting imperatives 
 of national interest and world order. In its report, the Institute of Society, 
 Ethics and the Life Sciences at the Hastings Center deals with such topics 
 as "The Right to Die in California," "Sterilizing the Poor and the Incompe- 
 tent," and "The Legal Right to Health Care." New journals on philosophy 
 and public policy are springing up, and a 7-university consortium fellowship 
 program has chosen world order and world politics as its organizing theme. 
 Jimmy Carter has conducted a winning campaign unashamedly centering 
 on "love and justice," and the electorate apparently finds a note of credibility 
 in the claim that too few people have acquired too much power within the 
 geographical confines of one city. 
 
 The road ahead is long and tortuous, and there is as much reason to 
 fear as to rejoice over the first faint signs of response. It is one thing to write 
 or talk of justice and another to point the way to implanting justice. The 
 French philosopher Paul Ricouer has helped to crystallize our thinking by 
 suggesting that the day of the lonely individual "good Samaritan" has passed, 
 and that what we are witnessing today is the effort to filter such justice and 
 compassion, as we know them, through vast sprawling networks of public 
 and private bureaucracy. For health care, old-age retirement, and unemploy- 
 ment, this is the machinery by which society seeks to give each man his due. 
 Our ethicists implore us to understand that ethics must be spelled out in dif- 
 ferent contexts for differing circumstances and for quite specific situations. 
 All this occurs within the exigencies of time and change. Trying to do what
 
 CHANGE AS CHALLENGE OR AS CATASTROPHE 
 
 is right involves making choices under circumstances of flux. The policy- 
 maker must act, as does the hunter following a bird in flight. If the aim is 
 wrong or the prey is not led, the only rewards for the trouble are tail feathers. 
 
 Moreover, today's changes are legion and multifaceted and have rami- 
 fications in all directions. Government must help us to meet our more press- 
 ing problems, some of which can be dealt with only for society as a whole. 
 Government, however, has had its chance since the days of Franklin D. 
 Roosevelt, and if we have learned nothing else from nearly five decades of 
 experience with big government, we know that no sector, whether public 
 or private, has a monopoly on wisdom and justice. Moreover, the warning 
 signs have flashed that a healthy economy atrophies when an overly large 
 segment of wage-earners draws a too-great percentage of income from the 
 taxes of an ever-smaller segment of the producers of goods and services. 
 Volunteerism, which writers from de Tocqueville to Riesman have singled 
 out as unique to the American system, is threatened when powerless men 
 resign themselves to letting John Doe do it, especially when John Doe is in 
 far-off Washington, D.C. Therefore, the future promises a host of ever- 
 shifting and experimental patterns of governmental relations, some highly 
 centralized, but others marked by the type of decentralized efforts which 
 John Gardner and others have advocated. In every field of public endeavor, 
 including diplomacy, innovations are likely. We have tried public diplomacy, 
 bilateral and multilateral negotiations, quiet diplomacy, and shuttle diplo- 
 macy; and, depending on the interests at stake, each has its merits and its 
 problems. If we are able to keep personal vanity and pride of authorship in 
 check, we may still discover the most appropriate diplomatic machinery and 
 techniques to meet new challenges and to prevent worldwide self-destruction. 
 
 It is obvious that another of the most severe challenges in the years 
 ahead will come in the workings of the economy. If one issue predominated 
 in the 1976 elections, it was that of inflation/unemployment. No branch of 
 the social sciences takes greater pride in the rigor of its methods and the 
 precision of forecasting than economics, yet none was brought up short more 
 dramatically by dominant economic trends. It is "infra dig" among economic 
 scientists to urge that some of the concerns of what once was called political 
 economy deserve reexamination. Econometrics and microtheory have evolved 
 tools of analysis which are far more sophisticated than policy-oriented studies 
 of an earlier day. With the manifold forms of interaction between govern- 
 ment and the economy, however, the focus of economics must, at least in 
 part, be addressed once more to the politics of the economy. At the same 
 time, the oil crisis has helped us to see that a national approach to economics 
 is not enough. Large corporations which make use of political consultants 
 are conscious of the need, and it is our best economists who should look be-
 
 JO CHANGING TIMES: CHANGING LIBRARIES 
 
 yond national boundaries if they are to achieve their fondest hope of making 
 the study of economics operationally relevant. Some younger economists are 
 manifesting an interest in the economics of education, cities and oil, and 
 while the terminology may offend the more orthodox economists, the need 
 is too pressing to justify the arguments of the purists. 
 
 Change is also expressed in demands that more attention be given to 
 the quality of life. In every one of the developing countries, national leaders 
 with whom I have worked have explained that increasing gross national 
 product, though a worthy national goal, was not sufficient. They have been 
 frank to say that they did not wish to run the cycle of industrialization- 
 commercialization-pollution and urban blight which developed countries 
 have followed although trends in the richer developing countries point 
 that way. Leaders of developing countries are in search of innovative educa- 
 tional structures more appropriate to their needs. They are coming forward 
 with rural development strategies designed to increase the use of interme- 
 diate technologies, lifelong learning, indigenous entrepreneurs, and techni- 
 cal/vocational training. The twin goals of the so-called poorer nations are 
 to gear education more directly to community problems closing the gap 
 between work and study, and to define national goals to generate support 
 among the people. The forms and structures through which the poorer 
 countries are working hardly correspond to those of the richer countries, 
 and the best way to earn stripes as an "ugly American" is to judge the social 
 and political life of one's hosts during the first day or two of a visit. 
 
 Instead, there is much that Americans can learn from these nations 
 (e.g., regarding education for development) ; a possible meeting ground is 
 a common heightened awareness that the quality of life deserves greater 
 emphasis. Within the United States, changing work patterns and lifestyles 
 demand reconsideration. The 4-day workweek is becoming increasingly com- 
 mon, and early retirement for various occupations occurs as often in one's 
 fifties as in the sixties. The mechanization of certain work tasks puts lively 
 and energetic people in the position of looking for satisfaction outside their 
 places of major employment. In my youth, leisure time was in short supply 
 for most people; now almost every community has its adult education pro- 
 gram, its recreational offerings, and numerous community programs of vary- 
 ing importance. For adults returning to school to complete their education, 
 the community colleges (which Harold Howe II considers the single great 
 twentieth-century educational innovation) are filling an urgent need. Reper- 
 tory theaters have sprung up in many communities, and local symphonies and 
 dance groups provide a richer cultural life. 
 
 Viewing the advanced and developing countries, I find the crucial role 
 that cultural development has come to play. In developing countries, it is
 
 CHANGE AS CHALLENGE OR AS CATASTROPHE 11 
 
 the route to national integration. Most of the new nations lack the main 
 requisites of nationalism. They are at best loosely organized collections of 
 tribes brought together by the accident of colonial settlements. For such 
 peoples, culture has a paramount role in national unification; without it 
 they are likely not to know what it means to be a Nigerian or a Tanzanian. 
 
 In the developed countries, culture faces a different challenge. Here the 
 identity crisis is less national and more individual. With more people spend- 
 ing more time away from their work, and with work itself (as the late Han- 
 nah Arendt wrote) taking on attributes of drudgery and unrewarding labor 
 rather than of the dignity of work, the individual must find meaning outside 
 his job. Here he comes to a fork in the road, a point at which the choice 
 must be made between cultural and civic activities capable of producing 
 continued personal growth and the endless repetition of childhood adven- 
 tures guaranteeing a permanent state of adolescence. 
 
 A related social problem which may be the greatest challenge must be 
 mentioned here. America leads the world in its scandalous treatment of the 
 aging. Driven from their homes, they languish in second-class nursing centers 
 which at their best are an invitation to perpetual loneliness. It is scant con- 
 solation that the other developed countries have fallen one by one into simi- 
 liarly disgraceful patterns. Japan had been a country in which 75 percent 
 of the aged lived with and were revered by their families. The Japanese now 
 house most of their older people in public establishments. Recently, a dying 
 woman who had been a longtime resident in such a paradise left all her 
 earthly belongings to her television set, the only object with which, accord- 
 ing to her will, she had had any communication in the last fifteen years of 
 her life. 
 
 This leads to the last item on the agenda : our communications network. 
 No one can fault the United States for its technological achievements. Mod- 
 ern television is the most powerful instrument known to man for the instan- 
 taneous communication of the nation's business. It is capable of bringing 
 art and education into the living room of the poorest family. Potentially it 
 is the world's greatest educator and human equalizer. Yet for many of our 
 citizens it has become the opiate of the people, a substitute for civic partici- 
 pation. We are drenched in soap operas, schooled in the latest forms of vio- 
 lence, and deprived of the deepest mysteries of the human drama. Television 
 offers the public the lowest common denominator of American life. It claims 
 to provide what the people want. It simplifies and corrupts the nation's most 
 basic dialogues, including the political and international. 
 
 This is plain talk and not pleasant to relate. Any balanced treatment 
 would hasten to give credit for those occasional national services that televi- 
 sion has rendered, such as its coverage of Watergate, the walk on the moon,
 
 12 CHANGING TIMES: CHANGING LIBRARIES 
 
 and of the war in Vietnam. The challenge posed, however, is that we are 
 capable of doing so much better, not only with communications but with the 
 care of the aged, cultural development, the quality of life, the workings of 
 the economy, and the ordering of political life. It is defeatist to think and 
 act as if improvements lay beyond human will. We need to reorder priorities 
 and to restructure institutions. Profits and power may be essential in society, 
 but so is a renewed sense of service. Rights are a part of the heritage, but so 
 are responsibilities. If self-esteem requires that we think more about the self, 
 then a good society implies a nonneglect of the common good. In rejecting 
 the traditional forms of Western values, we have abandoned what is far more 
 important : their substance. 
 
 It there a way out? Is there a way to renew the essence of the heritage? 
 I suggest that the answer lies in a return to moral reasoning. Moral reason- 
 ing is the discipline of weighing and considering competing and sometimes 
 conflicting goods. Moral choice involves the ordering of rights that compete 
 with other rights and the limitations which one places on the other. The 
 right of freedom of speech, the Supreme Court says, does not entail the right 
 to cry "Fire!" in a crowded theater. The rights of the majority can never 
 justify extinguishing all rights for the minority. If we could restore this type 
 of thinking in all the manifold areas in which we must respond to change, 
 we might proceed within a coherent framework of thought. We might then 
 see change as a challenge, not as a catastrophe. 
 
 No one can forecast with assurance the directions which history will take 
 in the next quarter-century. As H.L.A. Fisher argued in a brilliant essay, 
 no task is more uncertain and bewildering: "We know more about the 
 world in which we live and are in a better position to gauge the forces which 
 move it. Our statistics are more complete, our knowledge of the past is 
 fuller. . . ." Fisher then warned, however: 
 
 Although we have gained in precision, the factors to be assessed have 
 increased in number and complexity. In place of the isolated rivalries 
 of the past, we are now faced with struggles in which the whole habit- 
 able globe is either directly or indirectly involved. The problems have 
 become so vast, their solution depends on a forecast of so many impon- 
 derables and concurrent factors, upon so vast a complexus of doubtful 
 contingencies, that statesmanship . . . has become three parts guesswork. 
 
 With all the refinements of methods and technology, we still depend on social 
 imagination, political judgment and human wisdom. Fisher demonstrates in 
 a review of political prophets the greater prescience of a small group of 
 political thinkers, including Burke, Polybius, de Tocqueville, and Seeley. He 
 offers a longer list of those whose historical judgments were far from the 
 mark. If we consider present-day thinkers and rank them as Fisher did, we
 
 CHANGE AS CHALLENGE OR AS CATASTROPHE 13 
 
 must note that Lippmann warned of the risks of a land war in Asia, Niebuhr 
 prophesied that the United States would not be accepted or admired every- 
 where in the Third World, and Morgenthau proclaimed that foreign policy 
 had to reflect the national interest, not a moral crusade. It remains true even 
 in the age of the computer that all human intelligence, as it reaches out to 
 comprehend the future, is not equal. In Fisher's words, "the higher gifts of 
 divination . . . depend upon an insight into the fundamental moral forces 
 of the world." In this sense the poet Wordsworth was superior to statesmen 
 such as Pitt or Napoleon, for he foresaw in the rise of Spain an instrument 
 for thwarting French imperialism, the need to curb the abuses of child labor 
 and other evils of industrialism, the emergence of national compulsory edu- 
 cation, and the corruption of the popular press. The goal in these complex 
 human areas is, as the British say, to get it right, and Tightness here encom- 
 passes both justice and clarity. 
 
 I would thus advocate a call for greater openness and sympathy for the 
 thought and writings of the exceptional few whose minds bring us closer to 
 the truth and are more than compilers, conceptualizes or classifiers. These 
 few can be recognized by their words, especially the quality of them more 
 than the quantity. But to know them one must know oneself the gravity 
 of one's commitments, concerns and questions and one's resolve to seek 
 the truth. I challenge anyone with deep and abiding concerns and questions 
 on democracy to read de Tocqueville without sensing that here is such a 
 mind. I ask anyone with a commitment to progress to read Carl Becker with- 
 out a similar enlightenment. One cannot study Hannah Arendt's writing 
 without gaining a new understanding of totalitarianism. You will not find 
 such writers and prophets on the list of bestsellers nor reported as a rule 
 prominently in Publishers Weekly. It is unlikely that large publishers will 
 have pulled out all the stops of their public relations machinery for these 
 writers at least while they are alive (I have been told that Carl Becker's 
 books sold an average of 800-1,000 copies). I recently finished a volume 
 called Interpreters and Critics of the Cold War a review of the four or 
 five most penetrating thinkers whose interpretations help me, more than 
 either the official or revisionist historians, to comprehend the Cold War. 
 Several publishers have responded that because two of my chosen inter- 
 preters are dead, their work has been superseded. 
 
 When it comes to interpreting the future or comprehending any his- 
 torical period, our only recourse is to the exceptional few publishers not- 
 withstanding. Where we see catastrophe or contradictions, they may bring 
 to light some neglected source of explanation. If change is considered a chal- 
 lenging opportunity, they may help to plan the way to meet it and respond. 
 It remains true that behind every major policy direction, there is, as Keynes
 
 14 CHANGING TIMES: CHANGING LIBRARIES 
 
 so graphically put it, some "oftentimes obscure academic scribbler." Behind 
 understanding, there is often a book. The great challenge is to seek out the 
 interpreters and critics who provide this resource. Unless we find them and 
 ponder their thought, insights, and conclusions, we will probably remain 
 suspended between dreams and despair, between challenge and catastrophe, 
 between resolve and resignation when faced with a dangerous, uncertain, 
 but awesome future. It will not do to condemn the system and fall into a 
 deep and self-righteous sleep, for in Herbert Butterfield's words: "Like our 
 forefathers, we may feel that the world was spoiled before ever we were 
 born. ... It is pointless for us to blame our predecessors, for they handed 
 down to us a world of patches and compromises, because they too had their 
 desperate moments wondering sometimes whether they could keep the world 
 on its legs at all." 
 
 If we are to do more than blame others and condemn our fate, however, 
 we shall need all the accumulated resources both of ancient and modern 
 mankind. Of all professions, your profession can help to point the way to 
 these rich treasure-houses of wisdom and understanding. 
 
 JESSE H. SHERA 
 
 Dean Emeritus 
 
 Case Western Reserve University 
 Cleveland, Ohio 
 
 Response 
 
 I have two immediate reactions to Thompson's paper. The first is 
 that if, as we Irish say, his sainted mother had not been such a distinguished 
 musician, what a magnificent librarian she would have made! The other is 
 that by simply rereading his paper and substituting the word librarianship 
 for education, my paper would scarcely be needed at all.
 
 RESPONSE 15 
 
 We have a tremendous task ahead of us. The situation of the librarian 
 and the library is very much like that of education. I have said repeatedly 
 that the library is a creature of society, and that it came into being because 
 society needed libraries; and the goals of the library were the goals of society. 
 
 But what are the goals of society? Society is floundering in a morass of 
 skepticism, doubt, uncertainty, disbelief. In this environment the library is 
 very much like the university. President Goheen of Princeton once said, 
 apropos of the student activist movement in the late 1960s, that "the stu- 
 dents set out to destroy the university, when suddenly they discovered how 
 easy it would be to destroy it, and they pulled back in terror." I think this 
 is true. The library, too, is a very delicate thing, and it would be very easy 
 to destroy it. Yet we need libraries, we must have libraries, we have had 
 libraries ever since the time of Ashurbanipal and even before. Obviously, they 
 fill a need, but the library, I think, is by nature (and I have been criticized 
 for this statement) not a dynamic institution. The reader must seek it out 
 for himself. We cannot force people into the library and make them read. 
 We hold our lamp beside the golden door, and those who seek it out can 
 seek it to their benefit. 
 
 Society is not intellectual. Libraries began and had existed almost to 
 the middle of the nineteenth century for the elite, for those whom the so- 
 ciologists call the "elect." They were needed by the ministers, the lawyers, 
 the teachers, the people for whom books were necessary to their work. There 
 were people like Horace Mann and Henry Barnard, who said the library is 
 a nest to hatch scholars (which it is) . 
 
 In the 1830s there was a great spontaneous outpouring of enthusiasm 
 for the improvement of the "common man." I think one of the greatest 
 achievements of the library in this country is recorded in numerous auto- 
 biographies of second-generation immigrants whose parents fired the enthu- 
 siasm for this new land of opportunity and the good things it offered, and 
 admonished their children to go to the New York Public Library and read : 
 "Educate yourself, discover your opportunities." We've lost this enthusiasm 
 somehow, again because of some of the elements that Thompson has cata- 
 loged the breakup of the family, the loss of children's respect for their 
 elders, rejection of the past. But the past must not be rejected. Alex Haley's 
 book Roots (about the descendants of an exslave) brings home, I think mov- 
 ingly, the devastating effect upon a people who have no roots, who have 
 been literally torn from their homeland. They do not know anything about 
 their remote backgrounds and ancestors; they do not know who they were. 
 The library is the memory of society in more ways than one; what is past 
 is prologue. 
 
 You will recall that the Red Queen told Alice that a memory should
 
 16 CHANGING TIMES: CHANGING LIBRARIES 
 
 work both ways. Alice said that she was afraid her memory did not work in 
 that fashion ; she could not remember things before they happened. The Red 
 Queen replied that it must be a very poor memory that works only backward. 
 We must think of history in terms of its meaning for the future. 
 
 Thompson has referred to the tremendous advances in communication, 
 and the library has shared in these in a variety of ways. Within the past 
 quarter-century science has "invaded" the library and, largely through the 
 computer and allied technologies, is bringing to the library many changes 
 that promise increasingly efficient operations. I have often said that I wished 
 I were thirty years younger and a great deal smarter so that I might experi- 
 ence the results of all this effort. It may not be long before the library will 
 be a quite different kind of institution from that which all of us have known. 
 Whether it will be a "better" institution is for us and our immediate succes- 
 sors to determine. 
 
 In all this change we must not forget that change only for the sake of 
 change is not good; that it is not efficient to do efficiently that which should 
 not be done at all. Abraham Kaplan in one of his essays speaks of the "law 
 of the instrument," by which he means that every invention tends to bring 
 with it the conviction that it is just the machine that is required to do what- 
 ever it is that we need done. 1 To say it another way, the instrument creates 
 its own uses. A boy given a hammer immediately concludes that everything 
 needs to be pounded, and an executive who has acquired a copier for the 
 first time comes to the conclusion that all his thoughts must be immortalized 
 in multiple copies. (Indeed, executives have been known to conjure up 
 "immortal thoughts" just so they can be reproduced.) The greatest danger 
 of machine technology in the library, however, is that it can lead to the 
 dehumanization of the library's services. We must take great care that we 
 do not lose a certain rare quality of the "good" librarian epitomized by that 
 perceptive "little old lady in tennis shoes" who, with all her idiosyncracies, 
 knew her materials and knew her clientele. 
 
 Several years ago at a conference at the University of Maryland, a 
 tough-minded, very unsentimental professor of economics related that when 
 he was a boy he was a frequent visitor to the town's public library. On one 
 occasion the lady librarian of the type I have just described told him 
 that she had some books that she thought would be of interest to him. She 
 added that they were in the adult book collection, but nevertheless she 
 thought that he was "ready for them." He concluded his story with an 
 emphasis on the influence that her statement that he was ready for adult 
 books had on his morale and self-confidence. I would not deny that the 
 little-old-lady librarian is inefficient by modern standards of administrative 
 management, but in losing her we are losing something of the same quality
 
 RESPONSE 17 
 
 that the medical profession is losing with the disappearance of the family 
 doctor. Perhaps a machine can be devised which will tell little boys when 
 they are ready for the adult books, but at best this appears to be unlikely. 
 
 I have no desire to use science as a whipping-boy; the other disciplines 
 have their own shortcomings and excesses. I have emphasized science, how- 
 ever, because for so many centuries the humanities were the "highway" to 
 librarianship, and librarians were so steeped in the humanistic tradition, 
 that there is now some danger of their being misled by the glamor of science 
 qua science. I do not want machines to be in the saddle and to ride librarian- 
 ship; I do not want librarians to be lured by the bright light of the "instru- 
 ment." I yield to no one in my enthusiasm for what the machine, properly 
 understood and controlled, can do for the improvement of library service; 
 indeed I have myself played some part in the "scientific revolution" that has 
 come to the library but I want the machine's limitations, as well as its 
 benefactions, to be thoroughly understood. 
 
 The library must operate on two levels: with science as it relates to its 
 own operations, and with science as it relates to the society the library 
 serves. The library as a creature of society has been influenced by science 
 in ways other than the alteration of its technical processes and procedures. 
 Science has been, in large part, responsible for the population problems cre- 
 ated by a continually rising birthrate and, at the other end of the spectrum, 
 a greater life expectancy. The physical sciences have become sorcerer's ap- 
 prentices, gobbling up our finite natural resources at an ever-increasing rate 
 and presenting us with problems such as the conservation of energy, the 
 preservation of our natural resources, the control of pollutants in our envi- 
 ronment, the cult of bigness for its own sake, and our confrontation with a 
 transportation system adapted almost solely to the automobile. The list could 
 go on and on. We are besieged on all sides by the problems of living in a 
 society where change is rapid beyond any previous experience. 
 
 The problems are mountain high ; they reach to the sky. I can remember 
 sitting in the college library one snowy afternoon as an undergraduate, read- 
 ing Edward A. Ross's Introduction to Sociology, and particularly the con- 
 cluding sentence of one of his chapters in which he said: "Humanity has 
 a perilous knife-edge to travel and humanity may fail." I still remember the 
 shudder that went through me at that time, and the thought still makes me 
 shudder. 
 
 I see it as the responsibility of the library to make available, in a variety 
 of ways, resources which will enable people to form educated decisions about 
 how they collectively should try to solve these modern-day problems. The 
 solution will take a lot of good people who have the courage and the per- 
 ceptiveness to take a critical look at what passes for progress these days.
 
 18 CHANGING TIMES: CHANGING LIBRARIES 
 
 Libraries cannot fulfill this responsibility alone, even though they may bene- 
 fit by having at their disposal the most modern of technological systems. 
 Libraries must have super-librarians who have a social awareness, if not a 
 "social conscience." This brings us to a consideration of the qualities which 
 must be developed and encouraged in the training of good librarians. 
 
 Throughout my career in library education, I have pondered the ques- 
 tions of the characteristics of the "good" librarian, and of which of these 
 characteristics can best be learned in the classroom environment. I believe 
 there are four elements: (1) a sound general, or liberal, education; (2) sub- 
 stantive knowledge, expressed as the mastery of a subject field; (3) the abil- 
 ity to communicate that knoweldge to others; and (4) a sense of humor. 
 Let us look briefly at each of these qualities. 
 
 Of all professionals, the librarian most needs a good general education 
 in order to be aware of the multiplicity of forces and concerns that comprise 
 the complex society that he or she will serve. Indeed, a liberal education is 
 important to free people everywhere, but it is especially important to the 
 librarian, who must be familiar with the currents and crosscurrents that 
 shape and reshape the culture. 
 
 The second element, substantive knowledge, is exemplified as a mastery 
 of a specific subject field or cluster of closely related fields. A field, its bibli- 
 ography, its technical vocabulary, its landmark works, the problems it at- 
 tacks, and its current trends should all be mastered by the librarian. The 
 field chosen must be a recognized academic discipline. This is the area that 
 has been most neglected by library education, and that has been sacrificed 
 to make room for an ever-expanding body of library technology. The "good" 
 librarian should have at least a master's degree in a subject field, and the 
 academic librarian should have a doctorate. The current dual-master's pro- 
 gram at Case Western Reserve's School of Library Science is a step in the 
 right direction but only a step. Since the early 1950s the school has had 
 such a program at the doctorate level, but at the master's level there is some 
 danger that both the substantive field and librarianship are getting short- 
 changed. Some shrinkage in library technology can be tolerated and even 
 beneficial, but the subject courses are basic and need all the attention that 
 a full master's curriculum makes possible. 
 
 Third is communication, for all the knowledge in the world is valueless 
 if it cannot be communicated to others. The librarian is, or should be, no 
 Fafner guarding jealously the golden hoard that is his bibliographic collec- 
 tion. As part of the communication process, librarianship should make its 
 practitioners competent in communication itself, and this is done largely 
 through a mastery of the subject specialization. We must learn to meet our
 
 RESPONSE 19 
 
 respective clienteles on their own levels; this requires a flexibility that few 
 in the profession now seem to possess. 
 
 Finally, there is a sense of humor. Some of my friends tell me that this 
 is the most important of all. I do not agree, but it is important. A sense of 
 humor which really is a sense of proportion, a sense of values cannot 
 be taught in the classroom, but an atmosphere can be created that encour- 
 ages its development. "I hasten to laugh at everything," said Figaro in Beau- 
 marchais' Barber of Seville, "for fear of being compelled to weep over it." 
 Christopher Morley wrote that it is all very well to have a crown of thorns, 
 and indeed, every sensitive person carries one in secret; but the times when 
 it should be displayed to public view are very few, and even then it should 
 be worn cocked over one ear. Librarians have their own professional crowns 
 of thorns, but they should be kept discreetly from public gaze. 
 
 There are doubtless those librarians who will argue that the financial 
 rewards being what they are, no librarian can afford the kind of professional 
 education I have suggested here. I think that this logic places the cart before 
 the horse, and that librarians prepared as I have proposed would experience, 
 even in today's market, little difficulty in securing appropriate remuneration. 
 We cannot ignore the fact that we are not attracting to the field of librarian- 
 ship young men and women in sufficiently large numbers who have the po- 
 tential to become the kind of "good" librarians that I have described. Inade- 
 quate financial reward is only a partial explanation; even more important 
 is the absence of intellectual challenge that librarianship seems to present. 
 This failure is clearly the fault of the library schools. Our accrediting pro- 
 cedures have thrown open the floodgates to mediocrity. We have continued 
 to accredit schools not because of excellence, but because they are no worse 
 than schools already enjoying accreditation. The standards in and of them- 
 selves are reasonably adequate, but it is their enforcement that is lax. We 
 do not know the optimum number of schools that are needed, but we go 
 blindly forward accrediting more and more, without regard to the market 
 for their graduates. 
 
 Despite the proliferation of library schools and the pretended dedica- 
 tion to research, we are still plagued by a multitude of unanswered questions. 
 For example, we continue to admire the growth of circulation, particularly 
 the growth in circulation of nonfiction, without understanding the artificial- 
 ity of the distinction in terms of social values or utility. We continue to 
 dedicate ourselves to the growth of the book collections over which we pre- 
 side on the assumption that "bigger is better," without regard to the optimum 
 size of a library for any given clientele. I remember well from personal ex- 
 perience how much easier it was to use the unusually well-selected collection
 
 20 CHANGING TIMES: CHANGING LIBRARIES 
 
 of my undergraduate library than the millions of books stacked in the Li- 
 brary of Congress. With all the new instrumentalities for communication 
 (such as electronic networks) that science has given us, this race for bigness 
 has lost what little rationale it may once have had. Finally, the fear of 
 censorship still haunts us, despite the fact that publishing innovations have 
 put inexpensive "trash" within the financial reach of all who want to read 
 it. While subscribing to the belief that the librarian is an educator, we have 
 not stopped to define what that role implies with respect to acquisition 
 policies. 
 
 I think that librarians are the last to realize the power of the library. 
 The public that the library serves may be numerically small in terms of the 
 total population, but that public is far more important in the making of 
 social policy and the betterment of society than its numbers suggest. I think 
 it is good that the library is an "elitist" institution, for it is the "elite" who 
 make public policy. 
 
 Today's college students present a strange spectrum of competence and 
 motivation. At one extreme, they are the most brilliant and intellectually 
 developed young men and women we have ever had, as the science fairs 
 sponsored by the National Science Foundation testify. At the other extreme, 
 droves of students attend college because "it is the thing to do," because it 
 brings prestige ; they are lazy, indifferent, untouched by intellectual curiosity. 
 Between these two extremes stands the middle group, which in an earlier 
 era would be known as "gentlemen scholars" and which now seems to be 
 shrinking. As library educators we must look to the talented for recruits, but 
 we are getting recruits from the vanishing middle group in larger quantities 
 than will have job opportunities. We have not employed the right intellectual 
 appeals or given the student an intellectually challenging program of study. 
 
 We must not sell ourselves short with an inadequate educational pro- 
 gram. We must believe in ourselves and the importance of what we are 
 doing. We must stop arguing from poverty. Librarianship is what we make 
 it, and recognition of that fact is the first essential step toward making it 
 what it should be. Roy Jenkins, head of the European Commission, although 
 speaking in a different context from that which concerns us here, has never- 
 theless made some observations that are relevant to the task that confronts 
 the library profession. Speaking before the representatives of the 9-nation 
 European community, he said : 
 
 If our community cannot be made to work, what can? If we among the 
 richest and certainly among the most favored and talented of the popu- 
 lations of the globe, cannot learn to work together, what prospect is 
 there for humanity, or for a decent, civilized life for ordinary men and 
 women? These are the stakes and these are the issues. Let us approach
 
 RESPONSE 21 
 
 them with an awesome sense of responsibility, but also with a courageous 
 and determined optimism. 
 
 At the dedication of the new library of York University in Toronto, Archi- 
 bald MacLeish told his audience : 
 
 The library, almost alone of the great monuments of civilization, stands 
 taller now than it ever did before. The city our American city at least 
 decays. The nation loses its grandeur, becomes what we call "a 
 power," a Pentagon, a store of missiles. The university is no longer al- 
 ways certain what it is. But the library remains: a silent and enduring 
 affirmation that the great Reports still speak, and not alone but some- 
 how all together that, whatever else is chance and accident, the hu- 
 man mind, that mystery, still seems to mean. 2 
 
 Thus I am brought back to Thompson's analysis and the perilous knife-edge 
 of E. A. Ross. There is an ominous note of the inevitable in Hamlet's pro- 
 phetic warning : 
 
 If it be now, 'tis not to come; 
 
 If it be not to come, it will be now; 
 
 If it be not now, yet it will come ; 
 
 The readiness is all. 
 
 Those of you who have specialized in library service to young people 
 are undoubtedly familiar with Rosemary SutclifFs magnificent series of his- 
 torical novels, and particularly The Lantern Bearers, which treats of the 
 devastation in Britain after the departure of the Roman legions and at the 
 time of the coming of the barbaric hoards. You may recall that at the end 
 of the book, Aquila, who sees despair closing in around him, wonders "if 
 they remember us at all, these people on the other side of the darkness," and 
 observes : 
 
 I sometimes think we stand at sunset. The darkness will close over us 
 in the end. But I believe the morning will come again. The morning 
 always grows again out of the darkness, but maybe not for those people 
 who saw the sun go down. We are the Lantern Bearers, my friend; for 
 us to keep something burning, to carry what light we can forward into 
 the darkness and the wind. 3 
 
 "To keep something burning, to carry the light . . . forward into the darkness 
 and the wind" that is the apotheosis of librarianship, that is what librari- 
 anship is. It was not electronics that prompted MacLeish to say that "the 
 library, almost alone of the great monuments of civilization, stands taller 
 now than it ever did before." 4 The time may well come when we must be 
 the lantern bearers shielding, like the monastic librarians of the Middle Ages,
 
 22 CHANGING TIMES: CHANGING LIBRARIES 
 
 the flickering lamp of learning from the winds of a barbaric storm. The li- 
 brary, either with or without the benefit of technology, must carry the light 
 as best it can and proclaim itself a storage place for the memory of the 
 human race. The library just might make the difference between an unin- 
 habitable planet and a world that holds the possibility of the continued exis- 
 tence of humanity; "the readiness is all." 
 
 REFERENCES 
 
 1. Kaplan, Abraham. "The Age of the Symbol," Library Quarterly 34:303, 
 Oct. 1964. 
 
 2. MacLeish, Archibald. "The Premise of Meaning," American Scholar 41 : 
 362, Summer 1972. 
 
 3. Sutcliff, Rosemary. The Lantern Bearers. New York, H. Z. Walck, 1959, 
 p. 252. 
 
 4. MacLeish, op. cit.
 
 CLEMENT BEZOLD 
 
 Director 
 
 Institute for Alternative Futures 
 
 Antioch School of Law 
 
 Washington, D.C. 
 
 The Future of Government: 
 Trends and Emerging Conditions 
 
 "Ten years ago government was widely viewed as an instrument to 
 solve problems; today government is widely viewed as the problem," noted 
 an influential review of the future options for the federal budget by the 
 Brookings Institution. Former McGovern campaign manager Colorado Sena- 
 tor Gary Hart puts the problem of big government back to the people : "You 
 can't get the Federal Government off your back until you get your hand out 
 of its pocket." California Governor Jerry Brown says that you can't under- 
 stand his budget-cutting administration unless you understand the message 
 of E. F. Schumacher's book Small is Beautiful. Finally, Jimmy Carter told 
 the Democratic convention in his acceptance speech that: "I have spoken 
 a lot of times this year about love. But love must be aggressively translated 
 into simple justice." 
 
 What might happen to government in the next ten to twenty-five years? 
 
 I will review two approaches to the future and the trends they suggest, 
 and three conditions which could affect the direction of those trends and 
 their impact on the government. My approach will be to examine two views 
 of the future, one from the perspective of the federal budget, the other from 
 the images provided by an overview of major futurist works. Both ap- 
 proaches raise questions about how the agenda of the government will be 
 shaped. The following sections review : ( 1 ) activities to place on the institu- 
 tional agenda the discussion of a shift in our societal paradigm and its impli- 
 cations for policy, (2) the growing interest within government for a more 
 systematic consideration of the future, and (3) trends in citizen participation. 
 
 23
 
 24 CHANGING TIMES: CHANGING LIBRARIES 
 
 The images of the future I selected were supplemented by the small but 
 growing body of literature on the future of the government. 1 Most textbooks 
 on government or some aspect thereof end with a consideration of what the 
 future holds. 2 Other important sources are the various statements of impor- 
 tant trends, such as that included in Appendix A wherein Joseph Coates, 
 a leader in the technology assessment movement, gives sixty long-term trends 
 which he suggests will form the basis for the future. 
 
 The topic at hand is obviously a broad one. In this paper, however, I 
 will focus on some selected emerging trends and conditions which I think 
 are likely to affect what the government will do and how it will do it. 
 
 VIEWS OF THE FUTURE FROM THE FEDERAL BUDGET 
 
 Most cities and states have some growth and development policy, some 
 land use or comprehensive plan; most national governments do as well. The 
 United States is one of the few nations in the world which does not have a 
 growth and development policy to guide its future directions. It is also a 
 nation where policies are frequently made in relative isolation from each 
 other. In the absence of mechanisms to set coordinated policy, the major 
 mechanism which the federal government has for coordinating national 
 policy and setting national priorities is the federal budget process. 
 
 In 1921 Congress gave the president authority to prepare and submit 
 a unified budget. Congress did not then realize how powerful a tool the 
 budget would be for the president, particularly since he also received the 
 power to clear all requests for legislation from his executive branch. Con- 
 gress, however, was reluctant to give itself a mechanism which involved as 
 much discipline as does the budget. Nevertheless, the constitutional challenge 
 by President Nixon in impounding appropriated funds, as well as a concern 
 (particularly in the Senate) to involve Congress more effectively in setting 
 national priorities, led to the creation in 1974 of a congressional budget 
 process. 
 
 The budget process forces the simultaneous consideration of all spending 
 decisions, and presumably of their underlying purposes. This is important 
 for the consideration of the future, because funding decisions often initiate 
 expenditures and programs the effects of which may be felt for several years. 
 
 What view of the future is provided by the examination of the federal 
 budget? A major source of information for this is the report Setting National 
 Priorities, published annually by the Brookings Institution. This year's vol- 
 ume, which makes projections for the next ten years, gives a picture of the 
 major options viewed from where we are now. 3 This particular publication
 
 THE FUTURE OF GOVERNMENT 25 
 
 is also important because it is being used as one of the major background 
 documents for the formulation of the Carter administration's policy. 
 
 Trends in the Federal Budget 
 
 For the first 140 years of the republic, until the 1930s, federal spending 
 never exceeded 3 percent of the gross national product (GNP), except dur- 
 ing wars and their immediate aftermath. 4 Until the 1930s spending for 
 civilian purposes never significantly exceeded 1 percent of the GNP. With 
 the New Deal programs of the 1930s, domestic spending rose to 5 percent 
 of the GNP and remained at that level until the 1950s, with total govern- 
 ment spending rising to about 18 percent; in 1970 it had risen to 20.5 per- 
 cent, and by 1975 to 22.5 percent. This latest figure is affected by the in- 
 creased federal spending on unemployment and other measures caused by 
 the recession. This growth in the budget shows three major trends: 
 
 First, the total federal budget, adjusted to remove the passing effects of 
 recession, has grown only slightly faster than the national economy over 
 the past twenty years. Second, the stability of the total budget in rela- 
 tion to GNP masks two divergent trends a continuing fall in the 
 relative size of defense spending and a steady rise in the relative size of 
 domestic spending. Third, a major part of the growth in domestic spend- 
 ing has arisen from legislation creating new programs or expanding the 
 scope and coverage of old ones, with no liberalizing new legislation, the 
 growth of spending would have been much smaller. 5 
 
 Budget projections, however, suggest that these trends cannot continue. 
 In fact, the freedom to begin new programs enjoyed during the 1960s will 
 be severely curtailed: "Without a significant further reduction in the real 
 level of defense spending or an increase in the share of GNP devoted to fed- 
 eral spending, little leeway is left in the next five years to expand domestic 
 programs or to inaugurate large new ones." 6 The Carter administration in- 
 tends to keep federal spending at 21 percent of the GNP yet that still 
 means relative scarcity is upon us. The possibility remains of adjusting pri- 
 orities within the overall budget. National defense and social welfare are 
 particularly instructive in terms of the Brookings study. 
 
 National Defense 
 
 To provide an adequate defense posture, the authors of the Brookings 
 study call for a new consensus on defense policy. A basic element of that 
 consensus is an end to the decrease in the share of federal spending going to
 
 26 CHANGING TIMES: CHANGING LIBRARIES 
 
 defense. While sketching out areas where savings are possible, they note that : 
 "Other sectors of the defense budget should receive more emphasis. In gen- 
 eral, this means that defense spending will have to increase in real terms for 
 at least five years." 7 This projection is based on the fundamental assumption 
 that there will be no nuclear exchange between the major powers. A major 
 condition of the modern world is that it hangs in the balance of terror caused 
 by the existence of nuclear weapons. Although weapons will spread to 
 smaller countries and the possibilities of nuclear terrorism will continue, 
 there is nevertheless little likelihood that the United States and the USSR 
 will become engaged in nuclear war. 
 
 There are, however, other plausible events which might seriously affect 
 U.S. involvement and subsequent expenditures: 8 
 
 1. Upheaval in eastern Europe and weakness in western Europe might gen- 
 erate spreading European conflict. 
 
 2. A Korean war might confront the United States with a choice between 
 intervention and inaction possibly resulting in Japan's loss of confi- 
 dence in the United States. 
 
 3. An Arab-Israeli conflict might prompt Soviet intervention that only U.S. 
 action could offset. 
 
 Poverty, Equality and Welfare Expenditure 
 
 The authors of the section on income security policy also recommend 
 increases in spending in their areas, although not with explicit figures and 
 with more caution than their counterparts writing on defense. They note 
 that the federal government has made substantial progress in the last twenty 
 years toward three of the four objectives of income security policy: 
 
 protection for precipitous losses in economic well being because of 
 unemployment or other involuntary disruptions of work has greatly 
 expanded. 
 
 access to goods and services, such as health care and housing, which 
 society agrees are indispensable, has been substantially improved for 
 the lower income population. 
 
 major reductions in income poverty have occurred. Poverty as con- 
 ventionally measured has been cut in half from 22 percent to 12 
 percent of the population during the last 17 years. Using a broader 
 definition of income which includes in-kind transfers, it is likely that 
 this figure will drop to 5 percent if recovery from the recession pro- 
 ceeds. 9
 
 THE FUTURE OF GOVERNMENT 27 
 
 The fourth objective of income security policy, narrowing income differen- 
 tials, has not been effected, however. After some improvement between 1929 
 and 1949, the distribution of income has remained highly uneven and re- 
 markably constant. 
 
 While avoiding the term, the authors of the study argue for a negative 
 income tax system on the grounds that it would allow more efficient pursuit 
 of the first three goals, and the reformed tax and transfer system would also 
 allow for a conscious and more effective redistribution policy. 
 
 Libraries are not mentioned explicitly in the Brookings report, but the 
 general implication is: don't expect much. 
 
 VIEWS OF THE FUTURE FROM 
 THE FUTURIST LITERATURE 
 
 The federal budget provides a hard look at the government, yet the 
 budget is not concerned with the wider view of what might happen in so- 
 ciety in the future which could affect the budget. Most futurists are less 
 constrained in their speculations than budget specialists, and they can pro- 
 vide some wider conceptions of trends in society. 
 
 Scenarios 
 
 One useful review of several major descriptions of the future contained 
 in research reports, nonfiction, and science fiction was prepared for the En- 
 vironmental Protection Agency by the Stanford Research Institute (SRI). 
 The study, entitled Alternative Futures for Environmental Policy Planning: 
 1975-2000, begins with a standard caveat of futures research that the 
 study is meant to provide a frame of reference for policy-making rather than 
 policy decisions. The report focuses on four driving elements energy, 
 values, food, and climate and builds these into ten scenarios. These sce- 
 narios are meant to bound the domain of uncertainty by encompassing the 
 spectrum of plausible future. Appendix B contains a summary of each sce- 
 nario. 
 
 The SRI report notes that the ten scenarios, despite wide-ranging indi- 
 vidual variations, represent three basic themes : 
 
 The first theme, industrial success (Scenarios 1, 6, 7), is that of 
 relative success within the limits of the industrial age paradigm. Despite 
 the difficulties experienced, the United States and world societies gen- 
 erally succeed in discovering, organizing, and using human and material
 
 28 CHANGING TIMES: CHANGING LIBRARIES 
 
 resources to address political, social, and economic problems and to pro- 
 duce an economically viable and equitable environment that incorpo- 
 rates individual liberty and opportunity for self-fulfillment in some stable 
 relationship with the biosphere. These results are achieved, albeit im- 
 perfectly, through the medium of the political, economic and social forms 
 now existing in the developed countries. No major value change nor 
 significant institutional change is experienced, although former values 
 and institutions, of course, evolve and are modified during the experi- 
 ence. 11 
 
 In the prime example of this theme, entitled "Hitting the Jackpot," the opti- 
 mism of Herman Kahn is vindicated. Science produced the answers, nature 
 was kind; wise corporate business leadership acted responsibly; government 
 stayed out of the way. 
 
 The second theme, industrial failure (Scenarios 2, 5, 8, 9), expresses 
 the relative failure of these same institutions. Resources are either not 
 found or prove inadequate in the face of mounting problems, and the 
 problems themselves are exacerbated. Generally speaking, nations of 
 the world become poorer, less equitable societies that provide less indi- 
 vidual liberty and opportunity for self-fulfillment, and that exist in a less 
 stable and decreasingly viable relationship with the natural environ- 
 ment. However, the major institutions and the industrial-age values they 
 incorporate remain dominant. Neither alternative values nor reformed 
 institutions develop. The industrial-age system functions but less effi- 
 ciently and less happily. 12 
 
 This failure to respond is typified in the scenario entitled "Dark at the Top 
 of the Stairs." Hard times forced people to live with reduced levels of energy 
 consumption. This condition was brought about by the gradual withering of 
 the industrial state and the slow, grudging acceptance of more frugal life- 
 styles. In the 1990s the climate worsened, forcing energy consumption up and 
 the standard of living even lower. At the end of the century, the free market 
 industrial world was marked by near-exhaustion, economic stasis and pes- 
 simism, but also by social peace enforced by authoritarian regimes. 
 
 The third theme, industrial transformation (Scenarios 3, 4, 10), is 
 one in which the industrial-age paradigm, during the course of the next 
 twenty-five years, is drastically changed and, in effect, transcended. The 
 paradigm's potential for further success is outweighed by its inherent 
 limitations. A new paradigm, exemplified by the adoption of so-called 
 "frugal" values, incorporating the Buddhist economic principle of maxi- 
 mum personal satisfaction with minimum consumption or, in culturally 
 more familiar terms, Emerson's ideal of "plain living and high thinking,"
 
 THE FUTURE OF GOVERNMENT 29 
 
 emerges. Social and economic institutions are developed that are simpler 
 and interdependent and that, reversing current trends, involve more 
 people in self-sustaining activities. Despite the occurrence in some sce- 
 narios of considerable trauma during the period of transition, this is a 
 successful theme. Individual satisfactions over all dimensions are gener- 
 ally high, and the new social and economic institutions incorporate the 
 principles of harmony between human activity and the natural envi- 
 ronment. 13 
 
 The scenario "Toward the Jeffersonian Ideal," for example, is fostered by a 
 rapid evolution in values leading to a transformed America by the year 2000. 
 A new scarcity compelled people to live more frugally, and the exterior sim- 
 plicity and interior richness of their lives seemed a very rational and appro- 
 priate adjustment to a pressing situation. A visible minority strove for eco- 
 nomic self-sufficiency and others for a voice in the management of more 
 traditional economic enterprises. Both groups formed a confident citizenry, 
 skeptical of "experts," and became in every way more resilient and self- 
 reliant. 
 
 Transformation of the Industrial Paradigm 
 
 The implicit distinctions among these three themes is the degree to 
 which there is a "transformation" in the societal paradigm, or world view, 
 which affects the basic way in which persons perceive, value, think, and act. 
 Another group has defined a paradigm as : 
 
 the general conceptual orientation of a people. ... A conceptual orien- 
 tation results in, and is the result of, our noticing and paying attention 
 to some aspects of reality and not to others. The realities we notice, and 
 in the presence of which we live, are, then, a function of the elements 
 of our conceptual orientation the dominant concepts, metaphors, 
 images, logic and decisions rules by means of which we experience 
 and handle reality. 14 
 
 What is the industrial world view that may be transformed? The SRI 
 report states that the industrial paradigm has been characterized by the 
 progressive organization and division of labor into standardized tasks, the re- 
 placement of men by machines in the performance of those tasks, and the 
 joining of science and technology to further that development. The report 
 notes that the successes of the industrial age have been numerous : a remark- 
 able increase in the material standard of living, better nutrition, prolonged 
 life span, nearly universal education, highly advanced transportation systems, 
 communications media that serve a "global village," etc. Nevertheless:
 
 30 CHANGING TIMES: CHANGING LIBRARIES 
 
 These successes have also spawned problems. Health care improvements 
 have caused overpopulation problems, scientific breakthroughs have cre- 
 ated weapons of mass destruction, affluence has contributed to environ- 
 mental pollution, communications technologies are used to invade our 
 privacy, and so on. Practically all serious problems of the industrial age 
 seem to be the result of success which, in turn, suggests that these 
 problems may not be satisfactorily resolved within the context of the 
 industrial paradigm whose very success creates these problems. An illus- 
 tration of the "failure of our success" may be found in the fact that the 
 industrial paradigm, premised on the search for abundance, seems to be 
 creating a "new scarcity" of: 
 
 Energy 
 
 Materials 
 
 Natural fresh water 
 
 Arable land 
 
 Unpolluted living environments. 15 
 
 The values of the industrial paradigm as characterized in Kahn and 
 Wiener's "long term multi-fold trend" are rational, individualistic, secu- 
 lar, materialistic, mechanistic, and scientistic. 16 The values leading to the 
 paradigm shift (those inherent in the "frugal sector" of the population), 
 which will lead to the transformed or postindustrial paradigm, are : 
 
 a blending of rational and intuitive, a desire to voluntarily simplify the 
 external aspects of life in order to secure a greater internal/inner life, 
 enhanced cooperation/participation, a more holistic/systemic perspec- 
 tive expanding to future generations, and a Taoist sense of ecology ex- 
 tending beyond concern for only the physical environment to include 
 the psychic environment as well. 17 
 
 A comparison of the views on future technological and economic growth 
 implicit in the transformed and extended industrial paradigm is given in 
 the SRI report. 18 In Kenneth Thompson's paper the issue of shifting values 
 was raised. The shift in the societal paradigm may be the major cause of 
 what we are currently experiencing. 
 
 AGENDA SETTING 
 
 "It is imprudent to derive a political prediction from a social vision 
 alone." 19 
 
 While social and economic trends can lead to some accurate forecasts, 
 predictions of political actions are more difficult, because of the organiza-
 
 THE FUTURE OF GOVERNMENT 31 
 
 tional structures and processes in government and because of the human 
 element involved. At any given time, the structure and processes of the gov- 
 ernment will present a particular menu of issues or choices. 20 Nevertheless, 
 the institutional agenda of the government those concrete items scheduled 
 for active and serious consideration by the decision-making body might 
 not correspond to the wider systemic agenda of society. The systemic agenda 
 includes those political controversies that are viewed as falling within the 
 range of legitimate concerns meriting the attention of the active population. 21 
 The transfer of ideas in good currency (such as those involved with 
 "frugal values") to issues on the institutional agendas of Congress or the 
 executive branch is a complex process. Some aspects of this process make 
 it difficult for new issues to be considered. 
 
 1. There is only a limited number of issues which can be dealt with; in Con- 
 gress, for example, only about one-tenth of the proposals introduced are 
 ever seriously considered by committees. 22 
 
 2. Of this limited number of issues, a certain percentage is composed of 
 older issues which are topics of constant consideration or are periodically 
 reevaluated. The relative scarcity reflected in future budget decisions is 
 likely to contribute to a more crowded agenda by encouraging a closer look 
 at programs already in existence to determine their effectiveness. This is 
 the basic idea behind the movement in Congress to establish the "sunset" 
 concept whereby a program is terminated after a certain time period 
 unless positively recreated. 23 
 
 3. Decision-makers themselves play an important part in setting the institu- 
 tional agenda. Ideas and the programs in which they become embodied 
 need legislative "champions" or entrepreneurs. The necessary resources 
 and incentives for becoming an effective issue entrepreneur are not dis- 
 tributed equally among all members of Congress or the executive branch; 
 thus, a smaller number of key leaders have a disproportionate ability to 
 set the institutional agenda. 
 
 A certain time delay is usually required for a change in the systemic 
 agenda to be reflected in the institutional agenda, and this lag will be greater 
 in periods of severe system discontinuities, e.g., during depression, war and 
 technological change. Experts on the agenda-building process have pointed 
 out that "the viability of a policy is a direct function of its ability to cope 
 with the problem of lag between the two types of agendas and to keep the 
 magnitude of the lag within tolerable limits." 24 
 
 What are some of the forces acting on the link between these two 
 agendas? Several emerging conditions should be noted, because their impact 
 on this agenda-setting process could prove to be very important to the future
 
 32 CHANGING TIMES: CHANGING LIBRARIES 
 
 of government. First is the emergence of a variety of groups which could 
 broadly be interpreted as transferring values of the "frugal sector" into de- 
 mands for public policy. The second condition deals with a growing con- 
 cern within the government, particularly Congress, for a more systematic 
 consideration of the future impact of its current policy-making. A third and 
 divergent set of conditions will deal with citizen participation. 
 
 PUTTING THE EMERGING PARADIGM 
 ON THE INSTITUTIONAL AGENDA 
 
 One of the forces shaping the future of government is a myriad of 
 groups disseminating aspects of what I've called "frugal values." Several 
 groups work on putting these issues on the institutional agendas of various 
 levels of government. These groups have diverse backgrounds, operating 
 styles and degrees of permanence. Their origins have been affected by sev- 
 eral forces, including the public interest advocacy of Ralph Nader, the Whole 
 Earth Catalog and related publications, and the environmental movement. 
 Some of the issues that these groups deal with include a concern for a simple 
 lifestyle, limiting or redirecting growth, encouraging intermediate or appro- 
 priate technology, economic populism, and the paradigm shift itself. 25 In 
 addition to these change-oriented groups, there are counterpart groups be- 
 ginning to use similar tactics to encourage current industrial values. 
 
 Simple Lifestyle 
 
 In the United States a simple lifestyle is not necessarily a simple matter. 
 There is a variety of technical and scientific questions which are useful for 
 enhancing the quality of life with a lower standard of material goods. A 
 very important group in providing analysis and specific alternatives for a 
 simpler lifestyle is the Center for Science in the Public Interest. A spinoff 
 from Ralph Nader's organization, this band of scientists and others has pro- 
 duced a variety of popular descriptions of the possibilities for a simpler and 
 higher-quality life, e.g., a nutrition Scoreboard to rate foods, lifestyle and 
 energy indices to rate appliances, and The Contrasumers: A Citizen's Guide 
 to Resource Conservation. 26 
 
 Another group, Alternatives (part of the Interaction Coalition), has put 
 together The Alternative Christmas Catalogue. Believing that both celebra- 
 tion and giving are important parts of life, they feel that "giving has gotten 
 out of hand" in our society. In a real sense, "give until it hurts" best describes 
 our current practices :
 
 THE FUTURE OF GOVERNMENT 33 
 
 Materialism, pollution, the rate of depletion of the Earth's resources, 
 and the continuation of colonialism are the fruits of our celebration 
 process. The alternatives of celebrating simply, making gifts, buying 
 from self-help craft groups, diverting money to people- and Earth- 
 oriented projects, represent a new philosophy of giving. This is what 
 The Alternative Christmas Catalogue is all about. 27 
 
 Redirecting Growth 
 
 A Center for Growth Alternatives, premised on the notion that "we 
 can't grow on like this," was established to examine the various approaches 
 and implications of low-growth and no-growth strategies. 28 Their newsletter 
 considers various legislative proposals and also gives specific examples from 
 around the country of good and bad examples of growth. An example of the 
 latter is the Tennessee-Tombigbee Waterway project, "the most massive 
 earth-moving job in this hemisphere since the Panama Canal," whose price 
 tag ($1.36 billion) and likely adverse environmental impact have aroused 
 local opposition. 
 
 In the middle of the no-growth controversy is the question of employ- 
 ment, particularly for the poor. Environmentalists for Full Employment 
 (EFE) is a group established to confront that question. 29 One major legis- 
 lative question which EFE faced was the Humphrey-Hawkins proposal for 
 full employment discussed below. 
 
 Intermediate Technology 
 
 E.F. Schumacher's book Small is Beautiful has created great interest 
 in more appropriate forms of technology. An important function of groups 
 interested in intermediate technology is to maintain an ongoing network of 
 people committed to similar objectives. Therefore, some newsletters often 
 devote much space to what various groups around the country are doing 
 to further the cause. One such operation is Rain The Journal of Appro- 
 priate Technology. The attitude expressive of the evolving paradigm men- 
 tioned above is shown in the journal's introduction to an annotated bibliog- 
 raphy on architecture entitled "Spirit and Space" : 
 
 It often seems that spiritual concerns are something foreign and far- 
 removed from the pressures of every day life and they usually have 
 been in our culture. Yet the whole purpose of all our frenzied activity is 
 to somehow make us happier. And the most important thing about get- 
 ting happier is feelings about ourselves, toward others, about our
 
 34 CHANGING TIMES: CHANGING LIBRARIES 
 
 world. Funniest thing, once we remember why we're doing things 
 good feelings and feeling good we suddenly realize that reverence 
 and respect and love in how we do things are more important than 
 frenzy and quantity. More and more, that is happening in how people 
 are making the places where they live. 30 
 
 The same issue of Rain also discusses the potential development of a Na- 
 tional Center for Appropriate Technology by the federal government as part 
 of the 1976 Community Services Administration authorization. This would 
 fund appropriate technology researchers to work with community action pro- 
 grams on projects with direct impact on the poor. 
 
 Another group with an assertive approach to appropriate technology is 
 the Institute of Local Self-Reliance. It sees itself as working toward "the 
 goal of creating a new value system and a new distribution of economic and 
 political power." To help accomplish this, the group produces the news- 
 letter Self-Reliance "to give this movement a voice, both to report on prac- 
 tice and to weave a theory of localism which strikes at the root of questions 
 of power, of efficiency and of responsiveness.'* 31 Articles treat issues such as 
 "the battle for municipal garbage" and the land trust concept for commu- 
 nity ownership. 
 
 Economic Populism 
 
 The hard times of recent years and the likelihood of their continuing 
 have hurt the lower and middle classes most of all. When people realize this 
 situation and begin to value the limiting or controlling of urban or national 
 growth, they become more concerned with the mechanisms for distributing 
 wealth within the diminishing pie. This concern has resulted in a wave of 
 economic populism, including much attention to the distribution of wealth 
 within the United States by the federal government. This was ended in the 
 1940s with the advent of war. 
 
 A group whose agenda includes economic populism is the Conference 
 on Alternative State and Local Public Policies. This coalition of progressive 
 and radical politicians and activists has annual meetings and produces a 
 series on alternative legislation. While one of their authors notes that "it 
 seems certain that economic issues and questions of public control over 
 capital will be a major part of an alternative politics agenda for some time 
 to come," he admits that it receives only a small amount of attention among 
 politicians, and that the conference group will have to expand its member- 
 ship, particularly to include more minority and large city politicians. 32 
 
 The People's Bicentennial Commission, described by Edward P. Mor- 
 gan of ABC news as "a small but impressive band of patriots, blessed with
 
 THE FUTURE OF GOVERNMENT 35 
 
 what appears to be a mix of seriousness and good humor," has developed a 
 program for economic democracy and has used opinion surveys to show that 
 there is widespread popular support for several measures, such as citizens on 
 corporation boards. 33 The Exploratory Project on Economic Alternatives is 
 also examining in great detail some of the major possibilities in the area of 
 economic populism. 84 
 
 Another major agenda-setting effort in the area of economic populism 
 has resulted from the work of Ralph Nader and his associates on the question 
 of federal chartering of corporations. The Senate Commerce Committee held 
 hearings in 1976 on the related issues of the rights and responsibilities of 
 corporations. Nader's Public Citizen group expects federal chartering to be 
 one of their major issues during the next few years. 35 
 
 Discussing the Paradigm Shift Itself 
 
 Given the fact that the "paradigm shift" or transformation is an "idea 
 in good currency," and considering the multitude of activities of the above 
 groups and others, it is not surprising that the efforts of some groups are 
 directed toward the paradigm shift itself. 
 
 Earthrise, a small but influential group among futurists who might be 
 sensitive to the paradigm shift, publishes a newsletter on developments in the 
 futurist area. Their issues have increasingly been concerned with the ques- 
 tions of images of the future and the search for a new paradigm, and Earth- 
 rise has developed a series of presentations describing the various aspects of 
 alternative paradigms. 36 
 
 The Lindisfarne Association, founded by historian William I. Thomp- 
 son in Southampton, New York, studies paradigm shifts toward what is seen 
 as emerging planetary awareness. Thompson describes this planetary culture 
 as a: "Pythagorean synthesis of science, religion, and art; it is spiritual ec- 
 stasy and political economy, pre-industrial magic and post-industrial tech- 
 nology, myth and history. In short, planetary culture is an embodiment of 
 transcendence." 37 
 
 The Princeton Center for Alternative Futures has also been concerned 
 with the new paradigm. 38 Hazel Henderson, codirector of the center, will 
 debate Barbara Hubbard, another woman futurist with the Committee for 
 the Future, in June 1977 about the paradigm shift. The debate is part of 
 the activities of the Congressional Clearinghouse on the Future described 
 below. 
 
 What is the likely impact of these groups on the future of government? 
 That impact will depend on several factors, including the increase in the 
 number of people who adopt "frugal values" in the coming years; the extent
 
 36 CHANGING TIMES: CHANGING LIBRARIES 
 
 to which shortages and scarcity are felt; the degree to which these groups 
 and their constituencies gain political power; and the degree of competition 
 or cooperation on the part of more established sectors of society, particularly 
 the business community. 
 
 One indication that the public interest groups particularly in the 
 environmental area and those aimed at limiting growth have had some 
 impact is the response by business leaders in establishing regional public in- 
 terest law centers. The purpose of these groups is to counterbalance what they 
 view as the disproportionately large impact that vocal "minority" leaders, 
 such as defenders of the environment, have had on public policy decisions. 
 In California the Pacific Legal Foundation was founded in 1973 on the be- 
 lief that the interests of significant segments of the public in economic de- 
 velopment, highway and dam construction, and more rapid use of natural 
 resources are not adequately represented. Therefore, it has been fighting to 
 permit more intense construction development, greater timber harvesting 
 and grazing on public lands, and broader use of certain pesticides. 39 In addi- 
 tion, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce has established a new lobbying orga- 
 nization called Citizen's Choice to foster economic conservatism. This group 
 is calling for cost-benefit statements before new agency regulations can go 
 into effect, prohibition of public employee strikes, and the restriction of food 
 stamp distribution to families at or below the poverty level. 40 
 
 Libraries can play an important role in networking this information. 
 Networking has become a common professional term among librarians as 
 well as among many of these groups. In fact, Byron Kennard, chairman of 
 the National Council for the Public Assessment of Technology, 41 has pro- 
 posed that local libraries become the focus for a more active means for net- 
 working. Local groups often have time, energy and innovative ideas, but 
 lack funds to communicate effectively with their counterparts or other re- 
 source persons. Kennard suggests that the federal government provide com- 
 munities with toll-free WATS lines. These would be installed in local li- 
 braries and be made available to legitimate community groups, thus pro- 
 viding a significant increase in their ability to network information easily. 
 
 TOWARD A GREATER CONSCIOUSNESS OF THE FUTURE 
 IN THE GOVERNMENT 
 
 Another condition which might have an important effect on the future 
 of the government, particularly on how the government provides conscious 
 and coherent direction to the nation, is the increasing concern for the future 
 from various sectors within the government. This has been manifested by
 
 THE FUTURE OF GOVERNMENT 37 
 
 hearings on the future, by a concern with the operations of Congress itself, 
 by the creation of a futures network within Congress, by legislative proposals, 
 and by the creation of a federal advisory committee to examine the overall 
 mechanisms for coordinating policy. 
 
 Hearings on the future have become more frequent during the 94th 
 Congress. For example, Senator John Culver held hearings within the Public 
 Works Committee on "Choosing Our Environment: Can We Anticipate the 
 Future?" Culver, one of the leaders in an active group of futurist members 
 of Congress, has obtained testimony from several of the best-known futurists, 
 such as Alvin Toffler and Robert Theobald. 42 Senator John Glenn has gen- 
 erated much attention for his symposium for the Government Operations 
 Committee on "Our Third Century." 43 Senator Hubert Humphrey spon- 
 sored both hearings and a major study project on the future of U.S. economic 
 growth, which included spokesmen from both the present (or postindustrial) 
 and the transformed industrial perspectives. 44 
 
 On the House side, Congressmen George Brown and Robert Leggett 
 have held hearings on "Long Range Planning in the Federal Government." 45 
 These are an outgrowth of an earlier series of hearings by Congressman John 
 Dingell on "Growth and Its Implications for the Future." 46 
 
 There also has been increasing attention paid to the internal policy- 
 making processes by which Congress consciously or unconsciously directs the 
 future. 47 One significant indicator of this interest is the creation of the Office 
 of Technology Assessment. Realizing that the secondary or unintended ef- 
 fects of a technology are often more important than its original purpose, 
 Congress created this office to consider in depth the consequences of selected 
 actions before they are taken. A Futures Research Group has also been cre- 
 ated within the Congressional Research Service. 
 
 A major statement of this concern by congressmen themselves is the 
 "foresight provision" of the House Rules. In 1974 the House of Representa- 
 tives gave each of its authorizing committees an explicit foresight respon- 
 sibility: to monitor trends, events, and conditions and to perform futures 
 research and forecasting in their policy areas. Thus, added to committee 
 oversight (looking backward to see how effective programs are to imple- 
 ment) was the responsibility to look ahead more systematically. The response 
 to the foresight provision has been a slow but steady increase in the number 
 of committees complying with its intention. 48 This concern for foresight also 
 exists in the Senate. Both the Commission on the Operation of the Senate 
 and the Senate Select Committee on Committees are considering how to 
 improve this aspect of the Senate's operations. 
 
 On an informal but very important level is the establishment of the 
 Congressional Clearinghouse on the Future. Founded by Congressman
 
 38 CHANGING TIMES: CHANGING LIBRARIES 
 
 Charles Rose and directed by Anne Cheatham, the clearinghouse now pro- 
 vides more than 500 members of Congress with information on futurist 
 developments of interest on and off Capitol Hill. The goals of the clearing- 
 house are "focused on the need for Congress to look forward at the conse- 
 quences of decisions made today, to involve citizens in the processes of 
 government, and to realize the importance of foresight hearings" for com- 
 mittees. 49 As mentioned earlier, the divergent approaches within the futurist 
 movement to the industrial and transformed paradigms will be aired in a 
 June 1977 discussion sponsored by the clearinghouse between Hazel Hender- 
 son of the Princeton Center for Alternative Futures and Barbara Hubbard of 
 the Committee for the Future. 
 
 Working with the clearinghouse is the Committee for Anticipatory 
 Democracy (a group of prominent citizens and futurists) , which was founded 
 by Alvin Toffler to encourage more foresight in government and effective 
 citizen involvement. In September 1975 the committee sponsored the first 
 legislative seminar on futurism for Congress, entitled "Outsmarting Crises: 
 Futures Thinking in Congress." 50 
 
 In addition to this information sharing, several bills which would affect 
 the government's consideration of the future have been introduced. Two of 
 these would move the federal government toward national planning. The 
 first, the Humphrey- Javits planning proposal, S.I 795, would establish a sys- 
 tem for setting economic goals. The second, the Humphrey-Hawkins full 
 employment bill, S.50, would have a similar effect, although it is focused on 
 the particular goal of full employment. The 1976 election, coupled with the 
 high rate of unemployment, resulted in much heated discussion of the merits 
 of the Humphrey-Hawkins proposal. In terms of the paradigm shift discus- 
 sion, the full employment bill is an industrial paradigm attempt to ensure 
 an adequate income to the poor through guaranteed employment. Even 
 some traditional domestic liberal analysts such as Charles Schultze, however, 
 have pointed out that in its current form, the bill would force the govern- 
 ment into undesirable inflationary spending. Environmentalists for Full Em- 
 ployment, one of the groups mentioned above, supported the concept of the 
 Humphrey-Hawkins bill but criticized it for lack of consideration of alterna- 
 tive plans for full employment, particularly those which would include less 
 capital-intensive and less energy-intensive projects, e.g., decentralized energy 
 production from renewable resources, environmental monitoring and cleanup, 
 public transportation, recycling, and solar heating and cooling. 51 
 
 Another source of proposals for restructuring the way the federal gov- 
 ernment makes national policy will be provided by the Advisory Committee 
 on National Growth Policy Processes, a group created by Congress to suggest 
 mechanisms by which the nation could consciously set national growth and
 
 THE FUTURE OF GOVERNMENT 39 
 
 development policy. The committee will make recommendations for im- 
 provements in the executive branch and in Congress, and will probably rec- 
 ommend the creation of a National Growth Policy Commission to monitor 
 the direction of the major trends in the country and to make recommenda- 
 tions regarding coordinated national policy. 52 
 
 How are these developments likely to shape the future of the govern- 
 ment? Given the perceived interest of President Carter in planning and in 
 more coherent policy-making, it is likely that he will lend his support to 
 some improvements. His positions, as well as the degree to which the various 
 approaches to national planning and national growth policy will be merged 
 and coalitions formed, are uncertain, however. In Congress, the degree to 
 which the mechanisms and more importantly the political leadership 
 develop to facilitate more coordinated policy-making is yet to be determined. 
 The budget process has moved Congress toward more coordinated policy 
 and is likely to continue as a growing force in congressional policy-making. 53 
 
 ANTICIPATORY DEMOCRACY AND UNVOTE: 
 DIVERGENT TRENDS IN CITIZEN PARTICIPATION 
 
 What is the future of the citizen's relation to the government and its 
 direction? In this area there are divergent trends, including one toward lower 
 turnout rates at elections, and the other toward increased citizen involve- 
 ment in defining long-range goals for city and state governments. 
 
 The major recent work on American voting behavior contradicted the 
 findings of its predecessor. In 1960 The American Voter left the impression 
 that party identification was one of the dominant features of the American 
 political landscape. 54 After the elections in the 1960s and in 1972, however, 
 the authors of The Changing American Voter claimed that "it is clear that 
 the party-based electoral system of the late Eisenhower years is no longer 
 with us" ; but, they hasten to add, "it is less clear what will replace it." 55 
 
 One of the problems with the "changing American voters" is that they 
 are, to a certain extent, a declining breed. One of the directions for change 
 is no voting at all. On November 2, 1976, some 53 percent of the eligible 
 voters turned out to give Jimmy Carter a slim 51-48 percent popular vote 
 margin. This turnout followed widespread publicity predicting a close elec- 
 tion, yet 47 percent of the eligible voters did not take part. 
 
 What do we know about these nonvoters? A study of some 1,500 non- 
 voters surveyed in July 1976 showed them to be distrustful of and disaffected 
 from the major political and economic institutions, political leadership, and
 
 40 CHANGING TIMES: CHANGING LIBRARIES 
 
 the media. 56 Those surveyed most frequently agreed with the following rea- 
 sons for their nonvoting : 
 
 1. Candidates say one thing and do another; 
 
 2. It doesn't seem to make any difference who is elected because things never 
 seem to work out right; 
 
 3. Watergate proved that elected officials are only out for themselves; 
 
 4. All candidates seem pretty much the same. 
 
 Those interviewed also agreed, by an 11-1 margin, that "what the country 
 needs most, more than laws and political programs, is a few courageous, 
 tireless, devoted leaders in whom the people can put their faith." 
 
 In an interview on the subject, Bill Moyers felt that the American public 
 is terribly bored by the American political process as it has come to run: 
 "People need to be excited once again by politics and the ordinary run of it 
 seems to turn more and more people off to any personal involvement. Ameri- 
 cans are among the most unentertained society in the history of man because 
 all of their entertainment is so artificial and contrived and so is conven- 
 tional politics." 57 One response to this nonvoting is to make it a positive 
 virtue. The authors of Unvote for a New America, for example, argue that 
 the government has broken its contract with the people and therefore the 
 people should not vote; instead, they should prepare for the coming con- 
 stitutional revolution. 58 
 
 While voters are sitting elections out, citizens in various cities have be- 
 come involved in defining the future goals and policies of their governments. 
 These people realize the meaning of "anticipatory democracy," the treatment 
 Alvin Toffler prescribed for "future shock." Some twenty cities and states 
 have had some exercise of this type. These activities (e.g., Hawaii 2000, 
 Alternatives for Washington, Goals for Georgia) take a variety of forms, 
 but they all involve statements about the likely and desirable future that can 
 be developed through citizen participation. 59 Alternatives for Washington, 
 for example, was initiated by Governor Daniel Evans so that the future of 
 the state would not be "imposed ... by the personal interests of an elite nor 
 the impersonal force of history"; rather, it should "be determined by all 
 of the people of the state if they are willing to take time and devote the effort 
 to the task." 60 Initially, a task force of 150 met to consider directions and 
 to identify the range of desirable alternatives; 2,400 additional citizens then 
 took part in a Delphi survey of trends and developments. Approximately 
 2,000 other citizens met at ten locations around the state to discuss the goals, 
 policies and options for alternative futures. Finally, the general public was 
 allowed to vote for their preferred future through the use of ballots in Sun- 
 day newspapers which had been explained on statewide television broad-
 
 THE FUTURE OF GOVERNMENT 41 
 
 casts. The governor deescribed the response as clearly indicating "a prefer- 
 ence for a future Washington emphasizing agricultural development and the 
 protection and utilization of our unique land base." A report on the project 
 noted the discontent among citizens with their involvement in the normal 
 policy-making channels and the frustration of the state's politicians over 
 nonvoting. According to the report, while Washington's future looks promis- 
 ing, its citizens are nonetheless worried about the pace of change and are: 
 
 unsure of their ability to sustain the quality of life of the State. They 
 have expressed through the Alternatives program a vision of what they 
 want their life to be, and they have begun to translate this vision into 
 proposals for the resolution of current issues and the design of concrete 
 measures to move the State toward chosen goals. 61 
 
 Earlier, I mentioned the importance of the institutional agenda. Citi- 
 zens groups such as those described may provide an important source of 
 input from the average citizen and allow earlier perception of issues raised 
 by a shifting societal paradigm and thus translation of issues into policy 
 options. In terms of democratic participation, this may be more important 
 than electoral participation. 62 
 
 TRANSFORMATION, PLANNING AND THE CONSTITUTION 
 
 One of the implications from the foregoing discussion is that the U.S. 
 government will move toward a consciously set national growth policy, or 
 national planning. Among members of Congress, President Carter, and even 
 segments of the business community, there is mounting interest in planning 
 reforms. Such reform would affect not only the nature of federal policy but 
 would extend to the agenda-setting process. 
 
 Other factors will affect the shape of future national planning efforts. 
 These include: (1) the attitude and style of political leaders, (2) the role 
 of public interest groups (particularly those concerned with frugal values 
 and the paradigm shift), (3) the increasingly future-oriented frame of mind 
 of the general public, and (4) the degree to which equality in society is 
 accepted as a goal. 
 
 The first factor, the attitude and style of politicians, could certainly in- 
 fluence future efforts. An innovative policy-planning process is one of the 
 policy conclusions from the SRI study of alternative futures. It states: 
 
 The plausibility of great social change, coupled with uncertainty as to 
 the exact timing, nature, and dimensions of that change, suggests the
 
 42 CHANGING TIMES: CHANGING LIBRARIES 
 
 need for an innovative policy-planning process that would acknowledge 
 uncertainty, embrace error, engage in goal-setting, foster first-hand ex- 
 perience in futures exploration, and engage in boundary-spanning think- 
 ing. 63 
 
 From a more staid foundation in the federal budget, Schultze and Owen 
 also call in the Brookings report for frankness in policy-making. The need to 
 develop more complex alternatives will require that "government leaders also 
 display more candor in defining the hard and complex choices that lie ahead 
 eschewing either easy retreats or the exaggerated promises that incur 
 growing public mistrust." 64 If there is to be more effective policy-making, 
 political leaders must adopt a higher standard of advocacy. The second 
 important factor is the activity of groups to translate the requirements of 
 frugal values into public policy demands. Acceptance of these values by 
 other parts of the general public will vary according to the degree of scarcity 
 at any given time. Most of these groups focus on their local communities and 
 only secondarily on the federal government. Many of them remain indifferent 
 to discussion of national planning, and some are even opposed. The personal 
 examples they provide and the solutions they develop should not be ignored, 
 however, and these groups may yet explore the relationship between self- 
 reliance and government protection. 
 
 Furthermore, there is a need for the general public to anticipate prob- 
 lems before they reach a crisis stage, if difficult choices and determination of 
 growth policy are to be effective. As one Congressman stated : "Forcing the 
 country to meet problems before they reach a crisis stage necessitates a disci- 
 pline that isn't in the personal or political lives of the people." 85 The antici- 
 patory democracy exercises may play an important role in making citizens 
 aware of the significance of their choices. 
 
 Another issue is the degree to which income redistribution is an ac- 
 cepted goal. As noted earlier, there has been virtually no improvement in 
 the inequality of wealth in the United States in the last twenty years. The 
 trickle-down system for the distribution of wealth may have produced a 
 significant lowering of the percentage of people in poverty, but it has not 
 changed the distribution of wealth across income groups. 
 
 Most of the work done in the late 1960s and early 1970s contains an 
 optimism about continued growth. The events of the last few years and the 
 current indication for the future hold this optimism in question. In an in- 
 sightful work on the future of government, Zbigniew Brzezinski viewed the 
 future as a plentiful extension of current resources which would allow the 
 inauguration of a technetronic era. At the same time, Brzezinski realized 
 that an absence of economic growth (specifically, an economic recession) 
 would bring :
 
 THE FUTURE OF GOVERNMENT 43 
 
 calamitous consequences for the stability of the American social order. 
 Much clearly depends on the expanding economy's capacity to absorb 
 and ameliorate existing tensions. . . . This is particularly true of poverty 
 and race relations, in which even social good will be powerless to ac- 
 complish much in the event of a significant economic slow-down. 66 
 
 Is the trickle-down system of distributing benefits of the economic system 
 viable or desirable? 
 
 During the scarcity of the depression years, greater equality of wealth 
 was a more accepted goal, and improvements were made. If this scarcity 
 recurs, the types of issues raised by groups such as the Conference of Alter- 
 native State and Local Public Policies may be important to the federal gov- 
 ernment as guidelines for the elaboration of a national growth policy, which 
 includes economic equality as a planning goal. 
 
 Another topic relevant to the future of the U.S. government concerns 
 the origin of that government. From 1776 to 1789, structures and processes 
 were designed with a view to the protection and enhancement of certain 
 values. The era was a preindustrial one. The Constitution it produced carried 
 the nation through the Industrial Revolution and onto a road yet untraveled 
 in the history of man. Yet, the period from 1976 to 1989 provides an oppor- 
 tunity to consider again the best structures and processes to protect and 
 enhance life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. 67 
 
 In closing, I would like to return to the image used by Shera of the 
 librarian as the lantern bearer carrying what light there is against the wind 
 and into the darkness. The United States may or may not be on the edge 
 of a shift in societal world view. Relative scarcity, however, is likely to be 
 an ongoing fact of life for an America schooled since World War II in in- 
 creasing abundance. As librarians carry the lantern, I would urge that the 
 light include the lessons from creative and successful responses to scarcity 
 and the problems of justice that accompany it. 
 
 REFERENCES 
 
 1. Perioff, Harvey, ed. The Future of the United States Government Toward 
 the Year 2000. New York, Braziller, 1971. 
 
 2. Becker, Theodore L. American Government; Past, Present, Future. Boston, 
 Allyn and Bacon, 1976; Dye, Thomas R., and Zeigler, Harmon. The Irony of 
 Democracy: An Uncommon Introduction to American Politics. 2d ed. Belmont, 
 Calif., Duxbury Press, 1972; and see, for example, Saloma, John S., and Sontag, 
 Frederick H. Political Parties; The Real Opportunity for Effective Citizen Politics. 
 New York, Knopf, 1972.
 
 44 CHANGING TIMES: CHANGING LIBRARIES 
 
 3. Owen, Henry, and Schultze, Charles L., eds. Setting National Priorities; 
 The Next Ten Years. Washington, D.C., Brookings Institution, 1976. Government 
 projections for the next five years are provided in U.S. Office of Management and 
 Budget. The Budget of the United States Government, 1976/77. Washington, D.C., 
 U.S.G.P.O., 1976; and in Congressional Budget Office. Five Year Budget Projec- 
 tions, Fiscal Years 1977-81. Washington, B.C., Congressional Budget Office, 1976. 
 
 4. Schultze, Charles L. "Federal Spending: Past, Present, and Future." In 
 Owen and Schultze, op. cit., p. 357. 
 
 5. Ibid., p. 346. 
 
 6. Ibid., p. 356. 
 
 7. Blechman, Barry M., et al. "Toward a New Consensus in U.S. Defense Pol- 
 icy." In Owen and Schultze, op. cit., pp. 127-28. 
 
 8. Owen, Henry. "Peace or War." In Owen and Schultze, op. cit., pp. 15-58. 
 
 9. Palmer, John L., and Minarick, Joseph J. "Income Security Policy." In 
 Owen and Schultze, op. cit., pp. 532-34. 
 
 10. Stanford Research Institute. Center for the Study of Social Policy. Alterna- 
 tive Futures for Environmental Policy Planning: 1975-2000. Washington, D.C., En- 
 vironmental Protection Agency, 1975. (EPA-540/9-75-027, Contract 68-01-2698.) 
 For a list of fifteen works chosen by the project to be reviewed as the basis for 
 images of the future, see pp. 281-86. 
 
 11. Ibid., p. 3. 
 
 12. Ibid., pp. 3-4. 
 
 13. Ibid., p. 4. 
 
 14. Nelson, Ruben F. W. "Report on: The Cultural Paradigms Project." Ot- 
 tawa, Canada, Square One Management Ltd., 1975. Cited in "What is a Para- 
 digm?" Earthrise Newsletter 18 3:203, 207, Nov./Dec. 1975. 
 
 15. Stanford Research Institute, op. cit., p. 179. 
 
 16. Ibid., pp. 182-83. 
 
 17. Ibid. Taoist ecology is defined as a recognition "that each organization and 
 individual has an innate sense for growth and development that is to be freely ex- 
 pressed and not manipulated" (p. 234). 
 
 18. Ibid., pp. 182-83. 
 
 19. Dejouvenal, Bertrand. The Art of Conjecture. Nikita Lary, trans. New- 
 York, Basic Books, 1967, p. 237. 
 
 20. Allison, Graham, and Szanton, Peter. "Organizing for the Decade Ahead." 
 In Owen and Schultze, op. cit., p. 227. 
 
 21. Cobb, Roger W., and Elder, Charles D. Participation in American Politics: 
 The Dynamics of Agenda-building. Boston, Allyn and Bacon, 1972. 
 
 22. In the 94th Congress from January 1975 through October 1, 1976, 24,283 
 measures were introduced. This counts public and private bills and represents 3 
 percent of the measures introduced. See Daily Digest. Congressional Record, 94 
 Cong., 2 sess. ( 1976), CXII, No. 152, p. D1397. 
 
 23. A major sunset proposal, S.2925 (Government Economy and Spending 
 Reform Act of 1976), generated much discussion and was favorably reported by the 
 Senate Government Operations Committee. See U.S. Senate. Congressional Record, 
 94 Cong., 2 sess. (1976), CXII, No. 12, p. S1044. For a related discussion of the 
 crowding of the agenda by existing issues, see Bezold, Clement, et al. "Congres- 
 sional Committees and National Growth Policy" (Report for the Advisory Com- 
 mittee on National Growth Policy Processes). Washington, D.C., Center for Gov- 
 ernmental Responsibility, Oct. 1976, p. 9.
 
 THE FUTURE OF GOVERNMENT 45 
 
 24. Cobb and Elder, op. cit., p. 15. 
 
 25. There are a large number of public interest groups, including the Center 
 for Governmental Responsibility, which cover a broader range of issues. Overviews 
 of the public interest field are given by Jeffrey Berry in a forthcoming book on 
 public interest groups from Princeton University Press. See also: Balancing the 
 Scales of Justice: Financing Public Interest Law in America. Washington, D.C., 
 Council on Public Interest Law, 1976. 
 
 26. Fritsch, Albert J. The Contrasumers: A Citizen's Guide to Resource Con- 
 servation. New York, Praeger, 1974. (Available from the Center for Science in the 
 Public Interest, 1757 S Street, N.W., Washington, D.C. 20036.) 
 
 27. The Alternative Christmas Catalogue, 2d ed. Washington, B.C., Alterna- 
 tives, n.d., p. 5. (Available from Alternatives, 1500 Farragut Street N.W., Wash- 
 ington, D.C. 20011.) 
 
 28. The Center for Growth Alternatives has become a program of the Institute 
 for Local Self-Reliance, mentioned below. 
 
 29. Environmentalists for Full Employment, 1785 Massachusetts Ave. N.W., 
 Washington, D.C. 20036. 
 
 30. "Spirit and Space," Rain The Journal of Appropriate Technology 2:3, 
 July 1976. 
 
 31. "A Word from the Staff," Self -Reliance, no. 2, June 1976, p. 1. (Available 
 from the Institute for Local Self-Reliance, 1717 18th Street N.W., Washington, 
 D.C. 20009.) 
 
 32. Smith, David. "Updating Economic Populism," Conference on Alternative 
 State and Local Public Policies, no. 3, Oct. 1976, pp. 4-5. (Available from 1901 Q 
 Street N.W., Washington, D.C. 20009.) 
 
 33. The Peoples Bicentennial Commission, 1346 Connecticut Ave. N.W., Wash- 
 ington, D.C. 20036. In addition to their newsletter Common Sense, the PBC has 
 several publications. Americans for a Working Economy is another group encourag- 
 ing economic democracy (c/o Public Media Center, 1910 N Street N.W., Wash- 
 ington, D.C. 20036.) 
 
 34. Exploratory Project on Economic Alternatives, 1519 Connecticut Ave. 
 N.W., Washington, D.C. 20036. 
 
 35. Public Citizen, 1200 15 Street N.W., Washington, D.C. 20036. 
 
 36. Earthrise Newsletter, P.O. Box 120, Annex Station, Providence, R.I. 02901. 
 See especially: vol. 3, no. 14, Jan./Feb. 1975; vol. 3, no. 18, Nov./Dec. 1975; and 
 vol. 4, no. 21, May /June 1976. 
 
 37. Lindisfarne Association, 50 Fishcove Road, Southampton, N.Y. 11968. The 
 association is described in William I. Thompson. "Lindisfarne: A Planetary Com- 
 munity," The Futurist 9:4-5, Feb. 1975. 
 
 38. Henderson, Hazel. "Ideologies, Paradigms, and Myths: Changes in Our 
 Operative Social Values," Liberal Education 62: 143-51, May 1976. 
 
 39. Described in Pipeline, Oct. 1976, p. 1. (Available from the Council on 
 Public Interest Law, 1250 Connecticut Ave. N.W., Washington, D.C. 20036.) 
 
 40. Ibid. 
 
 41. National Council for the Public Assessment of Technology, 1785 Massa- 
 chusetts Ave. N.W., Washington, D.C. 20036. 
 
 42. U.S. Senate. Committee on Public Works. Subcommittee on Environ- 
 mental Pollution. Choosing our Environment: Can We Anticipate the Future? 
 (Hearings before the Panel on Environmental Science and Technology of the Sub-
 
 46 CHANGING TIMES: CHANGING LIBRARIES 
 
 committee on Environmental Pollution). Washington, D.C., U.S.G.P.O., 1976. 
 ( Serial No. 94-H31, 1976.) 
 
 43. U.S. Senate. Committee on Government Operations. Our Third Century, 
 Directions: A Symposium. Washington, D.C., U.S.G.P.O., 1976. 
 
 44. See U.S. Senate. "Challenging Views on Future U.S. Economic Growth," 
 Congressional Record, 94 Cong., 1 sess. (1975), CXXI, No. 169, p. S 199 15; and 
 U.S. Congress. Joint Economic Committee. U.S. Growth From 1976 to 1986: Pros- 
 pects, Problems and Patterns, vols. 1-11. Washington, D.C., U.S.G.P.O., 1976. 
 
 45. Library of Congress. Congressional Research Service. Long Range Plan- 
 ning (Report prepared for the Subcommittee on the Environment and the Atmo- 
 sphere). Washington, D.C., U.S.G.P.O., 1976. 
 
 46. U.S. House of Representatives. Merchant Marine and Fisheries Commit- 
 tee. Growth and Its Implications for the Future (Hearings before the Subcommittee 
 on Fisheries and Wildlife Conservation and Environment). 4 parts. Washington, 
 D.C., U.S.G.P.O., 1973-74. (Serial nos. 93-7, 93-28, 93-29, 93-35.) 
 
 47. For a description of this type of activity, see Bezold, Clement. "Congress 
 and the Future," The Futurist 9: 132-43, June 1975. 
 
 48. See "Senate Committee Foresight: Commis- 
 sion on the Operation of the Senate." In Techniques and Procedures for Analysis 
 and Evaluation; Commission on the Operation of the Senate. Washington, D.C., 
 U.S.G.P.O., 1976. 
 
 49. What's Next. (Newsletter available from the Congressional Clearinghouse 
 on the Future, Rm. 722, House Office Annex, Bldg. No. 1, Washington, B.C. 20515.) 
 
 50. The text of the major speeches from this symposium appears in U.S. Sen- 
 ate. Congressional Record, 94 Cong., 1 sess. (1975), CXXI, no. 143, p. S16827-28; 
 no. 144; and no. 145. 
 
 51. Environmentalists for Full Employment 1:1, Fall 1976. 
 
 52. In addition to the work of the Growth Policy Committee, the federal gov- 
 ernment mechanisms to set foreign policy were recently reviewed by a major federal 
 commission. See Allison and Szanton, op. cit. 
 
 53. Haveman, Joel. "Two Budget Committees Find Their Niche," National 
 Journal 8: 1346-52, Sept. 25, 1976. 
 
 54. Campbell, Angus, et al. The American Voter. New York, Wiley, 1960. 
 
 55. Nie, Norman H., et al. The Changing American Voter. Cambridge, Har- 
 vard University Press, 1976, p. 289. 
 
 56. Committee for the Study of the American Electorate. "Non Voter study." 
 1976. (unpublished) 
 
 57. Becker, Theodore L., et al. Unvote for a. New America: A Guide to Con- 
 stitutional Revolution. Boston, Allyn and Bacon, 1976. 
 
 58. Ibid. 
 
 59. Baker, David. "State Goals Groups: Performance and Potential," World 
 Future Society Bulletin 10:5-13, March/April 1976; and Chaplin, George, and 
 Paige, Glenn D., eds. Hawaii 2000: Continuing Experiment in Anticipatory Democ- 
 racy (Governor's Conference on the Year 2000, Honolulu, 1970). Honolulu, Univer- 
 sity of Hawaii Press, 1973. 
 
 60. "Washington Asks Its Citizens to Choose the State's Future." In Council 
 of State Governments. State Growth Management (Report prepared for the De- 
 partment of Housing and Urban Development). Washington, D.C., U.S. Depart- 
 ment of Housing and Urban Development, 1976, p. 76.
 
 THE FUTURE OF GOVERNMENT 47 
 
 61. Ibid., p. 83. 
 
 62. Cobb and Elder, op. cit. 
 
 63. Stanford Research Institute, op. cit. p. 5. For a discussion of the meaning 
 of these terms, see Michael, Donald N. On Learning to Plan & Planning to Learn. 
 San Francisco, Jossey-Bass, 1973. 
 
 64. Owen and Schultze, op. cit., p. 14. 
 
 65. Bezold, Clement. "Strategic Policy Assessment and Congressional Reform: 
 The Future in Committee." Ph.D. dissertation prepared for the University of Flor- 
 ida, Gainesville, 1976, p. 228. (Available from University Microfilms, Ann Arbor, 
 Mich.) 
 
 66. Brzezinski, Zbigniew. Between Two Ages: America's Role in the Techne- 
 tronic Era. New York, Viking Press, 1970, p. 229. 
 
 67. Rexford Tuxwell's version of a new constitution is the best known and has 
 appeared several places. See, for example, Giglio, Ernest D., and Schrems, John H., 
 eds. Future Politics. Berkeley, Calif., McCutchan Publishing Corp., 1971. For an- 
 other model constitution, see Baldwin, Leland D. Reframing the Constitution: An 
 Imperative for Modern America, Santa Barbara, Calif., ABC-Clio Press, 1972.
 
 48 
 
 CHANGING TIMES: CHANGING LIBRARIES 
 
 APPENDIX A 
 
 LONG-TERM TRENDS FORMING THE BASIS 
 FOR THE FUTURE 
 
 General Long-Term Societal Trends 
 
 1. Economic prosperity, affluence, 
 and inflation 
 
 2. Expanding education throughout 
 society 
 
 3. Rise of knowledge industries and 
 a knowledge-dependent society 
 
 4. Relative decline in common 
 knowledge of the physical world 
 
 5. Urbanization/metropolitaniza- 
 tion/suburbanization 
 
 6. Rise of the middle-class society 
 
 7. Cultural homogenization the 
 growth of a national society 
 
 8. Growth of permanent military 
 establishment 
 
 9. Mobility, a) personal, b) physi- 
 cal, c) occupation 
 
 10. International affairs and national 
 security as a major societal factor 
 
 Technology Trends 
 
 11. The centrality and increasing 
 dominance of technology in the 
 economy and society 
 
 12. Integration of the national econ- 
 omy 
 
 13. Integration of the national with 
 the international economy 
 
 14. The growth of research and de- 
 velopment as a factor in econ- 
 omy 
 
 15. High technological turnover rate 
 
 16. The development of mass media 
 in telecommunications 
 
 17. An awareness of the finitude of 
 resources 
 
 Trends in Labor Force and Work 
 
 18. Specialization 
 
 19. Growth of the service sector 
 
 20. Relative decline of primary and 
 secondary employment 
 
 21. Growth of information indus- 
 tries, movement toward an in- 
 formation society 
 
 22. Expansion of credentialism 
 
 23. Women, blacks, and other mi- 
 nority groups entering the labor 
 force 
 
 24. Early retirement 
 
 25. Unionism 
 
 26. Growth of pensions and pension 
 funds 
 
 27. Movement toward second careers 
 and midlife change in career 
 
 28. Decline of the work ethic 
 
 Trends in Values and Concerns 
 
 29. General shift in societal values 
 
 30. Diversity as a growing, explicit 
 value 
 
 31. Decline of traditional authority 
 
 32. The growth of anti-authoritarian 
 movements 
 
 Source: Coates, Joseph F. "Why Think About the Future: Some Administrative-Politi- 
 cal Perspectives," Public Administration Review 36:585, Sept./Oct. 1976.
 
 THE FUTURE OF GOVERNMENT 
 
 49 
 
 33. Increasing aspirations and ex- 
 pectations of success 
 
 34. Growth of tourism, vacationing, 
 and travel 
 
 35. General expectations of high 
 level of medical care 
 
 36. General expectations of high 
 level of social service 
 
 37. The growth of consumerism 
 
 38. Growth of physical culture and 
 personal health movements 
 
 39. Civil rights, civil liberties expan- 
 sion for blacks, Chicanes, gays, 
 and other minorities 
 
 40. Growth of women's liberation 
 movement 
 
 Family Trends 
 
 41. Decline in birth rates 
 
 42. Shifts in rates of family forma- 
 tion, marriage, divorce, and liv- 
 ing styles 
 
 43. The growth of leisure 
 
 44. The growth of the do-it-yourself 
 movement 
 
 45. Improved nutrition with the con- 
 sequent decline in the age of 
 menarche 
 
 46. Protracted adolescence 
 
 47. Decline in the number and sig- 
 nificance of rights of passage, 
 birth, death, marriage, etc. 
 
 48. Isolation of children from the 
 world of adult concern 
 
 49. The acculturation of children by 
 other children 
 
 50. The growth of a large aged pop- 
 ulation 
 
 5 1 . The replacement of the extended 
 family by the nuclear family and 
 other living arrangements 
 
 Institutional Trends 
 
 52. The institutionalization of prob- 
 lems. This is the tendency to 
 spawn new institutions and new 
 institutional mechanisms for deal- 
 ing with what were in the past 
 personal, private, or nongovern- 
 mental responsibilities. 
 
 53. Bureaucratization of public and 
 private institutions 
 
 54. Growth of big government 
 
 55. The growth of big business 
 
 56. Growth of multinational corpo- 
 rations 
 
 57. Growth of future studies and 
 forecasting and the institutional- 
 ization of foresight mechanisms 
 and long-range planning 
 
 58. Growth of public participation 
 in public institution and private 
 institution decision-making 
 
 59. The growing demands for ac- 
 countability and the expenditure 
 of public resources 
 
 60. Growth of demands for social 
 responsibility
 
 50 CHANGING TIMES: CHANGING LIBRARIES 
 
 APPENDIX B 
 
 SUMMARIES OF SCENARIOS OF THE FUTURE 
 
 Scenario 1 "Hitting the Jackpot" 
 
 Basically, this is the Kahnian future. Science produced the answers; nature 
 was kind; wise corporate business leadership acted responsibly; government 
 stayed out of the way. The present time of troubles was merely a temporary 
 aberration on the long term multi-fold trend line. The general, increasing, 
 and more widely extended level of prosperity during the 25-year period 
 placed no excessive strain on the environment: the prosperity of the period 
 enabled the repair of whatever minor damage was done. By 2000 the highly 
 complex and interdependent world economic system demanded a form of 
 world government, and this same system increasingly demanded and estab- 
 lished world rules for regulation of the environment. 
 
 Scenario 2 "Not-So-Great Expectations" 
 
 Energy, climate, and food availability are the controlling variables in this 
 scenario. Reduced availability of the first, worsening of the second, and a 
 per capita decline in the third produce a depression situation by the mid- 
 1980s. Major economic and social institutions in the industrial free market 
 countries survive, however. A major factor in their survival is the emergence 
 of a large minority of so-called "frugal" people who develop an alternative 
 and supplementary economy and society which reduces the strain on tradi- 
 tional institutions. By the 1990s a societal adaptation is underway leading to 
 economic recovery under less affluent but satisfactory conditions. The result 
 by the early years of the next century is a more temperate, resource-conserv- 
 ing, environmentally-sound industrial system offering scope for the exercise 
 of industrial age values on a reduced scale. Very importantly, despite the 
 domestic turmoil that accompanies the transition period of the 1980s, no 
 large scale international conflict or disharmony occurs. 
 
 Scenario 3 "Apocalyptic Transformation" 
 
 The belief in unbreakable links among economic growth, energy, and afflu- 
 ence led the United States to bet its future on new technology making new 
 resources available to sustain growth. By the mid-1980s the nation lost its 
 
 Source: Stanford Research Institute Report for the Environmental Protection Agency. 
 Alternative Futures for Environmental Policy Making: 1975-2000. Washington, D.C., 
 U.S.G.P.O., 1975, pp. 21, 35, 49, 63, 79, 93, 107, 121, 135, 149.
 
 THE FUTURE OF GOVERNMENT 51 
 
 bet, with the result that the economy nearly collapsed. The problems of the 
 late 1980s were made worse by deteriorating climate. By 1990, however, a 
 new ethic based on a more frugal way of life gained strength and grew very 
 rapidly throughout the 1990s as people saw this group making do quite well 
 in the face of adversity. By the year 2000 the "frugals" were in the majority 
 and the United States had been transformed. 
 
 Scenario 4 "Journey to Transcendence" 
 
 This scenario is the story of evolution and transformation. The old, growth- 
 dependent order slowly eroded as it faced the limitations of a finite earth. 
 From the late 1970s to the early 1990s the leadership doggedly persisted in 
 trying to make the "American Dream" work but with diminishing success. 
 A new order, guided by a more humane image of man, slowly emerged in 
 the midst of the decay of the old. With ever increasing success its adherents 
 learned how to translate its aspirations into practical realities. At the turn 
 of the century the visible success of this new frugal sector had drawn most 
 of the remnants of the old order to its side. 
 
 Scenario 5 "The Center Hold?' 
 
 The most significant among the variables controlling this future is the con- 
 tinued dominance of achievement values, even while energy shortages 
 threatened, the climate worsened and living standards declined. Throughout 
 the 1980s the big business, big agriculture, big government systems of the 
 industrial countries were threatened, appearing at times to be totally inade- 
 quate to meet the needs of the societies they directed; yet they remained in 
 control. There was public revulsion against the rising criminality and terror 
 tactics of desperate survivor groups and their associated intellectual revolu- 
 tionary apologists and sometime leaders. The frugal sector, which tried to 
 go its own way without taking part in the repression or promotion of vio- 
 lence, was condemned by both the revolutionaries and the conservative 
 achievers. With important technological breakthroughs and a cycle of good 
 weather worldwide in the 1990s, the achievers successfully restored, in great 
 measure, the world system of the 1970s. The new system, however, was more 
 centralized, more highly regulated, and more authoritarian than that of 
 25 years earlier. 
 
 Scenario 6 "The Boom Years" 
 
 In the late 1970s attempts to control growth in response to the energy crisis 
 resulted in a deep and extended recession large numbers of people had to 
 reduce severely their standards of living. This recession increased the proper-
 
 52 CHANGING TIMES: CHANGING LIBRARIES 
 
 tion of people seeking a frugal way of life in the 1980s. At the same time new 
 energy technology and resources were applied effectively to end the recession 
 and speed recovery. By the late 1990s, the United States was back on its his- 
 toric track of ever-growing affluence and mastery over the world around it. 
 The promise of comfort proved irresistible to many of those who had sought 
 the frugal path, so that by 2000 the frugals were a relatively small minority. 
 
 Scenario 7 "The Industrial Renaissance" 
 
 An extended recession through the early 1980s was brought on by inept 
 efforts to control energy consumption. Growth was indeed curbed but at a 
 high economic and social cost. The need for control was largely eliminated 
 in the late 1980s by the advent of new technology, leading to a period of 
 high growth. That growth was facilitated by the large numbers of people 
 who had opted out of the consuming system during the recession. By the late 
 1990s the technological elite, in recognition of the finite nature of the earth, 
 were making efforts this time successfully to control growth. At the 
 same time, those who had opted for a more frugal way were again drawn into 
 the mainstream. 
 
 Scenario 8 "The Dark at the Top of the Stairs" 
 
 In the late 1970s, efforts to control the demand for energy brought on a 
 decade-long recession. By 1990, people learned to live with reduced levels 
 of energy consumption. However, this was accomplished through the gradual 
 withering of the industrial state and the slow, grudging acceptance of more 
 frugal life styles. In the 1990s the climate turned for the worse, pushing 
 energy consumption up and the standard of living even lower. The end of 
 the century marked the free market industrial world with near exhaustion, 
 economic stasis and pessimism but with social peace, enforced by authori- 
 tarian regimes. Socialist industrial countries, better prepared by experience 
 for these conditions, were little better off, but did not share the sense of 
 trauma and defeat. Third world countries were left to their own resources 
 and displayed a variety of social and economic conditions. Some were ma- 
 terially better off. Others, especially Latin American and African depen- 
 dencies of the industrial nations, simply relapsed into primitive conditions in 
 which cities became Calcuttas and the countryside reverted to primitive 
 agriculture. 
 
 Scenario 9 "Mature Calm" 
 
 Even in the 1970s many people realized the need to control growth or even 
 limit it. The period from 1975 to 2000 was a time of learning how to do
 
 RESPONSE 53 
 
 that task well. The results of inept control in the late 1970s were so bad a 
 deep and extended recession that very large numbers of people just gave 
 up on the system and opted out, seeking their own self-sufficient way of life. 
 Aided by the need to provide for fewer numbers and an improving climate, 
 the social managers of the late 1980s and early 1990s finally got the situation 
 in hand. They were so successful that by 2000 many of the dropouts returned 
 to the fold. 
 
 Scenario 10 "Toward the Jeffersonian Ideal" 
 
 A rapid evolution in values leads to a transformed America by the year 
 2000. More and more people came to realize the necessity of tempering our 
 desire for affluence with an appreciation for the limits of the earth and the 
 needs of its people. The process of transformation was not without some dis- 
 array, particularly in the late 1970s and early 1980s, when there was little 
 consensus on how to control growth, let alone whether it was desirable to 
 do so. However, from the mid-1980s on, both the ability and the will to 
 manage growth carefully increased. 
 
 EILEEN D. GOOKE 
 
 Director 
 
 Washington Office 
 
 American Library Association 
 
 Washington, B.C. 
 
 Response 
 
 The ideas presented in Clement Bezold's paper are very thought- 
 provoking but perhaps difficult to grasp. His paper should be read very care- 
 fully, as should as many items as possible in his bibliography. In preparation
 
 54 CHANGING TIMES: CHANGING LIBRARIES 
 
 for this assignment, without having read Bezold's paper much in advance, I 
 wondered how to begin talking about the general term government so I 
 went to the dictionary.* The dictionary defines government as "administra- 
 tion, public policy and political clout or the office, function or authority 
 whereby political power is exercised." Because that definition was not par- 
 ticularly inspiring, I looked up the word politics which soon referred back 
 to government. Finally, I put the book down after deciding that a dictionary 
 or textbook approach is something you could undertake on your own. In- 
 stead, my definition of government the future of government, major 
 trends and emerging conditions will come from my vantage point on 
 Capitol Hill and from talking to ALA members in the field who deal with 
 government at every level. 
 
 A sense of frustration occurs in trying to define politics, too, until one 
 realizes that although politics may be a science dealing with government, 
 policies or affairs of government, politics is first and foremost the art of the 
 possible. Working with those involved with the legislative process requires 
 the ability to cope, persistence, and awareness of the need to compromise. 
 That is how our laws are made. 
 
 Compromise has a pejorative connotation in the minds of many people, 
 but actually it is a good word, a very legitimate word. If we didn't have 
 compromise in the political arena, very little if anything would ever 
 be accomplished. As quite often happens, people confront one another head 
 on, coming from different political orientations, and it's only after they have 
 argued it out night and day, in the case of the new education amendments 
 approved by Congress this fall that they finally reconcile their differences. 
 (The last session of the House-Senate conference committee on that bill 
 concluded at 4 a.m. September 29; the bill then had to be brought down 
 to the floor the next afternoon. That is what is called "going down to the 
 wire." Meanwhile, we were all cliff-hanging, awaiting final action on the 
 higher education amendments which had been slowly wending their way 
 through the legislative process for the last two years. ) Thus, compromise is 
 really a very important element in government, whether one is looking at 
 future trends or at what is happening right now. We have to be prepared to 
 deal with unexpected twists and turns. 
 
 No matter what the sponsors of legislation may say and no matter how 
 measures are introduced, unforeseen circumstances may force bills off course 
 or alter them dramatically. Sometimes, despite the best-laid plans and hard 
 work, even the principal sponsor will end up repudiating and even voting 
 
 * Incidentally, another volume we should all consult is Edwin Newman's new book 
 A Civil Tongue. I understand it has a chapter entitled "Paradigm Lost." A reading 
 of that may help in negotiating Bezold's paradigm shifts.
 
 RESPONSE 55 
 
 against the final version of his or her bill. In 1972, for example, Edith Green, 
 chairperson of the House Postsecondary Education Subcommittee, spoke 
 against final passage of the higher education amendments which she had 
 first introduced (in a different form) two years earlier. 
 
 Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes is credited with the statement: "The 
 light of law has not been logic, but experience." This is also true of the 
 legislative process, where many decisions are made on the basis of very little 
 logic. There is, however, much emotion and a lot of horse-trading. There 
 are many factors and forces that have a bearing on the way in which laws 
 are developed. For instance, we cannot legislate morals. A classic example 
 is the Volstead Act. History tells us that Prohibition was not only a failure, 
 it was a disaster. The important thing is to learn from experience. 
 
 There are many issues which require thoughtful consideration and 
 evaluation. As Bezold mentioned, approximately 24,000 bills were intro- 
 duced in the 94th Congress, and of that number just under 600 bills became 
 public law. Congressional action on even that 2 percent (which is about the 
 average proportion of public laws to initial proposals) generated massive 
 amounts of paper, research, and projections into the future. Research and 
 surveys are essential to the process, of course, but so are a touch of intuition 
 and a sense of timing. (A good crystal ball wouldn't hurt either to help sort 
 out the wheat from the chaff, or to help discern what really will become a 
 priority in the eyes of Congress.) 
 
 Thompson made the statement that there is no such thing as objective 
 response to change. I think the same concept might well be applied to the 
 legislative process. There is no such thing as one precise way to pass a law, 
 regardless of all the fine theories and findings that may be put forward as 
 justification during the course of hearings. We must have action, reaction, 
 interaction and after a good deal of what may be seen as erratic action by 
 Congress and reaction from the public, we may or may not get a law. The 
 evidence of need may be insufficient, or the timing may be wrong. I always 
 like to point to the fact that it took more than ten years to get the Library 
 Services Act passed. The bill was first introduced in January 1946. Hearings 
 were held; it passed one body and died in the other. (As you know, legisla- 
 tion remains in existence for the 2-year period of a Congress through the 
 first and second sessions, and then dies if not enacted into law.) The library 
 bill struggled along for ten years. Support kept building for it, and it finally 
 won congressional approval and was signed into law June 19, 1956. The 
 point here that cannot be stressed too much is the importance of persistence. 
 
 Looking to the future, when we see federal program opportunities being 
 developed, we must make every effort to consider them in relation to some 
 of our library goals. We must determine how those program proposals might
 
 56 CHANGING TIMES: CHANGING LIBRARIES 
 
 best be utilized for the improvement of library services. We cannot afford to 
 sit and wait for someone to hand us a grant; we must actively pursue them. 
 We have to take time to look ahead and to think seriously about the future 
 role of libraries. Participation in this institute provides a great opportunity 
 to do this, and Bezold's comments and bibliography do provide a wealth of 
 thought-provoking material. These thoughts, however, should be viewed in 
 the light of political reality, by keeping in mind that politics is the art of the 
 possible. Among other things, Bezold referred to low growth, no-growth 
 strategies, and to self-reliance. These concepts are not new to us in the li- 
 brary world; they make up the story of our lives. 
 
 Jesse Shera pointed out that the library is a creature of society, that the 
 goals of a library are the goals of society. This creates a dilemma. Because 
 we are a creature of society, we are dependent upon society's making its 
 needs known to us. We can anticipate a great deal when we look to the 
 future, but our ability to follow through with long-range planning and imple- 
 mentation is hampered when we return to our libraries only to be confronted 
 with reduced budgets, curtailed hours and staff cutbacks. At this point we 
 must speak out and communicate much better than we have. Our public 
 relations programs should say that we are more than willing to do what we 
 can, whatever needs to be done to serve the community better. The public, 
 however, must know our needs. Libraries need to have expanded, not re- 
 duced, hours. Libraries are not a frill. In one way or another we must get 
 some of the best minds in the country to appreciate the library's dilemma in 
 trying to be responsive to public needs for expanded service while competing 
 for survival with other vital community services. 
 
 I would like to mention a few pieces of legislation that have some imme- 
 diate implications for librarians. First is the copyright revision bill. The bill 
 took twelve years to work its way through legislative channels. After dying 
 and being reintroduced in varying forms from one Congress to another, it 
 was finally approved and signed into law October 19, 1976 (P.L. 94-553). 
 It still has an interesting future in terms of its implementation, however. 
 The law does not take effect until January 1, 1978. After that, the Register 
 of Copyrights is required to report to Congress at 5-year intervals on how 
 the provision on library photocopying is working in terms of striking a proper 
 balance between copyright holders' rights and library users' needs. I urge 
 all of you to write to your representatives or senators for a copy of the laws 
 (House Reports 94-1476 and 94-1733) which contain the guidelines for class- 
 room copying and guidelines for the educational use of music. Unfortunately, 
 there are no easy answers to questions of what may or may not be copied. 
 If something is not permissible under Section 108 (library photocopying), it 
 may be permissible under Section 107 (fair use). You owe it to yourself
 
 RESPONSE 57 
 
 and to library users to become familiar with the new copyright law 
 before it goes into effect in order to take full advantage of its provisions, 
 As a first step, you may want to get a copy of the November 15, 1976 issue 
 of ALA Washington Newsletter (available for $2.00 from American Library 
 Association, 50 E. Huron, Chicago, 111. 60611), which highlights the main 
 provisions of the law and includes excerpts and the guidelines from the two 
 reports I mentioned. 
 
 The second piece of legislation that deserves attention is P.L. 94-482, 
 the Education Amendments of 1976. This law deals with the extension of 
 the Higher Education Act, but also includes several other significant amend- 
 ments to the Vocational Education Act and to the Elementary and Secondary 
 Education Act. It should be read and interpreted thoughtfully and, I 
 might add, exploited. For example, a new Title II-C relates to research 
 libraries. This is something for which ALA fought and eventually gained 
 support; it is based on a proposal of the Carnegie Policies Studies group. 
 Title II-C authorizes federal grants to eligible research libraries to augment 
 their collections in order to encourage greater sharing of their resources with 
 other libraries throughout the country. 
 
 Another bill enacted this year with potential for library participation is 
 the Educational/Broadcasting Facilities and Telecommunications Demon- 
 stration Act (P.L. 94-309). Among other things, it establishes a demonstra- 
 tion program to encourage experimentation and utilization of nonbroadcast 
 telecommunications equipment, such as cable television and communications 
 satellites. This is only a small program, authorizing $1 million in expendi- 
 tures, but it is a beginning. Meanwhile, ALA is also a member of the Public 
 Service Satellite Consortium, which is investigating other opportunities for 
 such demonstrations. 
 
 Finally, I would like to call your attention to one more law which per- 
 haps holds the greatest potential of all for libraries and librarians to assess 
 where we are and where we should be going in the future. It is P.L. 93-568, 
 which calls for a White House Conference on Library and Information Ser- 
 vices. This is something ALA has been working on for years. (Remember 
 what I said about persistence?) In more recent years, the ALA Council 
 formalized the idea with the adoption of a resolution in 1972 calling for a 
 White House conference in 1974. It wasn't until January 1973 that a bill was 
 introduced in Congress- and that took two years to win approval. The 
 president signed it into law December 31, 1974. For the past two years, we 
 have been fighting for funding and trying to get the president to name mem- 
 bers to the required advisory committee and to call the conference. Slowly, 
 things are falling into place. This is an idea whose time has come. 
 
 More important than the national-level conference is the series of state-
 
 58 CHANGING TIMES: CHANGING LIBRARIES 
 
 level conferences which must precede it. You all have a role to play in your 
 respective state conferences. Get involved. Find out what is going on in your 
 own state, but keep in mind that this is not a conference for librarians. We 
 spend too much time talking to ourselves. This is a conference for users, po- 
 tential users, lay people, people who need libraries and may not know they 
 need them. We must involve a substantial cross-section of people in society, 
 including legislators and other decision-makers. We must use this process to 
 educate and to inform people about libraries, to inventory national library 
 resources and services, to draw up our blueprint for future library and in- 
 formation services, and to muster the necessary support to implement those 
 plans. We have our work cut out for us; now we need to get on with it.
 
 RALPH E. SMITH 
 
 Senior Research Associate 
 
 The Urban Institute 
 
 Washington, D.C. 
 
 Prospects for Women 
 in the Paid Labor Market* 
 
 The sharp rise in the number of women working outside the home 
 is one of the most dramatic and important economic developments of the 
 twentieth century. Its impact goes far beyond its consequences on the econ- 
 omy and on the labor market. I will discuss the prospects for women in terms 
 of the number who will be working outside the home over the next decade 
 or two and what they will be doing. I would like to make four major points : 
 
 1. Women's participation in the paid labor market has been rising at a rapid 
 rate, and most have found jobs. This has already resulted in profound 
 social and economic changes. 
 
 2. The jobs that women find, however, are typically within a narrow range 
 of occupations. This pattern of segregation is deeply entrenched and re- 
 sults in lower pay and status for working women. 
 
 3. Women's job market prospects are closely linked with the prospects of the 
 general economy. Economic growth encourages more women actively to 
 seek work outside of the home and reduces their problems in making this 
 transition. 
 
 4. With an improved economic climate, women's participation in the labor 
 market should continue to increase faster than men's but the pattern 
 of occupational segregation is likely to continue as well. The rate of 
 female labor force growth, employment growth, and occupational inte- 
 gration each will depend on the strength of the economy, the types of jobs 
 
 * The opinions expressed in this paper are the author's own and do not necessarily 
 reflect the views of The Urban Institute or its sponsors. 
 
 59
 
 60 CHANGING TIMES: CHANGING LIBRARIES 
 
 available, the structure of demand, male attitudes, government actions, 
 and many decisions that will be made by women themselves. 
 
 The changing role of women has been the subject of numerous research 
 projects and conferences in recent years. My own research is part of a large- 
 scale research program on the social and economic status of women begun 
 at the Urban Institute in 1975 with a grant from the Ford Foundation. The 
 observations I am presenting are heavily influenced by the recent literature, 
 including that of my institute colleagues. 1 
 
 Growth of Female Labor Force and its Consequences 
 
 In just a quarter-century the female labor force that is, the number 
 of women working or actively seeking work doubled. In 1950, 34 percent 
 of all women aged sixteen and over were participating in the labor force. 
 By 1975, 46 percent were in the work force. Meanwhile, the percentage of 
 men participating in the labor force slightly declined. Consequently, six out 
 of every ten additional people in the paid labor market over the past quarter- 
 century have been women. 2 In other words, over 10 million of the 37 million 
 women in the labor force last year would not have been there if major 
 changes in women's status had not occurred. I will discuss first some of the 
 causes of the change in women's place, and then some of the effects that these 
 changes have had thus far. 
 
 The decision of a person to participate in the labor force can be de- 
 scribed as choosing between working for pay or pursuing other activities, 
 including keeping house, going to school, or leisure. The decision is pretty 
 well made for the prime-age man. It is expected that, barring health or other 
 exceptional circumstances, he will either be working outside of the home 
 or looking for such work. For an unmarried prime-age woman without chil- 
 dren at home, the decision is almost as simple. For a married woman or a 
 woman with children (or both), the decision is much more complicated. 
 Essentially, the woman must decide either to devote all of her time to keep- 
 ing house or to divide her time between keeping house and working outside 
 the home. In the past the decision was usually the former. In this century, 
 particularly since World War II, more and more women are opting for the 
 latter choice. One major reason for this change probably has been the in- 
 crease in the potential rewards from working outside the home; their wages 
 have risen and, as the economy has become more service-oriented and as job 
 opportunities have become more "white-collar," there have been more jobs 
 for women to seek. In addition, the productivity of being at home may have 
 declined as families have had fewer children and as various labor-saving 
 devices have become more widespread. 3
 
 PROSPECTS FOR WOMEN 61 
 
 The effects of this growth in the female labor force have, for the most 
 part, been beneficial. Total output and income of society has increased. Fami- 
 lies of working women have higher incomes and in many families this factor 
 determines whether they live in poverty. There is greater economic stability 
 within a household that has more than one earner, since the loss of one 
 worker's job does not erase all of their income. 
 
 Increased output and income come with a price. The time spent by the 
 woman working outside the home takes away from time spent either working 
 in the home or pursuing leisure activities. Some work that was done in the 
 home simply will not get done. Some work will be done at the expense of a 
 longer total workday or workweek for the wife; other work will be done by 
 the husband, who had not previously participated in household work and 
 raising children. This undoubtedly causes quite a bit of conflict in many 
 families, and probably is linked to the increased divorce rate. It is difficult 
 to tell how much of the increase in divorces is due to the working wife's 
 sufficient economic independence to end an already unhappy marriage, and 
 how much of it is due to increased marital disputes. These are essentially 
 adjustment problems that should diminish over time. More people may opt 
 to remain single or to delay marriage. Some of the work that must be done 
 can be shifted out to commercial services, as is already occurring; other work 
 can be reduced by having fewer children. 4 
 
 Another consequence of the growth in the female labor force is that it 
 has caused a reassessment of some of our basic public institutions that were 
 developed at a time when the stereotypical family (with the husband work- 
 ing and the wife at home) was far truer than it is today. Research being done 
 at the Urban Institute and elsewhere is examining the degree to which the 
 social security system, tax structure, welfare programs, and child support 
 and alimony rules need to be restructured to take into account the realities 
 of working wives. 
 
 Occupational Segregation 
 
 Despite all of the attention that has been focused on patterns of sex 
 segregation in the labor market and all of the energy expended to remove 
 the barriers that have kept women out of many fields, jobs that are identifi- 
 able as men's and jobs that are identifiable as women's are all around us. 
 The library profession, of course, is one of these segregated fields. In 1975, 
 81 percent of librarians in the United States were women. 5 Nonetheless, this 
 profession is less segregated than many of the traditional women's jobs, e.g., 
 elementary school teacher (85 percent), cashier (87 percent), bookkeeper 
 (88 percent), waiter (91 percent), telephone operator (93 percent), typist
 
 62 CHANGING TIMES: CHANGING LIBRARIES 
 
 (97 percent), registered or practical nurse (97 percent), receptionist (97 
 percent), prekindergarten and kindergarten teachers (99 percent), secretary 
 (99 percent) , and dental assistant ( 100 percent) . a 
 
 Women's jobs are characterized by lower pay and often lower status 
 than men's jobs requiring an equivalent amount of education and training. 
 In many instances, the supervisor is a male. Often the jobs are logical exten- 
 sions of the mother or wife role. Most disheartening for those interested in 
 the attainment of equality for women is that the degree of sex segregation is 
 not changing very much. A recent Economic Report of the President 7 found 
 that the extent of occupational dissimilarity in 1970 was barely below that of 
 1960. Offsetting progress in some occupations has been the tendency of many 
 new participants to enter traditional fields. 
 
 Which "men's jobs" have women been entering in significant numbers? 
 Employment data since the early 1960s, tabulated by occupation and sex, 
 suggest progress in a wide variety of occupations. Women's share of total 
 employment rose from 34 percent to 39 percent between 1962 and 1974, and 
 their share of professional positions showed a similar increase. Within specific 
 professions, however, some dramatic developments occurred : the female pro- 
 portion of lawyers and judges rose from 3 percent to 7 percent, of pharma- 
 cists from 10 to 16 percent, of physicians from 6 to 10 percent, and of col- 
 lege and university teachers from 19 to 31 percent. Because each of these 
 occupations both requires considerable specialized training and is well-pay- 
 ing, these gains are quite encouraging. A few less-specialized occupations 
 became virtually integrated within a dozen years: in 1962, 18 percent of 
 bakers, 12 percent of bus drivers, 21 percent of bill collectors, and 9 percent 
 of insurance adjusters were women; by 1974 women held at least 37 percent 
 of the jobs in each of these occupations. 8 
 
 I should note here several conditions which are most conducive to inte- 
 gration, as well as the characteristics of the occupations that become inte- 
 grated and of those that do not. One condition that seems to make a differ- 
 ence is whether the occupation itself is growing. Most of the occupations 
 mentioned above (pharmacists and bakers being the exceptions) experienced 
 rapid growth during the period of integration. 
 
 What causes occupational segregation? Why are women more likely to 
 be nurses and secretaries and men more likely to be physicians and adminis- 
 trators? Part of the answer can be found in the preferences (i.e. prejudices) 
 of the people who make the hiring decisions, of the users of the services pro- 
 vided, and of the suppliers of the education and training. The remainder 
 of the answer lies in the education, training, and occupational choices made 
 by women themselves. These two sets of explanations interact. For example, 
 many employers have a stereotype of a woman worker who will not work
 
 PROSPECTS FOR WOMEN 63 
 
 long hours or go on business trips, who will become pregnant and quit, or 
 who will quit if her husband's job is transferred. With that image, it is no 
 wonder that the employer is reluctant to place a woman in a responsible, 
 demanding position, or one that requires a long period of expensive on-the- 
 job training. This situation leads to statistical discrimination, by which the 
 employer assigns his image of the typical female employee to the individual 
 female job applicant. As more women are willing to work long hours, etc., 
 these employers' stereotypes will change, but with a lag. Government action 
 speeds up the adaptation process. 
 
 Women's Prospects in the Economy 
 
 The basic theme of much of my work at the Urban Institute involves 
 the relationship between the status of women in the labor market and the 
 state of the general economy. Because there is such a close linkage, a few 
 words about the state of the economy are appropriate. 
 
 The recession that we have just been through was the most severe since 
 the depression of the 1930s. It brought the unemployment rate from a post- 
 war average of about 5 percent up to almost 9 percent in mid- 1975. We are 
 now only gradually coming out of that recession. The unemployment rate 
 dropped to 7.3 percent in June 1976, but during the following six months 
 it has been gradually rising again. In the recent political debates there was 
 a great deal of contention over whether this was a signal that the recovery 
 had aborted or whether it was a "pause that refreshes." 
 
 I think it is safe to say that the economy through the remainder of the 
 decade will improve. Although the pace of the recovery is certainly in doubt, 
 there is no doubt that recovery will occur. The president-elect's chief eco- 
 nomic adviser, Lawrence Klein, has predicted that under the new adminis- 
 tration the overall unemployment rate could be brought down to about 4.5 
 percent of the labor force by 1980. 9 This is not likely to be a steady decline; 
 indeed, there is a good chance that there will be an interruption of the re- 
 covery again in 1978 or 1979. Beyond 1980, it's uncertain where we'll be 
 headed. My best guess is that there will be a continuation of the kind of 
 cyclical behavior in the economy that we have had since World War II, but 
 that the basic trend will be an increased total number of jobs, sufficient to 
 provide employment to all but about 5 percent of those who are actively 
 seeking work. This still leaves a very important question for women the 
 composition of those jobs. Some mix of demand is more favorable to tradi- 
 tional women's jobs than others. After the initial recovery from the reces- 
 sion, the long-run trend away from blue-collar jobs and into white-collar 
 jobs will probably resume. In the past, this trend has encouraged women to
 
 64 CHANGING TIMES: CHANGING LIBRARIES 
 
 enter the labor force and has helped them to find jobs. One important 
 exception to this trend is teaching positions. The basic change in age dis- 
 tribution of the population necessitates a decline in the proportion of job 
 opportunities in elementary and secondary education. 10 
 
 The relationships among the overall state of the economy (including 
 the number of job opportunities that are available), the labor force par- 
 ticipation of women, and the number of jobs women hold have been well 
 documented. In my own study of the effects of the recent recession on 
 women, I found that the long-run growth trend of the female labor force 
 was interrupted, but not stopped, by the recession. 11 During the 2-year period 
 beginning in the fourth quarter of 1973, the female labor force (the number 
 of women working outside the home or seeking such work) increased by 2.3 
 million. This was about 400,000 fewer than would have been added to the 
 labor force had the recession not occurred. Female employment rose during 
 that 2 -year period by about 900,000; this was 1.6 million fewer than would 
 have found jobs without the recession. 
 
 I also found that the extent of women's job losses during the recession 
 was limited considerably by the industrial composition of the recession. The 
 industries that were hardest hit construction and durable goods manu- 
 facturing were industries that employ very few women. Less than 6 per- 
 cent of all construction workers in 1974 were women. About 22 percent of 
 workers in durable goods manufacturing were women. I estimated that had 
 the recession struck all industries with equal force, women would have lost 
 several hundred thousand additional jobs. One consequence of women's 
 entering the traditionally male blue-collar fields will be to make them more 
 vulnerable to cyclical unemployment. 
 
 In projections I have made of the size of the female labor force and the 
 number of jobs women would hold by the end of the decade, I concluded 
 that the difference between a strong recovery (the kind that would bring 
 the overall unemployment rate down to 4.5 percent) and a more moderate 
 recovery (that would still bring the overall unemployment rate down to 6.3 
 percent) corresponded to about 1 million women in the labor force. That is, 
 one consequence of a stronger recovery would be that an additional 1 million 
 women would be induced to look for work outside of the home. Another 
 consequence would be that a higher proportion of women would find jobs 
 if the recovery were strong. About one-half of all the additional jobs that 
 would be generated by a stronger recovery would go to women. Under the 
 stronger recovery rate, the female unemployment rate would decline from 
 its present 8.7 percent to 5.4 percent of the labor force. Under the weaker 
 recovery, the rate would be close to 7 percent.
 
 PROSPECTS FOR WOMEN 65 
 
 Women's Future in the Labor Market 
 
 What is known and not known about the likely course of women's fu- 
 ture labor activities? First, will the sharp increase in the number of women 
 working outside the home continue? The major source of projections on the 
 size of the labor force by sex comes from the U.S. Labor Department's Bu- 
 reau of Labor Statistics. In September 1976 a new set of projections was 
 issued. 12 These are based on U.S. Bureau of the Census population projec- 
 tions by sex, race, and age, and on the Bureau of Labor Statistics analysts' 
 estimates of the proportion of the population in each group that will choose 
 to participate in the paid labor market. Because we are dealing with a popu- 
 lation whose members are at least sixteen years .old, the former can easily 
 be projected through the year 1990, and will err only if there is a major 
 catastrophe. The latter is extremely difficult to predict. The Bureau of Labor 
 Statistics expects that the proportion of women who will participate in the 
 labor force will continue to rise. They project, for example, that between 
 1975 and 1980 the participation rate of women will rise from 46.3 percent 
 to 48.4 percent. This means that the number of women who will be in the 
 labor market will increase from 37 million to 42 million. This projection is 
 based on the assumption that the increase in the proportion of women par- 
 ticipating in the labor market will not be quite as great as that which we 
 have experienced in recent years. 
 
 I have made some alternative projections which also begin with the 
 census bureau's population statistics, but which use different assumptions 
 about the rate of increase of the female participation rate. Essentially, I as- 
 sumed that the participation of women would rise fairly sharply through the 
 end of the decade in reaction to the economic recovery and with a continua- 
 tion of the trend of their participation rate over the last decade. If that 
 were the case, and if we had a strong recovery, then I would expect more 
 than 44 million women, i.e. 51.5 percent of the female population, to be 
 in the labor market by 1980. This is roughly twice the rate of increase of 
 the participation rate of women assumed by the Bureau of Labor Statistics. 
 
 We could, of course, both be wrong. To give you some idea of the diffi- 
 culty in projecting even the number of women that will be in the labor 
 market, let alone what they'll be doing, I examined the projections of the 
 1 980 labor force that the Bureau of Labor Statistics made in earlier years. In 
 1965 they projected that in 1980, 36 million would be in the labor force. 
 In 1970 they projected that in 1980, 37 million would be in the labor force. 
 In 1973 they projected that in 1980, 39 million would be in the labor 
 force. As I mentioned earlier, they are now projecting that 42 million will 
 be in the labor force. As new information is acquired, their projections have
 
 66 CHANGING TIMES: CHANGING LIBRARIES 
 
 consistently been raised. I don't know of anyone who has come close to 
 predicting accurately the size of the labor force even five years in advance. 
 (You will notice that I am not making any guesses about projections beyond 
 1980.) 
 
 Why is it so difficult to project the number of women who will be work- 
 ing or looking for work outside the home? I think the main reason is that 
 there are so many factors in the individual decision of whether to seek work. 
 I have already mentioned the combined impact of the overall state of the 
 economy and of the types of jobs that are available. Other factors are the 
 availability to the woman of other income and the potential rewards of 
 working. The more that a woman can expect to receive from working out- 
 side the home (i.e. the higher the wages and the job satisfaction) , the more 
 likely she will be to seek work. Another extremely important set of determi- 
 nants is demography. Women who are not married more often seek work. 
 Women without children in the home are more likely to seek work. These 
 variables are very difficult to project, and they can make a large difference. 
 For example, the Bureau of Labor Statistics projections made a few years 
 ago were based on the assumption that women would have an average of 
 2.1 children. This is roughly the replacement rate the number of children 
 needed to replace the population over a long period of time. They estimated 
 that if, in fact, each woman had an average of 2.5 children, the size of the 
 labor force would be decreased by about 700,000 women. If the average 
 number of children per woman were 1 .8, their projection of the female labor 
 force would be raised by about 400,000. Nobody really knows whether the 
 low levels of fertility that we have seen in recent years will continue, or for 
 how long. The most important point here is that everybody who has looked 
 into the matter agrees that the female labor force will continue to increase 
 and that an ever-increasing share of jobs will be going to women in the 
 foreseeable future. 
 
 As more women seek work outside the home, changes should and will 
 occur where they work, at home, and in some of our major institutions. At 
 work, I would expect that the continued increase in female participation will 
 help to stimulate changes in work schedules changes that will result in 
 greater flexibility, fewer hours worked per day, and fewer days worked per 
 week. Increasingly, husbands and wives will be sharing the responsibilities 
 for working both outside and within the home. Also, as more women seek 
 and find interesting jobs, fertility rates may continue to decline. In effect, 
 it becomes more expensive to raise children. 
 
 The tax laws, social security laws, and other institutions presently tend 
 to favor families in which the husband works and the wife stays at home. 
 As the balance of power shifts toward families with more than one income-
 
 PROSPECTS FOR WOMEN 67 
 
 earner, this should force a change. Considerable care will need to be taken, 
 however, that such a change does not penalize women who want to stay at 
 home. 
 
 Turning to the issue of occupational segregation, I am convinced that, 
 in time, the roles of men and women in the paid labor market will become 
 much more similar. I doubt that the rate of progress will be very rapid, 
 however. The obstacles that have prevented occupational integration in the 
 past are probably at least as formidable as those that have kept most women 
 out of the paid labor market until this century. For example, many employers 
 believe that certain jobs require men and that certain other jobs require 
 women. Many women undoubtedly still share that belief. From the first toys 
 that were put into their cradles through the education that they had in sec- 
 ondary schools and colleges and the first jobs that they held, these beliefs 
 have been reinforced. 
 
 My basis for optimism for the future is that the forces of change already 
 have been set in motion. The attitudes of young women today are somewhat 
 different than those of their older sisters and mothers. This difference is 
 reflected both in the education and training which many of them are choos- 
 ing and in their first jobs. I suspect that the formation of role expectations 
 is cumulative. Women in nontraditional jobs provide alternative role models 
 to girls not yet locked into a career pattern. 
 
 The attitudes of employers, too, are changing. Expectations of what 
 women can do change as employers see women doing nontraditional tasks. 
 Expectations that women will drop out of the labor force very quickly (and 
 therefore do not merit the investment of on-the-job training) decline as 
 employers see women staying in. Attitudes change in response to the enforce- 
 ment of the law. It has been only in very recent years that federal legislation 
 has been enacted that prohibits discrimination against women in the labor 
 market. Beginning with the Equal Pay Act of 1963 and the Civil Rights Act 
 of 1964, employers were prohibited by law from paying women at different 
 rates than men for equivalent work in the same establishment, and then were 
 prohibited from discriminating in hiring, firing, promotion, job assignment, 
 training, and other conditions of employment. These laws have been en- 
 forced actively only in the past five or six years. 
 
 The pace of occupational integration for women who decide to work 
 will depend on the kinds of jobs that are available, the rate of change of 
 women's attitudes, and the rate of change of employer attitudes. I have no 
 quantitative prediction of how rapidly these will occur. Some of the infor- 
 mation needed for this projection is available: school enrollments, appren- 
 ticeship enrollments, and economic projections by industry and occupation. 
 These data need to be analyzed. Other information requires prediction of
 
 68 CHANGING TIMES: CHANGING LIBRARIES 
 
 basic economic and social trends. Just as a prosperous economy stimulates 
 more women to seek work outside the home, it also stimulates employers to 
 hire them. There is some evidence that the pace of desegregation will be 
 closely linked both to the rate of aggregate economic expansion and to the 
 industrial composition of demand. 13 
 
 The extreme form of occupational segregation in which men worked 
 outside the home and women worked within the home is rapidly breaking 
 down. I have tried to provide some basis for optimism that the pattern of 
 segregation within the paid labor market will eventually be broken as well. 
 I have said almost nothing about the persistent patterns of lower compensa- 
 tion and higher unemployment experienced by women. In 1975, the median 
 weekly earnings of women who worked full time was $145, compared with 
 $234 for men. 14 The female unemployment rate was 9.3 percent, versus 7.9 
 percent for men. 15 The exclusion of these problems was not intended to sug- 
 gest lack of interest or importance; both are closely linked to the occupa- 
 tional segregation problem. As long as women's job opportunities are more 
 limited than men's, they will be paid less and have a more difficult time 
 finding work. 
 
 REFERENCES 
 
 1. For three recent volumes providing an excellent overview, see: Chapman, 
 Jane R., ed. Economic Independence for Women: The Foundation for Equal Rights 
 (Sage Yearbook in Women's Policy Studies, Vol. 1). Beverly Hills, Calif., Sage 
 Publications, 1976; Kreps, Juanita M., ed. Women and the American Economy: A 
 Look to the 198ffs. Englewood Cliffs, N.J., Prentice-Hall, 1976; and Lloyd, Cynthia, 
 ed. Sex, Discrimination, and the Division of Labor. New York, Columbia Univer- 
 sity Press, 1975. For the best single source of information on the status of women 
 in the labor force, the laws affecting their status, and the organizations seeking to 
 advance their status, see: U.S. Department of Labor. Women's Bureau. 7975 Hand- 
 book on Women Workers (Bulletin 297). Washington, D.C., U.S.G.P.O., 1975. 
 
 2. U.S. Department of Labor. Employment and Training Report of the Presi- 
 dent. Washington, D.C., U.S.G.P.O., 1976, pp. 211-12. 
 
 3. For a major study of the causes of the growth in the female labor force, see: 
 Oppenheimer, Valerie K. The Female Labor Force in the United States (Popula- 
 tion Monograph Series No. 5). Berkeley, Calif., University of California, Institute 
 of International Studies, 1970. 
 
 4. For a more complete discussion of the impact of women's increased outside 
 employment on the future of marriage and parenthood and its consequences for 
 public policy, see: Moore, Kristin A., and Sawhill, Isabel V. "Implications of 
 Women's Employment for Home and Family Life." In Kreps, op. cit., pp. 102-22. 
 
 5. Green, Gloria P. "Employment Data for Detailed Occupations, 1975," Em-
 
 PROSPECTS FOR WOMEN 
 
 ployment and Earnings 22:9-12, Jan. 1976. These data are from the Current Popu- 
 lation Survey, a monthly national survey of 47,000 households. 
 
 6. Ibid. 
 
 7. U.S. President Economic Report of the President. Washington, D.C., 
 U.S.G.P.O., 1973, pp. 89-112, 141-74. On an occupational dissimilarity scale of 
 to 100 (complete segregation), the index was 62.9 in 1960 and 59.8 in 1970. 
 
 8. These data are from tabulations of the Current Population Survey, found in 
 Stuart H. Garfinkle. "Occupations of Women and Black Workers, 1962-74," Monthly 
 Labor Review 98:25-35, Nov. 1975. More detailed data from the decennial census 
 are analyzed in Constance B. DiCesare. "Changes in the Occupational Structure of 
 U.S. Jobs," Monthly Labor Review 98:24-34, March 1975. 
 
 9. Klein, Lawrence. Address to the National Press Club, Washington, D.C. 
 Oct. 28, 1976. 
 
 10. For the most comprehensive and widely-used source of employment pro- 
 jections by occupation, see: U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. Occupational Outlook 
 Handbook, 1976-1977 (Bulletin 1875). Washington, D.C., U.S.G.P.O., 1976. 
 
 11. U.S. Congress. Joint Economic Committee. The Impact of Macroeco- 
 nomic Conditions on Employment Opportunities for Women. Washington, D.C., 
 U.S.G.P.O., 1977. (Prepared for the JEC's Series on Achieving the Goals of the 
 Employment Act of 1946.) 
 
 12. "The U.S. Labor Force in 1990: New Projections." Washington, B.C., 
 U.S. Department of Labor, Sept. 15, 1976 (Press release 76-1222). The previous 
 projections discussed below are reported in Denis F. Johnston. "The U.S. Labor 
 Force: Projections to 1990." In U.S. Department of Labor. Special Labor Force 
 Report 156. Washington, D.C., U.S.G.P.O., 1973. 
 
 13. A new conference board study of jobs that do not require a college degree 
 also predicts very slow progress in reducing occupational dissimilarity over the next 
 decade. The report notes that the projections are based on a continuation of pat- 
 terns over the past ten or fifteen years, and that changes in counseling, vocation edu- 
 cation, career aspirations and acceptance of equal employment methods would ac- 
 celerate integration. See: Lecht, Leonard A. "Women at Work," Conference Board 
 Record 13:16-21, Sept. 1976. 
 
 14. "Trends in Weekly and Hourly Earnings Among Major Labor Force 
 Groups" (Press release 76-1290). Washington, D.C., U.S. Department of Labor, 
 Bureau of Labor Statistics, Oct. 6, 1976. 
 
 15. These figures understate the disparity between the two groups, because 
 many jobless women were not actively seeking work and therefore were not counted 
 among the unemployed. Inclusion of these jobless women raises the female rate to 
 11.9 percent versus 8.8 percent for men; see: U.S. Congress, Joint Economic Com- 
 mittee, op. cit
 
 70 CHANGING TIMES: CHANGING LIBRARIES 
 
 JANE COONEY 
 
 Librarian 
 
 Information Centre, Imperial Bank of Commerce 
 Toronto, Ontario 
 
 Response 
 
 Numerous issues have been raised during this institute which serve 
 to point out just how much current economic events can affect libraries. 
 Smith focused on one aspect of the economic scene, namely, women in the 
 paid labor market. In responding, I will try to discuss that topic as we know 
 it best, i.e. women in libraries. It should be remembered that I will be speak- 
 ing as a Canadian librarian, and that some of the illustrations I will be using 
 will be taken from the Canadian scene. I am speaking also as a special li- 
 brarian and will be drawing some examples from that area of library work, 
 although I hope to be able to resist the temptation to tell you "how I run 
 my library good." 
 
 Library Manpower 
 
 It seems that only one participant at this institute has read the Bureau 
 of Labor Statistics' report, Library Manpower: A Study of Demand and 
 Supply. 1 I am not surprised at this, because for some reason this document 
 seems to have been suppressed by the library world. In my opinion, however, 
 it is one of the most important reports related to library science released in 
 recent years. Following are some of the highlights of this report. 
 
 1. The bureau predicts that employment in libraries will grow much more 
 slowly between now and 1985 than it has for the past few decades. The 
 giddy, optimistic days of the 1960s are obviously over for us. 
 
 2. Employment of library technicians is going to grow much more rapidly 
 than employment of librarians. While the impact of library technicians 
 has not yet been felt in special libraries to any great extent, I am sure 
 that many of you who are from public and academic libraries have al- 
 ready seen the bureau's prediction in this regard come true. 
 
 3. Three-fourths of all job openings in libraries will be replacement posi- 
 tions. In other words, not many new jobs will be created. 
 
 4. New graduates will be available to fill 80 percent of all positions which
 
 RESPONSE 71 
 
 become available. This does not bode well for librarians who are now in 
 the field and might wish to change jobs within a few years. 2 These new 
 graduates will, however, have to be very mobile, and they may have to 
 accept positions which are not really in their preferred line of work, nor 
 are located in a geographic area in which they would otherwise choose 
 to live. 
 
 5. Demand is likely to remain strong for minority librarians, community out- 
 reach librarians, media/audiovisual specialists, and experienced library 
 administrators. 
 
 Individual librarians can readily see how the bureau's forecast might 
 affect them in the future, but the report has even greater implications for 
 library educators. Courses of study will have to be revised to emphasize the 
 skills and specialties for which there will be a demand. Previous qualifica- 
 tions and personal characteristics of prospective librarians will have to be 
 carefully examined by library school recruiters to ensure that the qualities 
 which "make a good librarian good" are possessed by persons entering the 
 field. 
 
 Women in Libraries 
 
 Smith mentioned that roughly 80 percent of librarians are women; we 
 have been referred to as the "4/5 minority." 8 This was not always the case, 
 however. At the first ALA conference in 1876, only 13 out of 104 attendees 
 were women. 4 Men were running the libraries then. At a conference in Lon- 
 don in 1877, Justin Winsor of Boston opened the doors for female employ- 
 ment in libraries. 6 We can probably thank him for that; however, he de- 
 liberately encouraged women to join the profession because they would work 
 for less money. He anticipated that library administrators could get much 
 more work out of women than out of men, for much less money. He pointed 
 out that women were very good at housekeeping chores, and would there- 
 fore be excellent library workers. At that time, it was felt that the presence 
 of women in libraries would provide a spiritual "uplift" to the masses. 6 That 
 is where the famous "little old lady in tennis shoes" image began; unfortu- 
 nately, we have not progressed very far beyond it. 
 
 As women entered the profession in greater numbers, they slowly began 
 to attain positions of power, and by 1950 they had more or less done so; it 
 has only been since then that women began to lose their grasp (see Table 1) . 
 Data for academic and special libraries have not been included in Table 1, 
 because statistics on the latter are virtually nonexistent, and statistics on the
 
 72 CHANGING TIMES: CHANGING LIBRARIES 
 
 Type of Position 
 
 Year 
 
 Percentage 
 
 Deans and Directors of Library Schools 
 
 1950. . . 
 
 50 
 
 
 1970.. . 
 
 19 
 
 
 1975... 
 
 20 
 
 State Librarians 
 
 1950. .. 
 
 80 
 
 
 1970... 
 
 48 
 
 
 1975. .. 
 
 34 
 
 Public Library Directors (50 largest cities) 
 
 1950. .. 
 
 24 
 
 
 1970.. . 
 
 22 
 
 
 1975... 
 
 14 
 
 
 
 
 Table 1. Percentage of Women in Top Library Positions 
 
 Source: For statistics for 1950 and 1970, see Schiller, Anita R. "Report on Women 
 in Librarianship," American Libraries 2:1215, Dec. 1971; for 1975 statistics (esti- 
 mated), see "1975-76 Library School Salaries Are Up," Library Journal 101:1996. 
 Oct. 1, 1976; Simpson, Donald B., comp. The State Library Agencies. Chicago, Asso- 
 ciation of State Library Agencies, 1975; and Shearer, Kenneth D., and Carpenter, 
 Ray L. "Public Library Support and Salaries in the Seventies," Library Journal 101: 
 781, March 15, 1976. 
 
 former indicate that from the beginning, women in academic libraries could 
 not attain such positions. 
 
 When the Association of Research Libraries was founded in 1933, fifteen 
 of the forty- three directors were women. Between 1934 and 1969, two of the 
 147 directorship appointments were made to women. Between 1970 and 
 1973, four women were appointed; all four were already employed in the 
 library in which the appointment was made, and two were over sixty years 
 of age. 7 These women had to take the route of seniority to get where they 
 wanted to go. 
 
 It is a little more difficult to evaluate the special library situation. An 
 "eyeball" examination of the proofsheets of a forthcoming directory of Cana- 
 dian special libraries 8 indicates that roughly 73 percent of all heads of 
 Canadian special libraries are female. This percentage also holds true for 
 the heads of the largest corporate and government libraries in Canada. Thus, 
 it may be true that some female special librarians are moving ahead faster 
 than female librarians in other fields. (A thorough analysis of the Canadian 
 Library Directory, Part II can be expected in the future from Beryl Ander- 
 son, who is chief of the Library Documentation Centre, National Library of 
 Canada.)
 
 RESPONSE 73 
 
 Institution Male Female 
 
 Public Libraries 1975 (median) $24,000 $18,750 
 
 Academic Libraries 1975-76 (avg.) $22,242 $17,062 
 
 Library Schools 1975-76 (avg.) $31,644 $30,373 
 
 Table 2. Salaries of Directors 
 
 Source: Shearer, Kenneth D., and Carpenter, Ray L. "Public Library Support and 
 Salaries in the Seventies," Library Journal, 101:781, March 15, 1976; "Salaries of 
 Academic Librarians 1975/76," College & Research Libraries News 37:231-34, Oct. 
 1976; and "1975-76 Library School Salaries Are Up," Library Journal 101:1996, Oct. 
 1, 1976. 
 
 Type of Library 
 
 Male 
 
 Female 
 
 Public 
 School 
 Academic 
 Other 
 
 $10,063 
 $12,415 
 $11,142 
 $10,328 
 
 $ 9,683 
 $10,996 
 $10,269 
 $10,252 
 
 Table 3. Average Beginning Salaries, New Graduates (1975) 
 
 Source: Learmont, Carol J., and Darling, Richard L. "Placements and Salaries 1975: 
 A Difficult Year," Library Journal 101:1493, July 1976. 
 
 Women and Salaries 
 
 Concerning the subject of salaries, we note that again men fare better 
 than women (see Tables 2 and 3). In all types of libraries at every level, 
 women earn less than men. I don't think I need to repeat all the figures in 
 Table 2 their implications are obvious. The library school salaries show 
 much less gap than any of the others, but library school faculty members 
 and administrators are generally the best paid of all people in library work. 
 
 Librarians may have been conditioned to expect that most library direc- 
 tors are going to be male, and that they are going to be paid more than fe- 
 males; however, it is very difficult to understand the salary differentials at 
 the starting level shown in Table 3. Despite the equal pay legislation that 
 prevails today, men are still being paid more than women. 
 
 The narrowest gap in salary ranges for new graduates is in the "other" 
 category, which includes all types of libraries that do not obviously fall under
 
 74 CHANGING TIMES: CHANGING LIBRARIES 
 
 public, academic, and school categories. These figures were also borne out 
 in the 1976 salary survey conducted by the Special Libraries Association 
 (SLA), the results of which will appear in the December 1976 issue of Spe- 
 cial Libraries. 9 The association discovered that the average beginning salary 
 for all special librarians was $11,000, with only a minute difference between 
 male and female salaries at the starting level. As special librarians get older, 
 however, the male/female salary differential begins to widen. Between the 
 ages of twenty and twenty-nine, it remains small (around $200), but when 
 a librarian reaches the age of thirty, the gap starts to expand. Between the 
 ages of thirty and thirty-nine, the average salary differs by about $1,000; 
 this difference increases to $4,700 between the ages of forty and fifty; and 
 from age fifty onward the gap is in the range of $5,500 or more. It seems 
 that international women's movements have had little effect on the library 
 world. 
 
 Whenever librarians are discussing salaries, the question "How well are 
 all of us paid?" usually arises. Most librarians certainly feel that they are 
 underpaid, and some observers consider that because librarianship is pre- 
 dominantly a female profession, librarians have tended to accept lower sal- 
 aries than would members of a predominantly male profession. The Bureau 
 of Labor Statistics reports that female librarians, while earning less than 
 male librarians, do relatively better than women in other professional occu- 
 pations. 10 The situation is slightly different in Canada, where, in fact, women 
 librarians fare even worse in terms of salaries than women in most other 
 professions (see Table 4) . 
 
 Table 4 has been adapted from a larger chart published by the Ontario 
 Ministry of Labour. The original table includes 1971 census data for approxi- 
 mately 400 selected occupations. For our purposes, I have tried to select 
 some of the occupations with which I believe librarians sometimes tend to 
 compare themselves. For Smith's benefit, and also because I work with econ- 
 omists, I have extracted the data on economists. Of 400 occupations ranked 
 by salary, male librarians and archivists place 118th. The female librarian 
 ranks 25th among females in 400 occupations. It does, of course, appear that 
 women librarians tend to do much better than many other women, but it is 
 disheartening for librarians of both sexes to see many occupations which 
 require less education, training, and responsibility ranked ahead of librarian- 
 ship in salary. 
 
 The third column of Table 4 offers an encouraging note for librarians, 
 i.e. female librarians in Ontario earn 88 percent of what male librarians 
 earn. Among the professional groups in this table, social workers form the 
 only group with better male/female pay ratios than those of librarianship; 
 and of all 400 occupations, there were only 5 or 6 categories (namely, in
 
 RESPONSE 75 
 
 
 Rank 
 
 by Salary 
 
 Percentage 
 ojFJM 
 
 Percentage 
 of F in 
 
 Occupation 
 
 Male 
 
 Female 
 
 Earnings 
 
 Occupation 
 
 University Teachers 
 
 11 
 
 4 
 
 71 
 
 12 
 
 Economists 
 
 25 
 
 16 
 
 67 
 
 10 
 
 Education & Vocational Counselors 
 
 33 
 
 6 
 
 84 
 
 32 
 
 Commun. Coll. & Vocational 
 
 
 
 
 
 School Teachers 
 
 43 
 
 17 
 
 73 
 
 24 
 
 Secondary School Teachers 
 
 49 
 
 9 
 
 84 
 
 35 
 
 Social Workers 
 
 101 
 
 21 
 
 89 
 
 56 
 
 Librarians & Archivists 
 
 118 
 
 25 
 
 88 
 
 78 
 
 TOTAL of all occupations 
 
 
 400 
 
 57 
 
 
 Table 4. Selected Occupations Ontario ( 1971 ) 
 
 Source: Ontario. Ministry of Labour. Equal Pay for Work of Equal Value: A Discus- 
 sion Paper. Toronto, Ministry of Labour, 1976, pp. 75-91. 
 
 medical and elementary school teaching occupations) where the ratios were 
 better for women. 
 
 Equal Value Concept 
 
 A comparison of salaries raises the question of the "equal value con- 
 cept," because librarians frequently try to compare the value of their work 
 with that of other professional workers. The equal value concept is one which 
 is extremely difficult to measure, and its application to the labor market in 
 terms of salaries is an even more difficult task. The Ontario government's 
 analysis of this debate has been published in the hope that interested parties 
 will respond to the document and add their thoughts to the scant informa- 
 tion now available. The Ministry of Labour points out the current lack of 
 value measures to indicate the existence of equal value jobs, as well as the 
 lack of knowledge about how much it would cost to implement such a pro- 
 gram, how it would relate to Canada's anti-inflation program, and whether 
 an excessive amount of government intervention to determine wages would 
 be necessary. The government's report is a document which librarians as a 
 group should study carefully. I think U.S. librarians would also be interested 
 in the contents of this report. Special librarians in particular need to con- 
 sider it, because it is in the special library environment that this kind of 
 evaluation is most keenly needed.
 
 76 CHANGING TIMES: CHANGING LIBRARIES 
 
 The lot of the special librarian is often a very lonely one. Currently, 
 more than 75 percent of librarians in Canadian special libraries are operat- 
 ing a one- or two-person library. Frequently, these librarians are viewed by 
 management as glorified secretaries or file clerks. In the past the SLA salary 
 surveys have illustrated that librarians in one- or two-person libraries are the 
 lowest paid. Such a librarian is also likely to be female, and in the question 
 of equal pay she must ask: "equal to whom?" If we feel that we are under- 
 paid, we must ask whether this is because (1) most of us are females, (2) the 
 library is unimportant in our institutions, or (3) we are earning what we 
 deserve. This last possibility must be considered as objectively as possible. 
 The question of "good" service has been raised at this institute. Most library 
 users are surprised when they find it, because for the most part their experi- 
 ences as users have not led them to expect it. 
 
 Another interesting item which emerged from the 1976 SLA salary sur- 
 vey (this will appeal to the special librarians among you) is that librarians 
 whose library entities are known as "information centers" earn an average 
 $1,100 more than librarians who call their entities "libraries." I will not dis- 
 cuss here the definition of information center versus that of library; many 
 articles have been written about that. I do think, however, that the fact 
 that information center librarians are paid more is significant, and I can 
 illustrate this from our own experience at the Bank of Commerce. A few 
 years ago the company had two libraries, the library and the economics 
 library. As happens so often in special libraries, there was a merger. The 
 new unit was called the information center, and the results of this name 
 change were unbelievable. Our clientele changed, our reference questions 
 became more sophisticated, and our circulation statistics skyrocketed yet 
 we were doing little different from what we did before. I am not suggesting 
 that we all go out and change the names of our libraries, but I think there 
 is an indication here that the information function has become more impor- 
 tant than ever before. 
 
 It is also apparent that with tightening budgets and unhappy economic 
 conditions, librarians are going to need all the support they can get from 
 their friendly clientele. In order to do this, we must find out who makes up 
 our clientele and what their needs are. (Special librarians have a distinct 
 advantage here.) We all still have a long way to go in that regard, however. 
 Librarians have been notoriously unsuccessful at measuring their perfor- 
 mance. We keep great amounts of statistics, none of which really tell us how 
 well we are satisfying our clients' needs, nor how our customers feel about 
 the services which they are receiving (or not receiving) . Thompson men- 
 tioned earlier the fact that economists are trying to measure the quality of 
 life; GNP has little to do with it. The same thing must be done in libraries.
 
 RESPONSE 
 
 Our circulation statistics may be growing, but they really do not help to tell 
 us what kind of job we are doing. 
 
 Cooperation 
 
 In addition to learning how to measure the quality of library service, 
 librarians from every sphere must learn to cooperate with each other more 
 effectively. We must try to forget about the "bigger and better" philosophy 
 and concentrate on ensuring that all members of the population in all parts 
 of both of our countries, from every field of interest, can obtain access to the 
 information which they require. The prevailing concept of resource-sharing 
 is extremely disheartening to special librarians. Special libraries are not well 
 understood by other types of libraries, and consequently have frequently 
 been bypassed by many cooperative programs of resource-sharing. Special 
 libraries have been criticized as being takers rather than givers. They are 
 the first to admit that they must borrow, and borrow frequently; neverthe- 
 less, by eliminating special libraries from some networks, the public is being 
 deprived of access to some of the best mini-research collections in existence. 
 Special librarians also have a great deal of skill in face-to-face interviewing 
 with their clientele, and in evaluating information for people. These are con- 
 tributions which I think special librarians can make in networks, too. 
 
 Related to the entire networking problem is the present controversial is- 
 sue of interlibrary loan charges. Many large organizations in both the United 
 States and Canada have instituted a fee for this service. People seem to be 
 jumping on the bandwagon without giving much thought to the overall 
 implications in terms of public access to information. Members of the Cana- 
 dian Library Association passed a unanimous resolution at the annual con- 
 ference in June 1976 calling on librarians not to levy interloan charges until 
 the question has been studied more carefully. 11 This resolution does not 
 seem to have had much impact. The Metropolitan Toronto Library Board 
 has recently started to levy charges, and once again special libraries have 
 been singled out for higher fees than those levied on some other library insti- 
 tutions. This state of affairs is particularly upsetting when we frequently 
 note that the public library does not hesitate to send us its customers when 
 its own resources fail. We are always happy to help a member of the public 
 when we can, but we do feel that the arrangement should be reciprocal. 
 
 In regard to the subject of cooperation, the time has probably come for 
 library associations to forget about some of their differences and to think 
 about the common good. Associations must learn to cooperate with each 
 other in pooling their resources and expertise when dealing with common 
 problems such as copyright legislation which affect members of the profession
 
 78 CHANGING TIMES: CHANGING LIBRARIES 
 
 in every field. The president of the Canadian Library Association pointed 
 out this year that there are more than ninety different library associations 
 operating in Canada. 12 It has become evident that this is far too many for 
 our country to support, and I think that there will be some mergers in 
 library association activity in the coming year. Canadian librarians are about 
 to embark on an examination of proposals for changes in Canada's copyright 
 law, and we hope that we have learned something from U.S. experience. The 
 Canadian Library Association has asked for commitments from other library 
 groups for a unified effort toward our mutual goal of satisfactory copyright 
 legislation. There are undoubtedly numerous other objectives toward which 
 we can set our cooperative instincts. 
 
 It is my opinion that our associations and library schools have a joint 
 responsibility toward the most important resource of libraries: library staff. 
 Very few librarians are able to attend meetings such as this; only a small 
 percentage of library association members ever attend a real conference. We 
 need to have more continuing education programs, and it is time to hold 
 some local and regional workshops aimed at people who cannot get to na- 
 tional conferences. You might be interested in a pilot project initiated by 
 the SLA Education Committee. An expanded 1-day workshop, originally 
 presented in a shorter form at the 1976 annual conference in Denver, will 
 be tried out in four geographical areas in North America between January 
 and June 1977. If these workshops are evaluated to be successful (both from 
 the educational and financial points of view) , the same "traveling road-show" 
 will be available to librarians in other geographic areas. 
 
 REFERENCES 
 
 1. U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. Library Manpower: A Study of Demand 
 and Supply (Bureau of Labor Statistics Bulletin 1852). Washington, D.C., 
 U.S.G.P.O., 1975. 
 
 2. A graphic example of this factor was noted in Toronto last year. About 26 
 percent of placements of new graduates from University of Toronto's Faculty of 
 Library Science were in special libraries. At the same time, the local SLA place- 
 ment service had on file the names of sixty individuals who wished to change jobs 
 in special libraries, plus an additional thirty-five names of unemployed librarians. 
 
 3. Smart, Anne. "Women the 4/5 Minority," Canadian Library Journal 
 32:14-17, Feb. 1975. 
 
 4. Sable, Arnold P. "The Sexuality of the Library Profession: Male and Fe- 
 male Librarian," Wilson Library Bulletin 43:748, April 1969. 
 
 5. "Proceedings of the Conference of Librarians, London, October 2nd, 3rd, 
 4th, and 5th, 1877," Library Journal 2:280, Jan.-Feb. 1878.
 
 RESPONSE 79 
 
 6. Newmyer, Jody. "The Image Problem of the Librarian: Femininity and 
 Social Control," Journal of Library History 11 :46, Jan. 1976. 
 
 7. Cohn, William L. "An Overview of ARL Directors, 1933-1973," College & 
 Research Libraries 37: 137-44, March 1976. 
 
 8. Canadian Library Directory Part II: University, College, and Special Li- 
 braries. Ottawa, National Library of Canada. (In press.) 
 
 9. "SLA Salary Survey 1976," Special Libraries 67:597-624, Dec. 1976. 
 
 10. U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, op. cit., p. 21. 
 
 11. "C.L.A. Annual General Meeting 1976," Canadian Library Journal 33: 
 400, Oct. 1976. 
 
 12. "President's Address," Canadian Library Journal 33:422, Oct 1976.
 
 BRUCE A. SHERWOOD 
 
 Assistant Director 
 
 Computer-based Education Research Laboratory 
 
 University of Illinois 
 
 Urbana, Illinois 
 
 Interactive Electronic Media 
 
 I am going to discuss two major new media : interactive electronic 
 systems and video disc. One is already with us, although on a very small scale, 
 and it is the kind of electronic media represented by PLATO and similar 
 computer-based systems. Although one reads about it constantly in Popular 
 Mechanics, the video disc is not here yet. It seems certain to come, however, 
 and I will try to outline some of the basic properties of both these new media. 
 Because I am not a librarian, I cannot point directly to the exact impact 
 these media will have on libraries, but I will as a layman allude to the kinds 
 of impact I think are likely. 
 
 In order to be concrete, I will present some examples of what is possible 
 today with the interactive electronics medium. First, I will use the PLATO 
 system of the University of Illinois as an example, and after having shown 
 some examples of how such a system can be used, I will then describe some 
 of the major aspects of publishing, distribution, royalties, copyright, etc., for 
 this kind of medium. My discussion will then turn to video discs. 
 
 There are about 950 PLATO terminals just like the one to be used here 
 which are connected to a large computer at the University of Illinois. About 
 300 of these terminals are on the campus and others are scattered around 
 the country. In its normal setting the PLATO terminal does not have a video 
 camera directed at it transmitting pictures to a television monitor such as we 
 have here today. The PLATO terminal is normally located in a classroom, 
 and more likely there are twenty or thirty terminals in that room, with many 
 students and teachers studying and writing materials together. Although my 
 demonstration will use only one terminal here this afternoon, I will show you 
 
 81
 
 82 CHANGING TIMES: CHANGING LIBRARIES 
 
 a few examples of the way such a medium can be used for instruction. I will 
 then demonstrate some of the impact that this medium brings to communi- 
 cation per se. 
 
 The first example is a program used for primary school math curriculum, 
 one which was developed at the University of Illinois on PLATO. This par- 
 ticular lesson comes from a program for approximately fifth grade-level chil- 
 dren dealing with fractions. The program begins by asking my name. It 
 then says, "You are the proud owner of a brand new pizza place" and asks 
 me to make up a name for this place. Let us call it the "Library Pizza 
 Palace." The task is to divide two pizzas among three children. The three 
 children are shown on the screen with two pizzas and a cutter. If I point at 
 one of the pizzas, it passes through the cutter, is sliced into three pieces, and 
 we are ready to distribute the slices. I pick up a piece of pizza on my finger, 
 and give it away; another one, and give that away. After cutting the next 
 pizza and again dividing it, I think that I will have divided them all equally, 
 but one child says, "I got a lot" ; another says, "That's not fair, I should get 
 more" ; and the third, "I got my share." Now I must start all over again, so 
 I will repeat the exercise and try to get it right this time. 
 
 What happens here is that the screen is so sensitive that, as I point, it 
 allows me to pick up a piece and move it around. Notice how very interactive 
 this terminal screen is. It responds almost instantaneously to whatever I do 
 and that is one of the unusual features of this kind of a medium. It will 
 say, "That's fine," and ask me how much pizza each child got I am invited 
 to say that each received two-thirds of a pizza. We can then watch the chil- 
 dren eat their pizza. 
 
 That was a silly example, but it illustrates one of a very broad range of 
 techniques used in that elementary school math curriculum, and it is some- 
 what representative. Using PLATO is not a passive experience for the child, 
 but a very interactive one. 
 
 I will take the next example from a college-level program. In some ways 
 it is very similar, but this lesson deals with a fractional distillation experiment 
 in chemistry, an experiment not usually done in the laboratory because it is 
 too complicated, too dangerous, and requires equipment that an undergradu- 
 ate laboratory does not usually have. It is expensive and it can explode. On 
 the terminal screen are the pieces of the still to be assembled. I will pick up 
 the condenser and put it where it belongs. Then I will take the flask, but 
 PLATO says, "No, you've got to hook the take-off adapter on first." I pick 
 up the take-off adapter and put it where it belongs. Now I can attach the 
 flask. I go through many of the intellectual operations that I would in fact 
 perform in a laboratory if it had this equipment. I will continue to assemble 
 the rest of the still by putting the thermometers in place. Then PLATO says,
 
 INTERACTIVE ELECTRONIC MEDIA 83 
 
 "Okay, I put in 100 milliliters of a 50/50 mixture of pentane and hexane. 
 What do you want to do now?" I reply that I would like to distill, but it 
 says "No, before heating the oil bath you'd better add a boiling chip." I do, 
 and then PLATO says, "And now what do you want to do?" I again say I 
 am ready to distill. "No," says PLATO, "now you need to turn on the cooling 
 water. If you don't do that you are going to be in trouble." I add cooling 
 water. "Fine. Does it go in the bottom or the top of the condenser?" I answer 
 that it goes in the top. PLATO replies, "No, it doesn't go in the top, it goes 
 in the bottom; otherwise it won't work." The cooling water is added at the 
 bottom. PLATO asks, "Now what do you want to do?" I answer that I 
 would like to distill. "Oh, all right, fine. Remember that as you go, you're 
 going to have to control the temperature and you're going to have to take 
 off fractions as they distill out." 
 
 This is what happens. I will heat the oil bath, which will cause the 
 liquid to boil off. As it hits the cold condenser, it condenses into this flask, so 
 that the most volatile substance comes off first; that is what collects here. I 
 take that off, put another bottle on there, collect another fraction, and so 
 forth. In the lower left-hand corner of the screen, PLATO notes the tem- 
 perature, which is presently 20 C. It says, "Warm the oil bath until the 
 distillation starts." I will warm up the bath: 25, 30, 35, 39, 44, 49, 
 54. Distillation has begun. The substance distilled out into the condenser; 
 however, it stops again because I have allowed it to get too cold at 54. I 
 have already boiled off everything at that temperature. I can take a sample 
 and warm things up a bit more; again the distillate comes off. I can remove 
 a sample, then warm it up. A graph is building up of distillation fractions. 
 I warm it up to 74 ; "Oops," says PLATO, "you just blew up the still be- 
 cause your bath temperature was too high. Let's put the apparatus together 
 again and repeat the experiment." Here the lesson returns to the beginning. 
 
 Note that in a few minutes I was able to go through the basic intellectual 
 components of what is done with this kind of a still, without getting hurt in 
 the explosion. That example represents another type of use of PLATO. 
 Again, notice that the hallmark of this program is a high level of interactivity. 
 I started a process and was interacting with it in real time as it proceeded. 
 I had to make decisions as I went along and, as in the pizza case for the 
 young child, so it is for the junior or senior in college : there is a higher level 
 of interactivity than can typically be achieved with other kinds of media. 
 
 I have another kind of example. It is a lesson on "Introduction to Esper- 
 anto," prepared by my wife, Judith Sherwood, in which she attempts to use 
 the graphic and interaction capabilities of PLATO to introduce something 
 that a person has never seen. It is plausible to assume that those fractional 
 pizzas are helpful to the children, but you already know that material. I am
 
 84 CHANGING TIMES: CHANGING LIBRARIES 
 
 using the following example because it may be something you do not already 
 know. Material here is presented in a structure which recurs many times in 
 teaching languages. 
 
 The lesson begins simply by introducing some nouns. P'irst, flowers ap- 
 pear on the screen with the word "floro" : and it is hoped that you get the 
 idea. If not, you are asked to give PLATO that word. I type f, I, i and am 
 stopped immediately at the error. This is made available by interactivity. 
 Here you can look at everything the person does and reply appropriately. 
 Now I type /, I, o, r, o. Good. Next noun : "tablo." I am asked to type it, too. 
 Now can you tell the difference? "Floro": yes. "Tablo?" Yes and your 
 reward is a "stelo," or star. 
 
 Having introduced some nouns, I can now introduce some prepositions. 
 "Where is the flower?" "The flower is on the table." "La floro estas sur (on) 
 la tablo; apud (beside) la tablo; sub (under) la tablo; super (over) la tablo." 
 Now we will see a typical drill which is very easy to write and very useful 
 in language studies. We are shown a drawing of a flower standing beside a 
 table. Notice that no English is used in the presentation. We are asked, "Kie 
 estas la floro?" "La floro estas." I will say, "sur," but PLATO says, "No. The 
 correct answer is 'apud.' " There is, fortunately, an erase button on the key- 
 board. I can erase my answer. Notice that the program removes the correct 
 answer, so that I must use my short-term memory to say that the correct 
 answer is "apud." The program will now remember that I had trouble with 
 that word, thus I will get extra practice on that word (a very common trick 
 in these kinds of drills). Next I get different prepositions, each presented in 
 random order. If you will watch, the "apud" example will recur at some 
 time. I will get it right this time, and then I will not have to do it again. 
 The lesson gets more complicated, with examples of nouns being "under," 
 "beside," "over," and "on" other nouns. We teach a broad range of languages 
 this way. A drill need not just be on vocabulary; it might be on grammar, 
 sentence structure, or other language element. With these three examples I 
 hope that I have given you some basic notion of how this kind of interactive 
 medium appears. 
 
 I want at this point to say something about the distribution of such 
 teaching materials. First, there is a tendency for materials of the kind illus- 
 trated to come in modular packages. Here is a lesson on fractions dealing 
 with pizzas ; here is another lesson on fractions, but it emphasizes conversions 
 from improper fractions to mixed numbers. Once these lessons have been 
 written, they can be assembled more easily in this kind of medium than can 
 the chapters of different textbooks. That is the first point I want to make. 
 Given this kind of interaction, teachers or self-study students can assemble 
 their own book of chapters, and the chapters may come from disparate
 
 INTERACTIVE ELECTRONIC MEDIA 85 
 
 sources. This is something that may be done to some extent with books, but, 
 at least in university education, it is a little difficult. An instructor may use 
 three books during the semester, but will use only chapters 2, 3 and 4 from 
 one book, chapter 5 from another book, etc. He also may use another text- 
 book, but substitute his own chapters for chapters 7 and 9 because the cover- 
 age is inadequate on those topics. In this electronic medium there is a ten- 
 dency to write the chapters in such a way that different people can assemble 
 the chapters in different orders to meet their individual interests. In par- 
 ticular, the person using this kind of medium will probably be using materials 
 already in existence, but the teacher might want to add something of his/her 
 own. I will take a very simple example, an avowedly contrived example, to 
 show you how a local teacher might write such additional material. 
 
 Suppose I am a teacher showing a drawing of a triangle to a student 
 and ask, "What is this figure?" The student will probably answer, "It is a 
 right triangle." This is a rather dull form of interaction, but it might be 
 useful under certain circumstances. How can I input that triangle into this 
 medium for later recall? Because I want to set up what the student will see, 
 I am offered a scratch pad by PLATO. I point at the screen and mark a 
 point. I mark another point and others until I have drawn my triangle. That 
 is what the student will see. At this place on the screen I want the student 
 to see the text that asks, "What is this figure?" (Remember that there is an 
 erase key to make changes in anything that is done.) Let us also put a little 
 arrowhead on the screen to show the student where to type in an answer. 
 That is the gist of it: the triangle, the question "What is this figure?" and a 
 place for the student to type the answer. I will now also put a circle on the 
 screen and state that I want to write in four times normal size, rotated 45 
 degrees. I'm going to put text on the screen that states, "Wow." I have now 
 developed a fairly complicated display of what the student will see. Next, a 
 program is written for me. I could have written this program by hand, just 
 as computer programmers have done for twenty years or so. 
 
 This is essentially an example of automatic programming. I simply de- 
 scribe what I want the computer to present, and it writes a program for us. 
 All I have to do to make it into a fully operational thing is to put in what 
 might be one possible answer. For example, "It is a (right, rt) triangle," 
 where "it," "is," and "a" are optional words, and "right" and "rt" are syno- 
 nyms. Having inserted that into the body of this otherwise automatically gen- 
 erated program, I can now try it out and pretend I am the student. It 
 appears on the screen, just as the student would see it. I am going to type: 
 "a pretty tringle, right?" It says, "Well, you're close." The word pretty is 
 marked as wrong. It shows us with special markings that there is a word 
 missing between "pretty" and "tringle." "Tringle" is a misspelling, and
 
 86 CHANGING TIMES: CHANGING LIBRARIES 
 
 the word right belongs to the left. PLATO automatically gave me that ap- 
 propriate feedback on the errors I made. Let me put in the correct answer: 
 "a right triangle." It says "Wow" inside a circle. With these kinds of tech- 
 niques, the local teacher can produce additional materials to augment what- 
 ever happens to be in the library. 
 
 What about the distribution of materials? First let me show you what 
 we think of in terms of the physical aspects of distribution. We have a map of 
 the United States showing the major sites of PLATO terminals that are 
 presently connected to the Urbana center. This is a national network. A flag 
 on the map does not represent a single terminal, it represents a cluster of 
 them. For example, in one classroom at the University of Arizona, twelve 
 terminals are connected to the Urbana center. In terms of communication 
 costs, 950 terminals spread over an entire continent is a very expensive way 
 to operate. In the long run, however, if this technique is useful, we can 
 imagine that terminals will be located in homes as well as in schools, and a 
 thousand terminals will be served by one large computer which is more 
 regionally located. The present geographic distribution pattern is bizarre and 
 anomalous, but regional systems have already been established in Minneapo- 
 lis, Florida, and Quebec City. In the long run, we imagine that these kinds 
 of services will be provided in the same way that telephone service is pro- 
 vided, i.e. with local exchanges in major cities serving the subscribers and 
 customers nearby, and with connections among those exchanges. The Min- 
 neapolis and Urbana PLATO systems are already tied by a phone line 
 through which curriculum materials and electronic mail flow. Regional cen- 
 ters probably will eventually be established throughout the country and those 
 will share curriculum materials and other kinds of information. The distribu- 
 tion of the pizza lesson, for instance, would typically be handled as follows. 
 Every exchange would have a copy of the pizza lesson. Any revisions to that 
 lesson, and all newer editions, wherever they originated, would be passed 
 from one node to another and would supplant the previous editions or, if 
 the previous edition was also useful, they would simply be added to the cata- 
 log. The catalog would then contain two versions of the fractional pizza 
 lesson. Multiple copies can be justified, for it is reasonable to assume that 
 the information flow from one node to another (e.g., between the Urbana 
 system and the Danville, Illinois system) may be slow and the institution 
 should have a copy available in each place. It is the same justification for 
 having a copy of the same book in each library. 
 
 I will show a map of Illinois on the terminal in order to give you an 
 idea of the different users of PLATO. In Illinois there are terminals not only 
 in university environments, but also in community colleges, prisons, industrial
 
 INTERACTIVE ELECTRONIC MEDIA 87 
 
 training centers, and grade schools. As I stated earlier, about 300 of those 
 950 terminals are on the University of Illinois campus. 
 
 In addition to the problem of distribution, there are problems of crea- 
 tion of programs, of copyright, and of royalties. What can we expect? What 
 are we presently doing? Unlike many media, with this kind of medium it 
 is possible to track the usage of materials on a detailed basis. I believe that 
 in Scandinavia authors actually receive some kind of usage fee based on the 
 number of times their books are checked out of a library. It will be possible 
 not only to identify and track usage sites easily, but also to know how many 
 people have used the program, how many times, and for how many hours. 
 With those data, it will be possible to return to an author some royalties as 
 well as some detailed information on which markets have accepted his/her 
 materials with the most interest. As a beginning, we are going to return a 
 few cents per contact hour. Notice that there is a little difference here be- 
 tween this and the book market or the record market. In the book market, 
 an author of a textbook is paid on the basis of the sale of the book, not on 
 the usage of the book. The book may be used five times, and by making it 
 possible to track actual usage itself, a slightly different way of calculating 
 royalties is offered. 
 
 This field is very new for copyright. In this respect, about the only thing 
 the university has done with regard to PLATO is to place copyright notices 
 at the beginnings of lessons, which may mean nothing or it may mean some- 
 thing. To my knowledge, no one has yet actually made the effort to discuss 
 copyright of interactive material with the Register of Copyrights. The solu- 
 tion may be very similar to the copyrighting of a videotape presentation of 
 a television play but it may not. In this medium, there is more difference 
 between what appears on the screen to a user and the inner workings (i.e. 
 the program) than there is in the case of videotape, where what appears is 
 also what happened in the studio itself. With interactive programs, this cor- 
 respondence is very slight. It may be that the external appearance of a pro- 
 gram, i.e. what it looks like, is a copyrightable production or presentation; 
 however, the inner workings of the program itself probably are not and 
 perhaps will just be kept as trade secrets. 
 
 In addition to these questions, there are questions of cataloging. These 
 are very new to both the Urbana system and the Minneapolis system, but 
 there has been quite a bit of activity in cataloging work. Because of the na- 
 ture of the materials, the cataloging of programs is of a somewhat different 
 character than the problems of library cataloging. These materials tend to 
 be short, single concepts, somewhat smaller entities which are more like the 
 chapters of books than books themselves. What is appropriate for cataloging
 
 CHANGING TIMES: CHANGING LIBRARIES 
 
 at this "microscopic" level may not be entirely clear from library practice. 
 We hope to learn from librarians about what we should be doing. It will be 
 a long interactive process in trying to understand how best to present the 
 catalog information that tells you, "Yes, the pizza lesson exists ... it deals 
 with fractions." 
 
 What I have shown thus far is that this particular system was built 
 mainly for direct instruction. There are, however, other uses of such systems, 
 uses which impinge upon the distribution questions. You notice that the word 
 notes appears here on the screen. While I have been talking, someone has 
 sent me a note a piece of electronic mail and I am going to read it. 
 This is an interesting note. Yesterday a person in Delaware wrote to me to 
 ask about attaching typewriters to the terminal for making certain kinds of 
 hard copies. The question was not entirely clear, so I wrote back asking if 
 the question related to the actual kind of typewriter the person used or how 
 he programs the thing to use that typewriter. We received this note back 
 from him today (notice that in the space of twenty-four hours, there have 
 been two full exchanges of mail, which is otherwise hard to come by these 
 days in Delaware) : "We are interested in learning about your basic algo- 
 rithm between PLATO and the external device and the device itself." I can 
 now write back to him, saying: "Okay, I will write back to you later today. 
 I'm giving a talk at the moment." By pushing the button, I have sent a note 
 to Delaware. The next time that person goes to the terminal, he will see a 
 little red flag saying that there is mail for him just like a rural mailbox. 
 
 Another kind of electronic communication open to public and special- 
 interest forums is multiway forums. Here is an example of a public forum. 
 A fellow at Cornell wrote: "Look, I'm trying to write a program of the 
 following kind. Am I doing something wrong? I did this and this and this, 
 but it doesn't come out properly. What's wrong?" Someone in the math 
 group says, "I tried it and it worked for me." Someone in Connecticut asks, 
 "Is it possible that one of those numbers was negative, which would make 
 it not work properly?" The fellow at Cornell answers, "Yes, I'm not sure 
 about that," followed by someone in electrical engineering who says, "Well 
 look, why don't you try this with such and such, and then that will prove it 
 once and for all." This example represents not a one-to-one personal com- 
 munication, but an open forum. This example happens to be devoted mainly 
 to programming questions, but there are all sorts of special-purpose questions, 
 from religion to technology, that could be discussed. This many-to-many elec- 
 tronic communication capability is a little different from any of the media we 
 presently have. 
 
 Still another form of communication that is rather specific to this par- 
 ticular kind of device is the possibility of talking to people. For example, I
 
 INTERACTIVE ELECTRONIC MEDIA 89 
 
 will ask to talk to a colleague named Dennis. If he is looking at his terminal 
 at the moment, he sees a message saying Bruce Sherwood would like to 
 "talk" to him. Actually, we will type messages back and forth to each other: 
 
 "Hi. Sorry to bother you; I'm in the middle of a presentation and would 
 like to show people how you and I can talk this way. Say something!" 
 "Hi, Bruce," he says. 
 
 "Could you show us something on your screen involving some graphics?" 
 "Sure. Here's a graph showing student grades on the last exam." 
 
 What we are looking at here is what is on his screen, which he offered to us. 
 It is as if we were looking over his shoulder while he worked. (To ensure 
 privacy, a note at the bottom of his screen reminds him that I am looking at 
 his screen.) An important use of this machinery is that of consulting on pro- 
 gramming problems. The consultant can look at the screen of the person 
 who is asking for assistance and suggest changes that should be made in the 
 person's program. 
 
 Another kind of programming help available is an extensive on-line 
 reference manual. If I want to know about how to draw circles, I just type 
 the word circle and it gives me all the information possible on how to draw 
 different circles, on parts of circles, etc. If I want to know how to handle 
 various possible answers the student might give, it will tell me how to do 
 that. This is the closest we have come yet to information retrieval per se in 
 this system. 
 
 For reference services it would seem plausible to plug into existing com- 
 mercial systems. Many commercial bibliographic searching services and other 
 kinds of information retrieval systems are presently available. If the type of 
 electronic utility exemplified by PLATO grows to a large scale, it could pro- 
 vide a window through its terminals into these existing services. For a multi- 
 purpose utility, it seems only natural to consider the electronic medium as a 
 window to a variety of public utility services. 
 
 I will briefly discuss some aspects of the emerging video disc technology. 
 A video disc player could be connected to your home television set, and a 
 video disc placed on the player like a record on a phonograph. One of the 
 obvious uses of this technology is simply to show movies. A more revolution- 
 ary use, however, springs from the fact that instead of holding a half-hour 
 movie segment, a disc could hold about 50,000 still pictures ! When allowance 
 is made for the relatively poor resolution of television, I estimate that twenty 
 of these television pictures could encompass the text of one page of the 
 Encyclopaedia Britannica. One video disc could therefore hold the results of 
 photographing 2,500 Encyclopaedia Britannica pages, and 10 video discs 
 would hold the entire encyclopedia. While this may appear to be a great deal
 
 90 CHANGING TIMES: CHANGING LIBRARIES 
 
 of information on one thin disc, it is not an overwhelmingly huge amount 
 of information. 
 
 Another way of storing information which makes a video disc seem 
 even larger is to store the data on the video disc so that one disc corresponds 
 to approximately two Encyclopaedia Britannicas. (If one disc can hold one- 
 tenth of an encyclopedia, while another disc holds two encyclopedias, the 
 difference between holding one-tenth of an encyclopedia and two encyclo- 
 pedias is a factor of twenty.) This compression factor comes from the follow- 
 ing considerations. When this type of dot-oriented technological gadget prints 
 an "A," it must be given specific information. It must be told that there is a 
 dot at the top of the "A," a line of dots down each side, and another line of 
 dots for the horizontal crossbar. About twenty or thirty pairs of numbers 
 would be necessary to print the "A." In contrast, if the information is going 
 to be limited just to text, then you need just one number (one through 
 twenty-six) to indicate the letter you want. You simply say "I want letter 
 no. 1," and the device looks into its innards and says, "Oh yes, character 
 no. 1. That's an 'A' and it looks like that. What's the next letter?" There is 
 a compression factor of twenty in the numbers needed to specify a letter. 
 This latter scheme of encoding, using "character codes," allows for tremen- 
 dous compression. It does not handle the pictures of the Encyclopaedia Britan- 
 nica, but it does handle the text, and some mixture of text and pictures would 
 be common. (You can slice the storage in other ways, too: if you don't want 
 50,000 pictures you could have 300 symphonies recorded instead!) 
 
 Capabilities of this kind suggest a possible future connection between 
 computer-based systems and video discs, for video discs need not hold only 
 static information. Because the disc could contain programs which, coupled 
 with a little computer beside the player, could perform a variety of opera- 
 tions, there is a likely connection between video discs and home computers. 
 At first these operations will emerge as being quite separate, but when the 
 characters are encoded, it is likely that a little computer could look at those 
 character codes and say, "Hmm, character no. 3, what's that? I look into my 
 memory of what letter no. 3 is. Oh yes, it's a 'C.' I make a G like that." 
 There will be, in fact, some overlap between the two new technologies. 
 
 The problems of distribution, royalties and copyright for video discs are 
 quite different from those of the interactive electronic medium we considered 
 earlier. For the latter, there is one centralized store with much information 
 and a network to connect people. It is very good for keeping things up to 
 date and for keeping people in touch with others. Video disc distribution, 
 on the other hand, is likely to be decentralized like phonograph records: 
 they may be purchased in a store or checked out of a library and then used 
 on a local player, either in the library or at home. The economics of video
 
 RESPONSE 91 
 
 disc distribution, including royalties, are somewhat peculiar. At the present 
 time authors receive royalties for books as a share of the selling price of the 
 book. If the book sells for $5, the author of the book gets $.50 to $1 a 
 fraction of the selling price. The selling price includes manufacturing, distri- 
 bution and advertising costs. For a video disc which could hold two Encyclo- 
 paedia Britannicas and with manufacturing and distribution costs likely to 
 make the selling price approximately $10 to $20, it is difficult to see how the 
 royalty fees can be established to compensate the writers of all that material. 
 Thus, even more than in the case of photocopying, there is a tremendous 
 dissociation in that kind of medium of royalty compensation for authors and 
 the manufacturing and distribution costs of the physical item itself. I think 
 that this will create many difficult problems, and initially, public domain 
 material will be used to fill those discs with huge amounts of information. 
 Pirated editions are likely to become a problem. While reproduction may in- 
 volve fairly expensive machines, as with phonograph records, there will be 
 many people with such devices. Because of the volume of information that 
 can be obtained from one of these devices, it seems to me that there are some 
 really sticky questions here much stickier than the photocopying question. 
 
 GERALD R. BRONG 
 
 Assistant Director 
 
 AV Instructional Media Services 
 
 Washington State University 
 
 Pullman, Washington 
 
 I was very impressed with the demonstration of the technology 
 presented by Bruce Sherwood and I suspect that others were, too. Before we 
 acquire PLATO terminals for our libraries and place our first order for
 
 92 CHANGING TIMES: CHANGING LIBRARIES 
 
 video disc equipment, however, I would like to suggest that there are certain 
 assumptions we should question. 
 
 My reactions are based on both notes I took from the outline of Sher- 
 wood's presentation given to me when I arrived yesterday, and notes taken 
 during his presentation. My remarks will cover three areas. First, I will ad- 
 dress that part of his presentation dealing with video discs; then I will offer 
 a few ideas about education, about philosophies of society, and about how 
 people learn, think and interact with one another. I will then attempt to tie 
 these philosophies to the third part of my response, dealing with PLATO as 
 a communication device (among other interactive electronic media) or as 
 a specific medium that should facilitate the betterment of humankind. 
 
 I would like each of you to consider the following questions. How can 
 you apply PLATO in your library? How can you, with a tool as powerful as 
 PLATO, provide learning not only through drills, but at higher intellectual 
 levels of study as well? Make the transition, if you will, to video discs or to 
 any kind of an information storage system that permits you to intermix sound, 
 motion and still visuals, plus other kinds of information that were not men- 
 tioned. How will you apply these tools in your library? Answer the following 
 question honestly. Are you presently applying current technologies of motion 
 picture storage, still information storage or audio information storage? Based 
 on my experiences with libraries, I am not optimistic that libraries are ready 
 for PLATO and they are certainly not ready for video discs. 
 
 In speeches given throughout the country, video disc production has 
 been billed as a very low-cost, paperback approach to motion visuals and 
 other kinds of information distribution. The prices that Sherwood has quoted 
 and the prices that appear in print represent only the cost of production of 
 the physical item, i.e. the disc itself. The costs that are incurred in the actual 
 production of the average one-half hour, 16mm sound motion picture for 
 the educational market account for only 60-70 percent of that motion picture 
 sale price. A major portion of the cost of the film is the scripting, the pro- 
 duction, the filming everything that must be done prior to the release of 
 the print. Therefore, one must add the cost of content production to the 
 video disc cost and that raises the price to some extent. Admittedly, video 
 discs can be produced for much less than 16mm sound films, but the $25 
 print of Gone With the Wind will still not be available for a very long time. 
 
 I would like to question another item, but I lack the technical expertise 
 to answer my own question. We have discussed the use of video discs as a 
 storage device for the printed page. It is well known that existing television 
 technology, including the technology of the video discs, has a limited num- 
 ber of lines of resolutions per inch. If we assume that a television set with 
 excellent resolution will give 550 lines of resolution per inch, how many
 
 RESPONSE 93 
 
 technologists will settle for only 500 lines of resolution per inch on a micro- 
 film reader? Therefore, as Sherwood has indicated, it will be necessary to 
 use multiple frames of that disc to store one printed page. Why not use video 
 discs or currently available, low-cost magnetic storage devices for storage of 
 digital information? 
 
 The point I wish to make is that we are not making use of the options 
 now available. I would suggest that at this conference, we should consider 
 how we can apply existing options first, so that we will be prepared for video 
 disc and PLATO. I am certain that many other innovative technologies can 
 be identified that will be extremely significant in the future of library and 
 information services. 
 
 I would like to reflect for a moment on a few comments I made based 
 on notes given to me by Sherwood, since they relate to the basic philosophy 
 of this conference. I asked myself why I, as an educational technologist and 
 a library information agencies specialist, am concerned with PLATO. If we 
 can assume that all of human behavior is based on learning as a result of 
 experience, then I would speculate that libraries and information programs 
 are concerned with that process. Libraries will support the human enterprise, 
 i.e. learning. How do libraries support learning? How do we obtain and uti- 
 lize information? At issue here is not only the storage, management and 
 retrieval of information, but the ability to utilize that information to help 
 solve the recreational, instructional, inventive, or other problems of human- 
 kind, as well. That is really the name of the game. 
 
 Our society continues to demand independence of the individual. 
 Throughout this bicentennial period, we have often attempted to review the 
 goals of independence. But look closely at what we really have : it is a depen- 
 dence which is really an interdependence. Our libraries, I think, are philo- 
 sophically based on the concept of intellectual interdependence. We try to 
 use the intellectual products of others as we interact on the intellectual plane 
 in order to solve problems, to invent, to learn, and to direct our behavior. 
 
 Sherwood has shown us only one interactive medium, i.e. PLATO. It is 
 probably one of the most powerful teaching machines that has come into 
 existence in a good number of years. PLATO is also one of the most fascinat- 
 ing teaching devices, because so very few of us have had the experience in 
 our own schooling of learning from a "teacher" such as PLATO. Remember, 
 however, that the content of PLATO is no better than the teacher's input 
 into it; PLATO is only a machine, like Skinner's box for the pigeon, and 
 can do nothing more than its human input enables it to do. 
 
 The question for libraries, therefore (and for myself, in educational 
 technology), is: When are we going to learn to be as skillful as Sherwood 
 and his colleagues in putting things into that box? If we do not develop that
 
 94 CHANGING TIMES: CHANGING LIBRARIES 
 
 kind of skill, will we be willing to depend on others to feed information into 
 the machine in order to communicate and learn? I am not yet ready to 
 answer that question. I feel that, in today's presentation, the stress was 
 basically on the medium itself, on PLATO as an interactive computer sys- 
 tem. We still need to examine its intellectual content. I am undoubtedly as 
 guilty as many of you in focusing attention on the medium itself rather than 
 on the content of that medium; think about that. Our concern is really for 
 the information. Because the computer is such a massive filing system and is 
 so flexible in its ability to access and to present information, we have the 
 opportunity to learn by using a programmed computer textbook in a scram- 
 bled manner, just as Sherwood has done with PLATO. The surface of a 
 large table could probably be covered with printed pages dealing with that 
 one program ; but this learning can be done with other devices. The medium 
 that is best suited for the presentations that Sherwood gave us is tied elec- 
 tronically to this little screen as a computer. 
 
 Since Sherwood has written on the subject, I would like him to react to 
 the related issue of cost-effectiveness. Consider PLATO in a public library 
 setting, where it gives tutorial help to a high school student who wants to 
 repair his car, or to an individual who wants to learn how to grow petunias. 
 How does this compare from a cost-effectiveness standpoint (if it could be 
 measured) to some other existing media which can do the same things? 
 
 While we are considering the public library and I refer here only to 
 the nonschool, noninstitutional library I will pose another question. As the 
 public library becomes more involved in direct teaching and increasingly 
 supportive of alternative education programs (especially with the availability 
 of powerful tools such as PLATO), will a conflict develop between public 
 libraries and institutions such as universities, whose livelihood is based on 
 enrollment? Will public libraries draw students away from the schools? I 
 have purposely overstated this case in order to elicit reaction. This problem 
 is a concern in many states. For instance, in some states, the university bud- 
 get authorizations are based on the number of students on campus. As stu- 
 dents begin to have options other than the campus for training in higher 
 education, enrollments may decrease. 
 
 Another issue should be raised, although Sherwood surprisingly did not 
 mention it. This relates to something on the horizon not only in education, 
 but in dealing with the microcomputer systems. Today we are dealing with 
 a megasystem that is horrendous. The computer capabilities you have seen 
 here are greater than any of us will ever have available to our libraries. Li- 
 braries will have to buy computer support from sources elsewhere. Not too 
 long ago, however, minicomputers came on the market. Some of you may 
 have minicomputers in your libraries functioning as management support
 
 RESPONSE 95 
 
 systems. Some of those minicomputers can be used for computer-assisted 
 instruction. The minicomputer is an alternative medium, and can be pro- 
 grammed just as well as PLATO is programmed. Given enough direction, 
 the minicomputer will do as much work as PLATO. 
 
 What about minicomputers or, more specifically, microcomputers? I 
 have not had any experience with microcomputers, but last week I was asked 
 for my reactions to a paper to be presented at a conference to be held in 
 1977. In particular, I was asked about microcomputers and their applica- 
 tions in educational activities. Although I do not know anything about them, 
 I do know that some of the media in the new technology are extremely small 
 and can be hooked to keyboards their potential is great. Perhaps Sherwood 
 has the kind of background that can help us look at the uses of the minicom- 
 puter in the learning experience. 
 
 To the administrators attending this conference, I would recommend 
 consideration of the problem of administrative support relative to the care 
 and the feeding of PLATO. Who should be hired? What kinds of people 
 should be hired? How many graduates of the ALA-accredited programs of 
 librarianship are going to know how to handle this kind of tool? I don't 
 know. In fact, I doubt that the Ph.D. graduate from the finest institution is 
 yet ready to handle this tool. This fact scares me. If we are going to place 
 these devices in the library for direct teaching purposes and for development 
 by librarians, then we as administrators must know what is in that system, 
 and for what we are responsible. 
 
 In closing, I would like to comment very briefly on copyright. Computer 
 programs are, in fact, now accepted for copyright registration. This is a 
 result of a 1971 amendment that grants copyright protection to recordings. 
 
 These comments represent fairly well my reactions to Sherwood's excel- 
 lent presentation. The power of the technology that we have with us now is 
 awesome, and I hope that we can continue to develop our ability to utilize it.
 
 R. LYNN CARROLL 
 
 Head, Community Affairs Branch 
 
 Office of Government and Public Programs 
 
 National Science Foundation 
 
 Washington, D.C. 
 
 Project: Knowledge 2000 
 
 rroject: Knowledge 2000, a conference organized by the National 
 Science Foundation, was a unique event as well as an experiment. This was 
 the first time that the foundation, essentially a grant-awarding agency, as- 
 sumed the responsibility for creating and executing a program that it had 
 originated. It was an attempt to discover, if possible, the knowledge needs 
 and requirements for the country in the next twenty-five years by the year 
 2001. Knowledge was defined in the broadest sense: as information organized 
 so as to influence decision-making and to improve the decision-making pro- 
 cess. 
 
 The conference was held in the new, $60 million Xerox facility in Lees- 
 burg, Virginia, which serves as a training center for their management, sales 
 and service personnel. It houses the most up-to-date closed-circuit television 
 facilities in the world. This fact proved to be very advantageous in that two 
 of the primary products for the Knowledge 2000 project were video cassettes 
 and video tapes which were to be used in the place of print products as 
 discussion guides. 
 
 Between 125 and 150 people were assembled for the project. Although 
 it was expected that there would be a high degree of interaction, it was gen- 
 erally accepted that the reasons for attending the conference would vary: 
 (1) conferences break the normal routine; (2) they provide a locale to 
 renew old friendships, make new friends and socialize (and it is my guess 
 that more communication occurs in the social sphere than in the formal 
 professional one) ; and (3) conferences provide exposure, however brief, to 
 
 97
 
 98 CHANGING TIMES: CHANGING LIBRARIES 
 
 some new ideas. It is a very secure feeling to be able to return home with 
 one's briefcase full of papers that may never be read. 
 
 For this project, we broke away from the usual format for such con- 
 ferences. A panel of four persons met in the television studio daily and ad- 
 dressed the particular topic of the day. Each panelist had some specialization 
 in the particular field. The first forum, held in January 1976, considered the 
 need for knowledge, largely in terms of research material; another forum, 
 held in June 1976, discussed the communication of knowledge. Each person 
 related his/her topic both to the needs of the next twenty-five years and to 
 what could be anticipated. 
 
 In addition to the four people in the television studio, six team rooms 
 were set aside in which relatively discrete generic (if you will pardon the 
 expression) groups of people were assembled: (1) people from the academic 
 community; (2) administrators and professionals; (3) the knowledge indus- 
 try representatives, e.g., from McGraw-Hill and Time-Life people whose 
 job it is to communicate various kinds of knowledge; (4) federal government 
 personnel; (5) state and local government personnel, including legislative 
 and judicial persons; and (6) the public advocacy or public interest group, 
 made up primarily of representatives from the League of Women Voters, 
 Common Cause, etc. For the first hour, the panel in the television studio 
 would address a particular topic. After a break, team representatives (not 
 team leaders) would reconvene with the four panelists to discuss various 
 points of view that had been generated in the team rooms. 
 
 As expected, there were some failures and some successes. One failure 
 concerned the process itself. Immediate conflict arose in distinguishing be- 
 tween panel members and team members; everyone wanted to be on tele- 
 vision. We also observed something I believe to be illustrative of our society : 
 this group of decision-makers, representative of various sectors of society, 
 continually talked past each other, did not listen to what others had to say, 
 digested little of what was said, and each busily prepared his/her agenda 
 while someone else was talking. This factor provided many insights into the 
 problem of communication. 
 
 Possibly the worst problem was the high level of frustration the re- 
 sult of the many ideas generated at the conference. It was difficult to grasp 
 and retain any one idea for more than a few minutes, because the next idea 
 demanded attention before the first could be noted on paper. It seems that 
 this frustration was generated not only by the amount of material, but by the 
 fact that television is still largely a mechanism projecting only in a super- 
 ficial way. Diligent effort will be required before television can be used for 
 in-depth communication of material. This may be attributed, in part, to the
 
 PROJECT: KNOWLEDGE 2000 99 
 
 transition from a print to a video culture, and circumstances may therefore 
 change in the future. 
 
 Some of the ideas generated at the conference may not be new to you. 
 Gabriel Almond, a political scientist at Stanford University, spoke about two 
 kinds of movements in society: cyclical and noncyclical (i.e. moving along a 
 spectrum from a sacred to a secular society) . From Almond's point of view, 
 the cyclical movement is event-related. A recent example of cyclical move- 
 ment would be the Great Depression of the 1930s, during which, as part of 
 the cycle, people were psychologically depressed as well as economically de- 
 pressed. Watergate, however, is considered a noncyclical movement, and thus 
 may be dismissed (according to this view) because such movements are 
 somewhat ephemeral. 
 
 The noncyclical movement the spectrum conventionally used by so- 
 ciologists to indicate the movement from a sacred to a secular society ap- 
 pears to be much more important. In a sacred society, religion and family 
 are the traditional vehicles of indoctrination and socialization. In the past, 
 both institutional and individual roles have been ascribed by religion and 
 family; each was assumed to play a particular role. Almond believes that as 
 we move toward secular societies, communication and education play more 
 important roles than either religion or family in the socialization or indoc- 
 trination of children. This concept is applicable to libraries and other institu- 
 tions in our complex society. As we approach the secular society, the emphasis 
 on communication, performance and legitimacy will become a factor of cru- 
 cial importance. In other words, institutions that do not perform will not be 
 considered legitimate, and such organizations (e.g., American Red Cross, Boy 
 Scouts of America, and libraries) will no longer hold their place in society 
 unless they can perform. It is thus not what has been done for me in the 
 past but what can be done for me now that will be important. 
 
 Project discussion groups believed that certain types of knowledge were 
 needed. First, it was believed that most of the knowledge needed in the next 
 twenty-five years would be largely nontechnological, or intuitive. How can 
 intuitive knowledge be enhanced? A surprising amount of the discussion 
 dealt with intuitive knowledge how to reach it, treat it, use it. I suspect 
 that intuitive knowledge is taken for granted much more than it should be. 
 
 Another recurrent theme of the sessions concerned how to obtain knowl- 
 edge that would increase public participation. What kind of knowledge is 
 needed to make institutions self-corrective? At issue again is the self-correc- 
 tive concept, the search for knowledge to empower the powerless a most 
 difficult kind of redistribution process. 
 
 We need to have some knowledge about the incentives necessary to use
 
 100 CHANGING TIMES: CHANGING LIBRARIES 
 
 the present information systems available. What are those incentives? Don 
 Michael, affiliated with the Center for Research and the Utilization of 
 Knowledge at the University of Michigan, asserted that it is simply not true 
 that created knowledge will be used knowledge. Any librarian at the smallest 
 branch library in America knows this. The major problem appears to be how 
 to create situations in which knowledge will be used. The public will not 
 necessarily beat a path to the door of the person who builds a better mouse- 
 trap. 
 
 Robert Hoffman, a professor of the Wilson School of Public Affairs, 
 made what might be considered an indictment of our society when he ex- 
 pressed concern about the burden being placed on knowledge, i.e. that few 
 societies have been given the "state of knowledge" we have. Upon reflection, 
 this is a terribly important consideration that we do give such weight to 
 the operation of our society and the distribution and utilization of that knowl- 
 edge. We are forced to ask : Are we doing as well as we can? 
 
 One of the participants in the project, Doug Cater talked about the 
 future of communications. He went through many tapes generated at the 
 project looking for things that had to do with information systems and with 
 communication in particular. Because it is of possible relevance for librarians, 
 I will relate one point that he raised which I have no way of substantiating, 
 but v/hich seems to ring true. The Aspen Institute, of which Cater is the 
 director, is in Menlo Park, California, and its staff works with Stanford re- 
 search personnel. One Stanford demographer estimated that over one-half 
 of our labor force is currently involved with the manipulation of symbols or 
 words. This is a significant number of people, and among them, librarians 
 are the Madison Avenue word-pushers. Because the process of manipulating 
 symbols and words requires little consumption of energy and raw materials, 
 there may be no limit to the heights to which these processes might go. The 
 point that Cater was trying to make is that conceivably 95-98 percent of 
 our GNP could be employed in this passing of symbols within the next few 
 decades. 
 
 Cater also spoke of the need to correct some trends. One with which I 
 am sure you can all identify is the ever-increasing rate of the growth of tech- 
 nology; of particular concern, because of the economics of it, is the trend 
 toward its concentration, whether in multinational corporations or in govern- 
 ment. In other words, the economics of scale makes it relatively easy to have 
 large concentrations of technology, which has some inherent danger. Control, 
 for instance, comes from the fact that knowledge is power. It has a tendency 
 to create its own hierarchies within (or outside of) which people work. 
 
 Another point that was made during the discussion was that in the field 
 of communications, the consumer usually does not pay for the cost of the
 
 PROJECT: KNOWLEDGE 2000 101 
 
 product. Books are probably the least subsidized form of communication; 
 when you buy a book, you are generally paying for the cost of that book. 
 You do not, however, pay for the cost of a television show, because those 
 costs are subsidized in various ways. 
 
 There was discussion about the information outlaw and two different 
 forms of improper use of information. In the old computerized information 
 systems, the information outlaw could use illegally obtained information that 
 was not leased for use. The other form, which I think has various connota- 
 tions, is the antisocial effect of communications. One example is gratuitous 
 violence, what we know as violence for its own sake, such as that found on 
 television. The point here is that it is one thing for people to go to the theater 
 and pay to see violence, but it is quite another thing to have violence beamed 
 into one's house. At some point the information outlaw becomes truly anti- 
 social in his use of things created for a totally different purpose. 
 
 Another discussion point that was raised centered around the ownership 
 of knowledge and the role of telecopiers, computers, xerography, etc. The use 
 of copyright is becoming obsolete. It may well be that events in the field will 
 be accelerating at such a rapid rate that the new copyright legislation may 
 be outdated by the time it is enacted and implemented. I suppose, however, 
 that some sort of technological metering is needed as a copyright control 
 against people who take the things that have been generated illegally. It was 
 suggested as part of this concentration syndrome that we should strive to 
 obtain more producers or packagers of knowledge; this idea would have 
 relevance for libraries. I will not attempt to pursue this further, because the 
 matter is linked to the problem of reaching the outer limits to which an 
 advertising economy can subsidize communication systems. 
 
 Another topic raised was a concept that originated with Willis Harmon 
 of the Stanford Research Institute. Harmon refers to dilemmas for which 
 there are no right answers. I will discuss just one of these dilemmas. Indus- 
 trialized societies face a growth dilemma; industrialized society needs con- 
 tinued growth for a viable economy. It becomes more and more clear, how- 
 ever, that society cannot tolerate that growth in terms of environmental 
 regulation, energy and material shortage. Given the impact on the life sup- 
 port systems of the deteriorating ozone layer, we are replacing human physi- 
 cal labor with energy-consuming machines. Where does it stop? There does 
 not appear to be a clear answer. 
 
 Harmon made the point that our contemporary society is tied into jobs 
 and employment. There are only three kinds of legitimate societal roles: 
 ( 1 ) those people who have a job, (2) those people who are married to people 
 who have a job, and (3) those people who are educating themselves to get a 
 job. This is an interesting concept to consider in the sense that neither the
 
 102 CHANGING TIMES: CHANGING LIBRARIES 
 
 elderly nor the young have a legitimate role and the uneducated cer- 
 tainly do not. Thus, the question essentially becomes : If we have only three 
 kinds of legitimate societal roles, and if our industrialized society continues 
 to produce more and consequently to employ fewer people, what will the 
 long-term effect be? The following story gives an example of an astounding 
 statistic which I believe is an index of this problem. You may be aware that 
 the Pepsi-Cola Corporation made a business deal with the Soviet government 
 to sell Pepsi in the USSR in exchange for their sale of Russian vodka in the 
 United States. The first of five Pepsi-Cola plants opened in the Soviet Union 
 and produces 60 million colas every year with only 85 employees. I think it 
 is ironic that these figures come from the Soviet Union, but this will become 
 increasingly common as new plants with comparable advancements replace 
 some of our own older plants. 
 
 The paradigm shift has been discussed here frequently, but I suspect 
 that no one has spent too much time on it. It is somewhat abstract, but I 
 believe that one thing we should be aware of is that a value shift is occurring 
 and I do not think that we will value efficiency in the future as much as 
 we have in the past. I think that we will be doing things and creating jobs 
 that are not as efficient in order to give people things to do. I do not know 
 how much longer productivity can continue to be the name of the game. 
 
 A topic continually raised by all the groups in Project : Knowledge 2000 
 was the issue of values, i.e. the role of values in the decision-making process. 
 I wonder if it would have been nearly as intensive a subject a few years ago. 
 I think there has been a consciousness-raising process in the whole area of 
 values what they are, how we use them, how we acquire them, how we 
 discard them. In terms of the paradigm shift, part of the prediction deals 
 with this value-shift of assumptions. There is a new analogy which might be 
 useful in thinking about this approach to paradigm-shift. Ten years ago, 
 earthquakes were thought to be discrete, isolated, upward thrusts of the 
 earth's crust in order to relieve some pressure. As long as this was the over- 
 riding assumption (which is essentially what a paradigm is a perspective 
 or assumption), i.e. that the earth worked in a random, upward-thrust way, 
 no one could seem to understand how or why earthquakes occurred. As a 
 result of research performed largely by NSF grant recipients, the field of 
 plate tectonics has been discovered. This discovery, in a sense, did away with 
 the old paradigm and created a new one. It states that large plates move 
 laterally, and in the course of doing so have an upward as well as a down- 
 ward thrust. By plotting these movements around the world, two significant 
 conclusions have been reached: (1) the historically important continental 
 drift theory is confirmed; and (2) plate tectonics enables prediction not 
 only of where earthquakes will occur, but when. As assumptions become
 
 RESPONSE 103 
 
 reinforced through thinking and sharing ideas, we produce a new set of 
 assumptions which permit us to look at the old activities in new ways and 
 thus allow greater insight into this particular kind of earth mechanics. I will 
 not discuss the paradigm shift further, but this example serves as an analogy 
 to the makeup of this shift. 
 
 Finally, I would like to make some points which are responsive to the 
 fact that we live in a period of extensive, rapid change. What are some of 
 the things we can do, particularly as affiliates of institutions? First, solutions 
 should be viewed as temporary and continuously open to amendment. That 
 may sound very simple, but is often terribly difficult because we have a way 
 of setting things in concrete once we begin instituting solutions. If we can 
 view solutions as temporary while we are instituting them, however, we have 
 taken a long step. Secondly, decisions should be made which are flexible 
 enough to be useful and productive in more than one social configuration. 
 We should also experiment with innovations that provide the mechanics 
 around which broader courses may mobilize and which, at the same time, 
 legitimatize failure (which has not been a distinctive part of our society) . 
 
 JOHN P. MCDONALD 
 
 Director of University Libraries 
 
 University of Connecticut 
 
 Storrs, Connecticut 
 
 Response 
 
 I have been much taken with the high quality of word play at this 
 conference. "Paradigm Lost" is sheer genius, as is George Bonn's "Foresight 
 Saga." A story occurred to me as a result of all this talk about the future; 
 it concerns the futurist writers. Some time ago, the crime writers of America 
 got together and decided that they needed a motto. After they brainstormed
 
 104 CHANGING TIMES: CHANGING LIBRARIES 
 
 awhile, they coined the phrase "Grime doesn't pay . . . enough." This phrase 
 so successfully insinuated the need for better remuneration for crime writers 
 that the science fiction writers became envious and decided that they, too, 
 needed a motto. They put their heads together and decided on : "The future 
 isn't what it used to be." 
 
 My participation in these sessions has convinced me that this particular 
 line, "the future isn't what it used to be," is becoming more and more apt. 
 We have all been trying to see what the future holds, and I am afraid that 
 most of us are not quite sure that it is what we once imagined or hoped it 
 would be. I have been told that Arthur Miller in his new play has used the 
 line, "For Americans the past is a rumor." There is probably a counterpart 
 saying dealing with the future, but I leave it to you to invent. 
 
 I want to begin my remarks with a disclaimer. My comments here are 
 bound to be quite disjointed and may not always deal directly with what 
 Lynn Carroll has said. I only met Carroll last night and just read an outline 
 of his talk at breakfast. I made copious notes as he talked, and I hope that my 
 remarks will relate to what he has said. It seems to me that his presentation 
 forms a useful bridge among the various discussions that have taken place 
 thus far. 
 
 We have heard much about technology, and Carroll has illustrated how 
 technology has been used to display ideas. I think, however, we do want to 
 get back to ideas. We should, if possible, try to see how the many ideas we 
 have heard relate to the alleged theme of this session : the humanities, use of 
 leisure time, and morals. I do not think that any of us is ever very comfort- 
 able in dealing with moral and ethical issues. I certainly am not, and do not 
 plan to say much about them, but I will try to work them in as I go along. 
 
 One of the thoughts that occurred to me about libraries and the humani- 
 ties is that much of the technology that has been and is being developed for 
 libraries seems to be better able to serve the needs of science and technology 
 than of the humanities and the social sciences. I am not quite sure what the 
 implications of this may be, but I am a bit worried about it. One example 
 of this phenomenon is that, for years, we have been devoting a growing per- 
 centage of our acquisitions funds to periodical literature, and particularly to 
 journals in science and technology. A lesser portion of the budget has been 
 allocated to other fields; consequently, a diminishing amount of money has 
 been allocated for monographs and other materials that serve the more 
 bookish fields of history, philosophy and the humanities. Where this trend 
 will end, I am not certain, but I think we may have supported the sciences 
 in university libraries for many years at the expense of the humanities. 
 
 Jesse Shera once wrote an article entitled "How Much is a Physicist's 
 Inertia Worth?" 1 He wrote about the expense of maintaining and providing
 
 RESPONSE 105 
 
 departmental libraries to accommodate the physicist who had only to walk 
 down the hall to get the literature he needed, in contrast to the historians 
 and the humanists, who had to use the central library to find their resources. 
 I think that this concern about how we spend our money our institution's 
 money is analogous to that earlier argument about centralization and de- 
 centralization. Although people like Hugh Atkinson tell us that arguments 
 about centralization or decentralization of library resources will be irrelevant 
 in the new electronic future, we still have much money to spend now for 
 materials in academic libraries. We must be more careful and understand 
 how we are spending our funds and why. We need to find ways to involve 
 more people in the process, i.e. more people than are currently involved. 
 
 Kenneth Thompson talked about the necessity of finding better ways to 
 integrate research and teaching. We have heard echoes of this idea in subse- 
 quent presentations at this conference. As I think about the future of uni- 
 versities and of their libraries, it seems possible that the research capacities 
 of universities may be oriented differently in the future than they have been 
 in the immediate past. In many universities, for instance, the number of 
 unemployable Ph.D.s is already forcing the curtailment of doctoral programs. 
 A recent issue of Chronicle of Higher Education indicated that Louisiana 
 had joined New York State in ending a number of doctoral programs. 2 One 
 result of this kind of policy may be that university-sponsored research will be 
 increasingly undertaken not by graduate students and faculty members, but 
 by postdoctoral fellows and research specialists. Without graduate students 
 to carry part of the teaching load, there will be a major shift in the lifestyle 
 of universities. This may in turn result in some redistribution of funds that 
 university libraries expend for instructional versus research materials. 
 
 I would like to comment, too, on some other educational trends. The 
 trend in this country toward universal higher education may mean that most 
 of our people will soon be "degreed." When this occurs, the emphasis will 
 inevitably shift toward in-service training. Indeed, it is already apparent that 
 there is a bullish market in continuing education with implications for 
 libraries that are only now beginning to be understood. Academic libraries 
 are not presently organized for outreach services, but they should investigate 
 alliances with public libraries and other agencies in order to overcome ob- 
 stacles to the effective delivery of library and information services to off-cam- 
 pus students and groups. This possibility has been mentioned, but it has also 
 been suggested that competition may develop among different types of li- 
 braries. That is a luxury we cannot afford. What is needed is cooperation 
 between academic libraries, which may in some cases have the necessary re- 
 sources, and public libraries, which in most cases have the necessary staff 
 skills and experience to meet these new community needs.
 
 106 CHANGING TIMES: CHANGING LIBRARIES 
 
 Another problem that libraries may be expected to address is the integra- 
 tion of research and teaching. As a nation we have rightly paid attention to 
 research, but we have not paid comparable attention to the process of diffu- 
 sion. Carroll has told us how much money the National Science Foundation 
 spends on research, and I think we should ask the complementary question of 
 how this research reaches society and produces whatever benefits might flow 
 from it. The knowledge gained from research has not always been dissemi- 
 nated in the most useful forms. The mere preparation of research reports is 
 not sufficient. Better ways must be found to bring the benefits of research to 
 society, and at this point libraries may find themselves in an altered role. 
 Obviously, some techniques that have been demonstrated and discussed here 
 may play an important part in the future. How can these newly-created tools 
 be used by libraries to meet very heavy mass needs? It seems clear to me that 
 the whole process of the creation and distribution of scholarly knowledge is 
 currently subject to tremendous strain, and it also seems inevitable that great 
 changes will soon alter the ways in which information is produced and 
 disseminated. 
 
 In that connection, some comments about Sherwood's presentation of 
 the PLATO system seem appropriate. I might note here that last week, 
 partly in preparation for this session and partly at the insistence of one of my 
 colleagues at the University of Connecticut, I went to the university's Health 
 Center in Farmington forty miles away from the main campus to learn 
 what is being done with computer-assisted instruction. Among other things, 
 a number of PLATO terminals are being used by the students in the medical 
 and dental schools. After seeing Sherwood's demonstration, I have a few 
 thoughts on this. (Incidentally, I decided to summon up a lesson on PLATO 
 to see what I could do with it; I did not do well.) The power and promise 
 of PLATO and other interactive media are impressive, but I see some pos- 
 sible problems of equity in their use. Just as the major share of our invest- 
 ment in abstracting and indexing services and on-line bibliographical systems 
 has been devoted to the literature of science and technology, so, I suspect, 
 will the principal efforts to provide courseware for interactive systems be 
 devoted to scientific and technical fields. I do not mean to revive the "two 
 cultures" argument, but I feel that the "have-not" disciplines (history and 
 the other humanities) and, to a lesser extent, the social sciences will not soon 
 share proportionately the benefits that these systems offer. 
 
 Another problem may occur with the development of courseware for 
 these systems. It seems clear that the fashioning of effective courses should 
 not be left entirely to the entrepreneurs. Talented faculty members must be 
 involved along with those who have the graphic and visual skills to help make 
 the teacher's knowledge come alive. A dilemma arises for the college and
 
 RESPONSE 107 
 
 university teacher who takes time to assist in producing good courseware, 
 however. The academic reward system, at least at present, does not place a 
 high premium on such activity. "Publish or perish" is still a way of life, and 
 despite evidence of change, the college professor will still find it safer to work 
 on a book or article than on interactive courses, if he or she is seeking pro- 
 motion or tenure. This could change and probably should, but until it does 
 it may be a serious barrier to the creation and availability of a wide range of 
 effective courseware. Of course, Brong knows more about this than I do, but 
 it is an observation I felt should be made here. 
 
 There have been a number of references throughout the conference to 
 copyright and the effect of copyright on the software used in interactive 
 systems. It is by no means certain that the new copyright law is clear about 
 this question. The fact that the law is not clear may be inferred from the 
 establishment of the Commission on the New Technological Uses of Copy- 
 righted Works which will grapple with some of the implications of these tech- 
 niques. I think it is important to bear in mind that the new copyright law 
 does not go into effect until January 1978, so we have some time to prepare 
 for future fallout. It has been suggested that there might be a road-show on 
 copyright implications, which will be good as long as all of the constituencies 
 are adequately represented. 
 
 The particular copyright arguments going on between publishers and 
 authors on the one hand and libraries on the other is really a conflict be- 
 tween two goods. Copyright is clearly necessary and beneficial to the crea- 
 tion of new knowledge, or to the provision of an incentive for the creation 
 of it; however, copyright was designed to promote the dissemination of new 
 knowledge, and librarians who have been arguing for freedom of access to 
 information had hoped to achieve it without undue penalty to those who 
 created the knowledge. The authors and publishers have very skillfully 
 manipulated the argument and made it appear that libraries were participat- 
 ing in a big ripoff of starving authors and poets and depriving them of their 
 livelihood. The fact of the matter is that nobody buys poetry except libraries, 
 and libraries by and large do not photocopy it. Libraries photocopy quite 
 different things scientific and technical articles, for example. A good case 
 can be made for generous photocopying rights when: (1) an article has 
 been produced as a result of government-sponsored research; (2) an article 
 is published through a subsidy in the form of page charges from a grant- 
 making agency; and (3) the motive of the author is to disseminate the re- 
 sults of this research and not to gain profit from royalties (indeed, he prob- 
 ably doesn't even hold the copyright; the journal publisher does). Thus, it 
 was ludicrous when publishers gathered people like Art Buchwald, Irving 
 Stone, Barbara Tuchman, and Kurt Vonnegut (all millionaires) at a legis-
 
 108 CHANGING TIMES: CHANGING LIBRARIES 
 
 lative reception, and then tried to convince Congress that authors are suffer- 
 ing and that librarians are responsible. What is most interesting to me is 
 that it didn't work. All the power and influence of these people who have 
 access to the media was not sufficient to persuade Congress to pass a law 
 which would seriously inhibit the public's access to information. The voices 
 of librarians, and of the societies and the associations to which they belong, 
 finally prevailed, and in the eleventh hour secured a compromise bill from 
 the House subcommittee dealing with copyright. I think that it is a credit 
 to librarianship and to our democratic system. 
 
 During the copyright debate I was executive director of the Association 
 of Research Libraries in Washington, D.C., and I wrote a letter to Senator 
 McClellan that I hoped would have some effect on the Senate subcommittee 
 that was dealing with copyright. The letter did not actually make any points 
 with the Senate, but one of the things I said in it touches on the question of 
 pay libraries. There is a real policy issue here about information. Carroll 
 alluded to knowledge power, and information is unquestionably equivalent 
 to power. That is the idea I tried to convey to Senator McClellan in my 
 letter: 
 
 In our technological society there can be no doubt that information is 
 the equivalent of power economic power, political power, and intel- 
 lectual power. Information is the essence of education and it is as de- 
 sirable that the citizens of this country have free access to information 
 through a healthy and unencumbered system of libraries as it is that each 
 person have access to a good education at public expense. But informa- 
 tion, like education, is costly, and not every citizen is equally able to 
 afford it. It is crucial therefore that information be viewed as a national 
 resource to be used for the benefit of all and not as a commodity to be 
 sold to the highest bidder. To repeat, there is a public interest in infor- 
 mation and that interest must be preserved and safeguarded from those 
 who would profit from every citizen's natural desire to enjoy the eco- 
 nomic, political and social benefits that information can bestow. 
 
 I would like to comment on another topic discussed at this conference. 
 Given the tendency of any organization or bureaucracy to adhere to the 
 status quo, do librarians do much, if anything, to effect change? I believe 
 that they can, and in academic libraries, for instance, there are literally 
 dozens of examples to prove it. As executive director of the Association of 
 Research Libraries, I worked closely with the Office of University Library 
 Management Studies administered by the association. That office is supported 
 by a Council on Library Resources grant. One of the principal achievements 
 of that office was the development and application of the Management, Re-
 
 RESPONSE 109 
 
 view and Analysis Program (MRAP), presently being applied in more than 
 twenty large research libraries. MRAP is a guided self-study technique for 
 evaluating and exploring management practices at all levels, and for bringing 
 about constructive change based upon the findings of the self-study. Man- 
 agement practices at all levels, from the director down to the departmental 
 level, are examined. Every policy is scrutinized; committee structure is stud- 
 ied, and communications systems are tested. Staff at all levels are involved in 
 the process and the resulting changes ensure future staff participation in de- 
 cision-making, particularly those decisions which affect staff members directly 
 and personally. MRAP has been fully described in the literature, and it is 
 hoped that the knowledge that has been gained from the application of this 
 program in large libraries can be modified and used in smaller libraries. The 
 process was applied and implemented, among other places, at the University 
 of Connecticut libraries. It seems to me that the results, at least in our situa- 
 tion, have been extremely fruitful. The staff believe that change can be 
 brought about partly through their own efforts, and therefore they want some 
 access to decision-making. Staff members have an increasing sense of self- 
 worth, and one of the greatest benefits, as I see it, is the surprising strengths 
 which are revealed once people are permitted to assert themselves. Unless 
 this kind of change takes place in libraries, people will be pigeonholed and 
 categorized and their qualities may never be appreciated, understood or 
 utilized. 
 
 In the debate about leisure time and its uses in our society, it seems that 
 there are a number of countervailing forces. Although workweeks are appar- 
 ently shorter for many people, there is a growing tendency among this same 
 group to use newly available time for moonlighting. This may in part be a 
 response to the economic situation, including the effects of inflation, but it 
 may also be a response to the uncertainty of how to use available time or 
 it might simply be disenchantment with the nature of many leisure-time 
 activities. On the other hand, many professionals and administrators seem to 
 have less leisure time rather than more. Academic people, who are believed 
 to have a soft life with vast stretches of time for deep thought, seem rather 
 to be busier than ever, so much so that they may not now be doing enough 
 thinking of any kind, deep or otherwise. 
 
 A third observation has to do with what I think is a somewhat new 
 spirit among young people, born perhaps of student activism (even though 
 it no longer takes the same form). I am speaking here of involvement 
 sometimes real commitment, but often just healthy activity of one kind or 
 another. Consumer advocacy, political involvement, environmental aware- 
 ness, outdoor activities such as backpacking and bicycling rather than spec-
 
 110 CHANGING TIMES: CHANGING LIBRARIES 
 
 tator sports all of these and more seem to be responses to additional leisure 
 time. This might be called constructive leisure and seems to be a positive 
 new element. 
 
 Kenneth Thompson brought up what appears to be the makings of a 
 substantial debate on the subject of morals and ethics, i.e. whether they can 
 or should be taught in universities. He mentioned Paul Freund, and I noticed 
 that in the latest issue of Change magazine, Derek Bok, the president of 
 Harvard, has written an article entitled "Can Ethics be Taught?" In short, 
 Bok joins Freund in supporting the notion that morals and ethics can be 
 taught in universities, and he very clearly feels that they should be. Bok con- 
 cludes his article as follows and I will make this the end of my presenta- 
 tion: 
 
 But is the effort [to teach ethics] worth making? I firmly believe that it 
 is. Even if courses in applied ethics turned out to have no effect what- 
 soever on the moral development of our students, they would still make 
 a contribution. There is value to be gained from any course that forces 
 students to think carefully and rigorously about complex human prob- 
 lems. The growth of such courses will also encourage professors to give 
 more systematic study and thought to a wide range of contemporary 
 moral issues. Now that society is expressing greater concern about ethics 
 in the professions and in public life, work of this kind is badly needed, 
 for it is surprising how little serious, informed writing has been devoted 
 even to such pervasive moral issues as lying and deception. But beyond 
 these advantages, one must certainly hope that courses on ethical prob- 
 lems will affect the lives and thought of students. We cannot be certain 
 of the impact these courses will have. But certainty has never been the 
 criterion for educational decisions. Every professor knows that much of 
 the information conveyed in the classroom will soon be forgotten. The 
 willingness to continue teaching rests on an act of faith that students 
 will retain a useful conceptual framework, a helpful approach to the 
 subject, a valuable method of analysis, or some other intangible residue 
 of intellectual value. Much the same is true of courses on ethical prob- 
 lems. Although the point is still unproved, it does seem plausible to 
 suppose that the students in these courses will become more alert in 
 perceiving ethical issues, more aware of the reasons underlying moral 
 principles, and more equipped to reason carefully in applying these 
 principles to concrete cases. Will they behave more ethically? We may 
 never know. But surely the experiment is worth trying, for the goal has 
 never been more important to the quality of the society in which we 
 live. 8
 
 RESPONSE 111 
 
 This is a trend. It is one that will deeply affect libraries of all types, and it 
 is one that we should all watch and observe carefully. 
 
 REFERENCES 
 
 1. Shera, Jesse H. "How Much is a Physicist's Inertia Worth?" Physics Today 
 14:42-63, Aug. 1961. 
 
 2. Winkler, Karen J. "18 Doctoral Programs Ordered Ended by Louisiana 
 Regents," Chronicle of Higher Education 13:9, Nov. 8, 1976. 
 
 3. Bok, Derek C. "Can Ethics be Taught?" Change 8:30, Oct. 1976.
 
 HAROLD G. SHANE 
 
 University Professor of Education 
 
 Indiana University 
 Bloomington, Indiana 
 
 Education in America: The 
 Next Twenty-five Years 
 
 I am very pleased and very happy to be with this group because of 
 my long-standing respect and appreciation for librarians. You cannot begin 
 to work on hundreds of publications many of them research-oriented 
 without being aware of the kind of selfless dedication that I have always 
 associated with librarians. I would like to share with you some general in- 
 formation about the future which I think is of common importance not only 
 to librarians, but to persons in all lines of work. I hope that you will make 
 allowances for some of the gaps in my knowledge with respect to the future 
 as it pertains to library science. I will begin by reviewing my own experiences 
 in the field of future studies. 
 
 I would like to share with you particularly the past five extremely excit- 
 ing years of my life. During that time I had a chance to work on a volume 
 entitled Educational Significance of the Future, which is based on interviews 
 with people such as Willis Harmon, personnel at the RAND Corporation, 
 and others. I will also digress a bit and discuss some of the insight I gained on 
 various questions about moral values in the future while working for a foun- 
 dation in St. Louis. Finally, I will discuss something of great interest to me 
 in the last year: the National Education Association (NEA) bicentennial 
 project on which I had a chance to work. This project was an attempt not 
 only to revise the seven cardinal principles of education in order to accom- 
 modate a new century, but also to probe the minds of approximately fifty 
 distinguished world citizens for answers to three questions: What is your 
 image of the world in the next twenty to twenty-five years? What are some 
 of the educational responsibilities and imperatives that will confront an edu- 
 
 113
 
 114 CHANGING TIMES: CHANGING LIBRARIES 
 
 cator in the next twenty-five years? Do the old cardinal principles, where 
 they hold membership and are still valid, help to command the fundamental 
 processes? I will slight that last question because a 16-page special section 
 of Today's Education summarized the research, and NEA is publishing my 
 book called Curriculum Change Toward the 21st Century, on possible 
 changes in the structure, goals and processes in American education. 
 
 This is preamble, however, and without intending to patronize, and 
 recognizing that I have much to learn in the field myself, I would like to 
 share with you some of the things I learned about the methodical study of 
 the future. I will then shift my discussion to the images of tomorrow's world 
 and their implications for persons in education, especially those in the field 
 of library science. This is a big order and the problem is not whether I will 
 succeed, but how closely I will escape failure to cover these various points 
 in an hour's time. 
 
 Incidentally, I would like to justify the way in which I have turned 
 outside the profession to persons like Norman Cousins, Helvi Sipila (the 
 head of the Women's International Year) , Elise Boulding and many others 
 in my inquiries this last year. Back home in Indiana, we tell a story about an 
 interesting event that occurred in Kokomo. Monday through Friday, always 
 shortly before noon, the telephone company received a phone call from a 
 male voice asking for the time. Of course, in the informal atmosphere of a 
 relatively small town, the ladies and gentlemen on duty wondered who was 
 so invariably interested five days a week in the time of day. Finally the 
 supervisor, emboldened by curiosity, asked the caller if he would mind ex- 
 plaining why he always asked for the time. The Hoosier voice, in its rich 
 accents, said, "I'm Bill Smith over at the Kokomo Box Factory and it's my 
 duty to blow the noon whistle just on time, and everybody knows the tele- 
 phone company has the right time." As he listened for a moment for a re- 
 joinder, the supervisor's voice came over in a strangled fashion and said, 
 "Sweet Jesus, we have been setting our clock by your whistle for twenty 
 years!" That is supposed to be a true story, but my point, lest you forget the 
 point and remember the story (which would be a catastrophe in terms of 
 any intelligence of my message), is this: sometimes, in the field of education, 
 we tend to talk to one another to set our own clocks, so to speak, by one 
 another's docks. That is one reason why, in looking ahead twenty years or so, 
 I felt it made sense not only to interview some outstanding educationists such 
 as Ben Bloom and Bob Havighurst, but also to see what the David Rocke- 
 fellers, the Sir Walter Perrys (who currently have in the Open University 
 probably the most important experiment in English education), and others 
 had to say about the future. 
 
 Now I will turn back and plagiarize a title, African Genesis^ in order to
 
 EDUCATION IN AMERICA 115 
 
 explain how I became interested in futures research. I supervised a project 
 in the heartlands of Nigeria. One of our contracts was designed to see 
 what could be done with primarily illiterate populations to accelerate the 
 education so desperately needed in that area. One of the persons with whom 
 I worked was a RAND employee. I had not then heard of futures research, 
 and when he told me it was his specialty, I asked him to tell me a little bit 
 about it. One of the really striking things that he told me was a story of how 
 RAND, in the late 1950s, had answered the following question from the 
 Air Force. The Air Force wondered what the result would be of an atomic 
 or nuclear attack on the United States in the manner of Pearl Harbor. What 
 would the devastation be, and what would happen to the people in the 
 United States? In order to answer an unanswerable question, the RAND 
 staff made some early forms of videotapes which portrayed, from different 
 angles, the way a screen would look on a radar set as one moved from one 
 distant early warning station to another. They accumulated about thirty 
 tapes which recorded what people would have reported to the Supreme Air 
 Command in Colorado if there had been a real attack. They did so on the 
 basis of the blips that were simulated on the screen at the different centers 
 each one had to be different, of course, because of the different lines of 
 flight. This information was then collected and given to the Supreme Air 
 Command in Colorado, where it was announced that messages from the 
 thirty centers would at some time be piped into the communication system 
 as if they were taking place simultaneously. The Supreme Air Command per- 
 sonnel would then give orders indicating what counter-measures to take to 
 stop the ICBMs, the planes, etc. 
 
 The results were worked out through probability analysis by computer, 
 and they were pretty grim. RAND Corporation found that 57 million Amer- 
 icans would be killed in such a sneak attack. On the basis of more recent 
 data which I received from a friend who is a brigadier at the Supreme Com- 
 mand, approximately 138 million Americans would be killed in such an 
 attack now, regardless of what might be done to defend them. Moreover, 
 this figure does not include the Mexicans and Canadians who might acci- 
 dentally be hit by radiation. 
 
 This dramatic story really inspired me and I began to look around to 
 see if I had been missing something all these years. I learned a number of 
 interesting things, including the fact that futures studies began in the 1700s. 
 Louis XIV, for example, uneasy about his teetering regime, commissioned 
 his foreign minister to study what France could do to mediate or influ- 
 ence the future and maintain the royal family line. He came up with what 
 he called "reason conjectures," and through his studies tried to establish: 
 ( 1 ) with whom the French should make treaties, ( 2 ) to whom members of
 
 776 CHANGING TIMES: CHANGING LIBRARIES 
 
 the noble family should be married, (3) who should be married to specific 
 dukes, etc., in order to attract the largest number of allies with the largest 
 number of soldiers who might then align themselves with the royal family. 
 Unfortunately, he made a mistake that many futurists have made : he did not 
 look for the exceptional, but merely a continuation of the status quo. He 
 therefore made no attempt to anticipate the unexpected (such as the forth- 
 coming French Revolution). Only the sans-culottes (the revolutionaries who 
 plundered Versailles and found this interesting document in the strongbox) 
 had a chance to study the report. 
 
 Modern futures studies began about 1942-43, although there is really 
 no way of pinning down that date. It was before the war effort had reached 
 its culmination that the event occurred that ended adolescence for human- 
 kind. At the University of Chicago, a group of the most able men and women 
 were gathered to devise a mathematical model which would later be trans- 
 lated into the atomic bomb. About two years before Hiroshima, on the basis 
 of their efforts to mediate and study the future, a group of Americans and 
 others celebrated the fact that they had successfully exploded the first com- 
 puterized model of an atomic bomb under the stands at Stagg Field. The 
 model later became the bomb that first hit Hiroshima and later Nagasaki. 
 
 By this time I had become extremely enchanted with the matter of 
 looking into the future. While reading an issue of Educational Horizons, I 
 came across a phrase that I had never heard before, but which I thought 
 was a marvelously descriptive term: "future shock." It is a term which is 
 very familiar now, of course, but was then written by a virtually unknown 
 author. 
 
 Having described this background, I will discuss four methodical devel- 
 opments in futures study that have occurred in the last fifteen years. Most 
 attempts to look ahead in the early 1960s were based on a linear projection. 
 Persons who studied the future at that time generally thought that the best 
 approach was to begin with the present and decide how various trends (e.g., 
 oil depletion, population trends) could be translated into an image of ten 
 years hence, and what could be done in the meantime to adjust to it. By 
 1965, however, futurists began to think that this was not enough. They real- 
 ized that there was not any single future, but that the future was fan-shaped 
 and could take any of a variety of shapes, depending on our adjustment to 
 it. For example, John Kennedy once said, "We will put a man on the moon"; 
 this was a decision about the future which caused a particular future to be 
 realized. Almost everything happens for a reason, and this is certainly a case 
 in point. Between 1968 and 1970 futurists and thoughtful people were begin- 
 ning to see that there was more to the study of the future than a fan-shaped 
 future. They began to see that developments in the fields of physics, chemis-
 
 ED U CATION IN AMERICA 1 1 7 
 
 try and other disciplines paralleled the things happening, for instance, in 
 education. They saw that these developments overlapped and that we had 
 what is called a "cross-impact situation." What was happening in holography, 
 for example, was going to influence what was happening in education. 
 
 In early 1975 the NEA Bicentennial Planning Committee decided to 
 review the seven basic random principles of education, and asked me to 
 interview a variety of people to get their opinions and solidify this informa- 
 tion. We gathered influential American educators, including Wilson Riles, 
 the state superintendent from California ; Ted Sizer, former dean at Harvard 
 and head of the School of Andover ; Louis Berman ; and Alvin Loving, Sr. 
 
 We decided to ask those interviewed the three questions I mentioned 
 earlier: What is the world going to be like? What does this mean for edu- 
 cation? Are the old principles still valid? We also selected approximately 250 
 persons whose responses would be of interest to NEA, ranging from Muham- 
 med Ali to Nobel prize-winners. Among those we actually worked with were 
 people I have already mentioned (Helvi Sipila, Elise Boulding, Norman 
 Cousins) ; Patsy T. Mink, the congresswoman from Hawaii; Studs Terkel; 
 Jonas Salk; Norman Lear; Raul Castro, governor of Arizona; John Johnson, 
 editor and publisher of Ebony; and David Rockefeller. On the basis of the 
 views of these persons, about eight or nine characteristics of the future 
 in education were defined, to which I will now turn. 
 
 I am reminded of something that Will Rogers said about American 
 schools back in the 1920s when I broached the topic of scholarly education 
 with him: "The schools ain't what they used to be and they probably never 
 was." As you look at the images of tomorrow, I think one might say that the 
 "future ain't what it used to be and it probably never was," because we en- 
 visioned it in a totally different context in the 1930s and 1940s than we do 
 now. 
 
 One of the first things that became very clear from the eighty hours of 
 tape produced was the fact that we are, unfortunately, reaching the end of 
 a hydrocarbon age and are not doing very much about it. We all know that 
 we have major energy crises that a child of two, by the time he reaches the 
 end of eighth grade, might very well find himself in a land bereft of all natu- 
 ral gas and oil at today's consumption rates, if we are totally on our own re- 
 sources. These consumption rates are fantastic. In 1975 we were using five 
 barrels of oil for every one barrel we had used twenty years earlier. Of 18 
 billion barrels used daily, 10 billion are imported and imports are increasing 
 at an alarming rate. Costs, of course, may go up between 5-10 percent and 
 30-40 percent, depending on how the oil-producing countries finally decide 
 to handle the problem. 
 
 Because of the automobile, this is a world totally different from the one
 
 118 CHANGING TIMES: CHANGING LIBRARIES 
 
 in which I grew up ; today, many people cannot shop without one. Not only 
 is the decline of the hydrocarbon age important because of the way our auto- 
 mobiles trap us, but also because of the way in which oil relates to America's 
 agricultural mural. We are the only nation with any significant grain exports 
 far more than Australia, Argentina and Canada combined. In fact, one 
 or two of our states produce more grain than all other exporting nations in 
 the world. This agricultural miracle is based to a substantial degree on the 
 use of petroleum-based fertilizers; thus, in a time when great hunger is in 
 the offing (according to persons like Theodore Hesburgh, chairman of the 
 board of World Development Corporation), we could have a double tragedy 
 here. Americans are presently using three times the energy per capita of the 
 Swiss, and twice the energy consumption of the West Germans. Although I 
 doubt all of these facts are new to you, the total composite is pretty shocking. 
 
 A corollary of this is the fact that we are very probably faced with the 
 need to contemplate a postextravagant society. I will not call it a postaffluent 
 society, but I do think that ours will become more a postextravagant than a 
 postindustrial society. This very clearly means that we can postpone and 
 delay, with parsimony, some of the problems ahead of us, but we simply 
 must develop a post-Pearl Harbor type of attack on the domestic problem 
 of energy. It is a major issue that is downplayed by most politicians, I think, 
 partly because of the present frustrating lack of any viable answers. 
 
 This postextravagant society is one in which there is a difficult and 
 subtle psychological problem that arises in the classroom. When my grand- 
 father was a young man working six and one-half days a week in Chicago, 
 he looked forward with longing to a world in which life would be a little 
 easier. I began to see people realize many of the things that we as under- 
 graduates had clamored for in the last years of the depression. We began to 
 see not merely the political promise of a chicken in every pot, not just one 
 car in every garage, but two cars in every garage and sometimes the cata- 
 strophic problem of storing a snowmobile or boat in the garage along with the 
 two automobiles. We reached a point early in the 1950s where every man, 
 woman and child in the United States could ride simultaneously (if not for 
 the traffic jams), because of the number of autos we had. In 1973-74, we 
 had 100 automobiles for every 4 the Russians had. We believed this kind of 
 material gain would end much of the anguish of the human spirit and we 
 were dead wrong. By the 1960s many young persons were demanding things 
 for which we had longed. 
 
 In one of his most recent writings, Bell talks about the revolution in 
 entitlements, where persons expect that the world owes them a living. This 
 kind of thing has an ominous note to it for an obvious reason. Many young 
 persons today are not motivated because, with the likelihood of employment
 
 EDUCATION IN AMERICA 119 
 
 insurance, guaranteed wages and other prospects, they do not face the chill 
 of hunger. Many bright young people, however, also realize that there is not 
 enough affluence to go around. Thus, there is neither the "carrot" nor the 
 "club," and I can only hope for a careful, evolutionary revaluation of what 
 we believe in and what we are taught. 
 
 In addition to the concept of our moving into a postaffluent era, we will 
 very possibly find ourselves severely reappraising the "growth-is-good" process 
 that motivated us for as long as we have had industrial revolutions. We might 
 look at Kurt Schumacher's idea that "small is beautiful." 
 
 In the matter of reexamining "growth-is-good," I had a rather fascinat- 
 ing dialogue with a former classmate of mine, Walter Heller, the Regents 
 Professor of Economics at the University of Minnesota, who is a distinguished 
 economist and was a major adviser, if not senior adviser, to both Johnson 
 and Kennedy. As we looked at the possible shape of the next twenty to fifty 
 years, we came up with a model showing that we would move into a cylin- 
 drical phase where the balance between outgo and input was more in line, 
 i.e. a somewhat stable state. Approximately between 1995 and 2000, we need 
 to envision something like an inverted funnel at the top of that cylinder, 
 which would be a dynamic contraction of what we are using, and with a 
 narrower kind of cylinder going upward. This dynamic contraction relates 
 to our need to learn in the next twenty years how to do more with less. 
 Telstar, for example, which does a much better job of sending telephone calls 
 across the Atlantic than cables, has one-tenth ton of copper inside it; the 
 total number of cables needed to carry the same amount of traffic conven- 
 tionally on the ocean floor would weigh 75,000 tons. In this period of dy- 
 namic infraction, we need not totally do without, but must learn how to make 
 one-tenth ton do some of the work that 75,000 tons were required to do 
 earlier. 
 
 Rather than thinking only about how to miniaturize, how to work more 
 efficiently, we must also consider what is happening to our imports. An in- 
 dustrial nation like the United States needs to import thirteen basic ingredi- 
 ents, including iron, steel, coal, chromium, tin (from Rhodesia), oil (from 
 the Middle East), etc. In 1974-75 we imported approximately 50 percent of 
 materials listed above; by 1985, unless we find new domestic reserves, we will 
 be importing eleven of the thirteen at approximately a 50 percent level. This 
 suggests that we need not only to practice parsimony, but to rethink our 
 actions many times. 
 
 The next point that seemed to characterize the dialogues we had with 
 our fifty consultants was a frightening one. Most felt that we faced the pros- 
 pect of what I will call "regulated freedom" ; the opportunity to do what one
 
 120 CHANGING TIMES: CHANGING LIBRARIES 
 
 chooses something we have always prized in America was being recon- 
 sidered. 
 
 One man, for example, pointed out that the promises of social welfare 
 for more and more people were going to necessitate restrictions. If, according 
 to Wilbur Cohen, one of the midwives of the Social Security years, we are 
 to have guaranteed minimum wages, guaranteed employment, etc., a lot of 
 regulations and directions will undoubtedly be required by 1995. One of our 
 problems is to learn how to live with this without losing the freedoms which 
 we have always prized in this country. 
 
 Regulated freedom may very well become a threat as well as a need in 
 the next twenty to twenty-five years. It already has happened in a number of 
 countries. Margaret Mead said that we will probably have what is called a 
 "string-saving society," or one that will involve a great deal of recycling. We 
 must, if we want to leave something for our posterity, think of ourselves as 
 users rather than consumers. 
 
 A couple of grim thoughts arise here, however. We have heard about 
 the population and about how we are being squeezed by numbers. I was 
 appalled by some of the information I received about the gravity of this 
 problem. I learned, for example, that after subtracting deaths from births, 
 we are adding 200,000 mouths per day to the world population, which means 
 a city the size of Houston every 10 days, and a state the size of South Dakota 
 or Montana every 4 days. This is a dangerous problem because of its expo- 
 nential quality. It was estimated that there were about 12 million human 
 beings alive in the year 10,000 B.C., about the population of greater London. 
 In the 1860s there were 1 billion human beings. In late 1975 or early 1976, 
 we passed our fourth billion. Demographic projections suggest that in view of 
 the number of women of child-bearing age and the rate at which the pop- 
 ulation is increasing, and assuming there are no changes in the next decade, 
 there will be 1 billion persons born between 1985 and 1994, making the 
 population almost 7 billion by 2001. 
 
 This is a catastrophe for a variety of reasons, but I will touch on only 
 one or two of them. Much of this growth is appearing in places that can 
 least afford and least support it. Four of the five nations that produced al- 
 most one-half of this enormous 200,000 additional mouths per day are Bang- 
 ladesh, India, Pakistan, and Indonesia and this is despite efforts on the 
 part of Indira Gandhi and others to try to cut back the population. Inciden- 
 tally, the country with the greatest rate of reproduction at the present time 
 is Mexico; 50 percent of the population of Mexico is fifteen years old or 
 younger. It has been estimated also that the number of Caribbean youth in 
 Mexico (Caribbean and Isthmanian states) will probably jump from around 
 1 7 to 35 million in the next twenty years. If we think we have many Latinos
 
 EDUCATION IN AMERICA 121 
 
 moving into the United States and no way of restricting the flow now, in the 
 1990s there will virtually be a constant movement unless we drastically 
 change our immigration policies and that is not going to be easy in a 
 world where we need mutual reciprocity and mutual support. Demographic 
 studies have also shown that in 1975, 1 million human beings starved to 
 death and 10 million suffered brain damage or permanent physical damage 
 because they did not have enough to eat in their first year of life, or because 
 their mothers were undernourished during their pregnancies. This is a catas- 
 trophic problem in light of the impact that persons who are defective may 
 have upon the world's population problems. Of course, related to this are the 
 problems of hunger and population, the wear and tear on our globe, and the 
 serious problem of pollution. 
 
 Another item to be considered is the matter of emergent changes re- 
 garding our relationships with the third world. There are many persons in 
 the third world (sometimes also called the fourth or even fifth world) . These 
 nations are aware of the overconsumption of nations such as ours, and the 
 problems to which it leads. Merely redividing what we have on a completely 
 equitable basis does not provide a solution to that problem, either. Thus, we 
 must look very carefully at how we are going to handle this overconsumption. 
 Heilbroner remarked some years ago that if the typical American or Cana- 
 dian family were changed by some magical movement into a family typical 
 of 50 percent of the world's population, these persons would be stripped of 
 all their clothes, except one suit or one piece of clothing for every person and 
 a pair of shoes for the father of the family. Journals and papers of all kinds 
 would disappear, all bank accounts would be destroyed, the house that people 
 lived in forgotten (the family will have moved into the tool shed behind the 
 house), and the nearest hospital facilities transformed into a clinic ten miles 
 away with only one trained midwife. You would also give the family an an- 
 nual income of $300, of which the father would pay $100 to the landlord 
 and another $100 to the usurious gentleman who loaned him the money for 
 seed, and keep $100 to support his family for 365 days. This is a very difficult 
 type of situation, and the third world is going to apply more and more pres- 
 sure, just as the oil-producing nations are doing. 
 
 There is a fishhook in this, however. In a paper that, to my knowledge, 
 has never been published, the president of the British Historical Association 
 pointed out that nations such as Iraq that are seeking to industrialize are 
 planning to increase their share of the world's gross national product (one 
 might call it the gross world product) from 7 percent to 25 percent by the 
 turn of the century. We might cheer that these nations will be able to live 
 better and we will thus have less to carry, but there is a danger in this. In 
 order to maintain our unemployment at its present level, we must increase
 
 722 CHANGING TIMES: CHANGING LIBRARIES 
 
 our own productivity by 4 percent every year or, according to the Brookings 
 Institution, by 7 percent. Britain is in bad shape. Japan Herman Kahn said 
 a few years ago that the next century might be Japan's century is in dire 
 straits. These countries are now faced with an enormous amount of competi- 
 tion from Iran and Taiwan, and this fact could totally change the patterns 
 that the western world has known (industrially speaking) for the last 150 
 years. This is something that we will hear more about. These items ought to 
 be matters of public discussion, information and debate, but they are part 
 of the iceberg that never even surfaced in any of the political discussions that 
 I heard during the heated campaigns (possibly because there were only frus- 
 trating answers, temporarily, that could be given) . 
 
 Another item is the matter of some of the fiscal difficulties into which 
 we are drifting. One of our consultants, Wilbur Cohen, well known for his 
 work on Social Security legislation, told me flatly that, as matters now stand, 
 our Social Security system faces bankruptcy by 1980. It was never intended 
 to be actuarially sound, and vast additional sums have to be pulled from 
 somewhere. Originally there were seven workers for every pension; in 1973 
 there were 3.4 workers for every pension; and by 1985 there will be 2 
 workers for every pension. 
 
 The difficulties with Social Security point up another phenomenon : the 
 aging of America. Twenty years ago the median age of our population was 
 around 17 or 18 years of age, but between now and 1985 or 1990, the median 
 age will range from 25 to 35 years of age; and by the turn of the century, 
 there will be a 50 percent increase in the Gray Panthers, jumping from 20 
 to 30 million people. All of these people are going to have an enormous im- 
 pact on our lives, and the political impact will certainly be tremendous. 
 Nevertheless, these things are not yet seeping into our minds. 
 
 To compound the population problem, we are under considerable finan- 
 cial stress. In the past ten years the cost of social benefits has risen 738 per- 
 cent from $13.3 billion in 1964 to $111.5 billion in the fiscal year ending last 
 June. In addition, $108 billion was plowed into American public education; 
 $116 billion into various kinds of subsidies, such as Medicare; and the cost of 
 pensions for retired military personnel has been projected as $8 billion for 
 fiscal 1979. Ironically, in 1937 during Roosevelt's administration, the total 
 cost of federal government payments for past, present and future wars was 
 only $1 million more than the cost of pensions for the ex-servicemen and 
 ex-servicewomen in the late 1970s and 1980s. Consequently, I foresee some 
 economic discomfort that I think is going to be pretty difficult for us. 
 
 In short, the world is one in which I think we can live with some belt- 
 tightening, but one in which we need to live with a certain kind of insight 
 and understanding. There is little evidence yet, however, that we are in a
 
 EDUCATION IN AMERICA 123 
 
 position to encourage our legislators to support any type of future planning; 
 yet I know from reading the legislation that our legislators, at least a number 
 of them, are completely aware of these forecasts. 
 
 Despite the troubled kind of world that has been projected by the 
 persons I have consulted, there is a surprisingly gratifying, strong feeling 
 that we will make it. I will try to identify why, in view of all the gloom and 
 doom, people like Norman Cousins and Lear are optimistic. Although all of 
 these reasons are very speculative, of course, one reason is that human beings 
 have had a marvelous track record; they have had a high survival quotient 
 all these years, and there is no reason to suspect that they should suddenly 
 try to commit species suicide. Second, is the interesting point that David 
 Rockefeller made, i.e. a trend is not necessarily a picture of reality, it is a 
 picture of what will happen if we do not mend our ways. If you will recall, 
 Scrooge in Dickens's Christmas Carol says to the Ghost of Christmas-yet-to- 
 come, "Spirit, are these shadows of what must be or of what may be?" The 
 spirit does not answer, but Scrooge assumes that he can change, and he does 
 and Tiny Tim does not die. 
 
 In the same way, the various future reports have value because they 
 have alerted us to what can happen if pollution goes unchecked for another 
 fifty years; or to what will happen to food if population growth is unchecked. 
 This does not mean, however, that we are going to die on our backs. The 
 reports, as Rockefeller, Margaret Mead and others have repeatedly said, 
 merely suggest what we are challenged to do. Humans are adaptable and 
 would be stupid indeed to continue polluting to the point where we would 
 all be dead when we realize there are ways to restrain it. 
 
 Another item that would seem to suggest optimism is the fact that we 
 do have time to avert disaster before it closes in on us. About twenty years 
 remain before we face the risk of doing irreversible damage, in terms of 
 population, resource depletion, and in terms of living on a planet that would 
 be insupportable for most of its conceivably 8 or 9 billion inhabitants. This 
 time offers us years to make the social decisions more carefully, e.g., to deal 
 with the kind of legislation that Hubert Humphrey proposed about nine 
 months ago. 
 
 Another item, which I prefer not to consider as completely idiotic ideal- 
 ism, is that human beings are improvable and that this trend, if it continues, 
 will help us. In the year 1900, it was a pretty lousy world even in America. 
 Children slept under newspapers on the barges of New York; women were 
 little better than chattels for some years after that; people like my father-in- 
 law quit school out of necessity at the end or middle of fourth grade to work 
 as a breaker boy in the coal mines of Wilkes-Barre. Until about 1914, there 
 were youngsters in Illinois aged eight or nine working fourteen hours a day
 
 124 CHANGING TIMES: CHANGING LIBRARIES 
 
 under the most hazardous of circumstances, without any child labor laws to 
 protect them. Skipping to the present, today you would never find a presi- 
 dent saying "I took the canal!" as Teddy Roosevelt did; or a publisher like 
 Hearst fermenting the war with Spain, only to have us discover in 1976 that 
 the explosion that sank the Maine came from within and not from a torpedo 
 shot from the dock. We would not find, I think, the ideas of the League of 
 Nations being rejected. The diffusing of many of our problems at the present 
 time, I think, has a most important and optimistic impact on this. 
 
 Another reason for optimism is the fact that we still have a lot of clout. 
 One of the magazines I try to read rather lamely to see what others think of 
 us is the French Paris Match. The author of a recent article believed that 
 250 million Europeans have far less clout, in terms of what can be done, 
 than do 205 million Americans. The article went on to point out how well 
 we stood (by comparison) on wheat, cattle, electricity, computers, telephones, 
 etc. We can and will find the answers, and I think the lifestyles will not be 
 any worse than what I enjoyed in the 1920s. 
 
 I once asked Norman Cousins, "Are you an optimist or not?" His answer 
 that he is naturally led to the question, "All right, so why are you an opti- 
 mist?" He made an interesting observation which I think is important: "We 
 do not know enough yet to be pessimists." If we do not know that we are 
 damned, there is a chance that we can bootstrap ourselves up very well, and 
 I would like to believe that we will of course, we must. 
 
 Twenty years ago Maurice Chevalier, that very charismatic French 
 singer, was performing in a perfectly marvelous one-man show at the Shore- 
 ham in Washington, D.C. He was so good I saw it two nights in a row, 
 wondering, since he was so good the first night what he would do the second 
 night. Of course, I should have guessed he was like a videotape : precisely the 
 same routine, word for word. He told a story that I have never forgotten. 
 Asked by a reporter how it felt to be seventy-eight years old, Chevalier cocked 
 his straw hat over his eye and said, "I tell zem it is magnifique considering 
 ze alternative." I would like to suggest that we really do not have any alterna- 
 tive other than optimism in this situation. We do not know enough to be 
 pessimists. We have identified our problems and it is important to know the 
 answers. 
 
 I would like to turn to the future of education, and its responsibilities 
 and relevance for library science. The remarks of three people interviewed 
 are of note here. Willis Harmon, an engineer and member of the Stanford 
 Educational Policies Research Center of Stanford Institute, answered the 
 question "What do you think of education and its responsibilities?" in this 
 way: "Education is going to be increasingly important during these next 
 forty years; but I am not sure about schooling." He went on to suggest that
 
 ED U CATION IN AMERICA 125 
 
 education would take place through media, library science indeed, the 
 whole realm to educate a much larger clientele than we have ever edu- 
 cated before. 
 
 The next man, Lester Russell Brown, an internationally known agrono- 
 mist and author of World Without Borders and In the Human Interest, took 
 me to lunch at the Cosmos Club in Washington, whose walls are lined with 
 pictures of Pultizer and Nobel prize-winners who are among its members. 
 Pointing to this distinguished assemblage, he said, "There probably isn't a 
 man or woman in this group who couldn't talk for an hour to a semester on 
 resource depletion, hunger . . . ," and he went on down the list. Not one of 
 them learned it in schools; they learned from self-education, from libraries, 
 from television programs, from reading, from magazines. You must recognize 
 that agencies other than schools will have to carry in the next twenty years 
 the melancholy burden, as I believe he phrased it, of seeing that more people 
 the uneducated, the prejudiced, the biased, etc. get the word about 
 some of the things we need for a decent twenty-first century. 
 
 Larry Cremin, president of Teacher's College, made a similar point. He 
 said that by 1995, the public may decide to put much of its money into 
 nonschooling activities, public service television, and expanded self-education 
 services such as libraries. He went on to say that he was concerned about the 
 way in which the world was changing under the impact of the media, par- 
 ticularly in the United States. As a young man, all the news that was fit to 
 print was on the first page of The New York Times; the editorial page had 
 the biases, the opinions, the subjective viewpoints. He was increasingly con- 
 cerned that, in a world so dominated by a medium, 80 percent of the popula- 
 tion now gets most of its news from television, and that this is selected news 
 which could be biased. There is a potential of having control of the system 
 held by either unethical persons or those inclined to be manipulators. 
 
 My grandmother left me with two pieces of advice that I will give to 
 you. First, remember why there is free cheese in the mousetrap ; be careful at 
 what you snap at. I apologize for having ignored her second piece of advice. 
 She never heard a poor short talk.
 
 725 CHANGING TIMES: CHANGING LIBRARIES 
 
 CRYSTAL M. BAILEY 
 
 Children's Librarian 
 
 Oak Park Public Library 
 
 Oak Park, Illinois 
 
 Response 
 
 Since I did not have Shane's speech before making this presenta- 
 tion, I decided to examine articles he had written in the past and hoped that, 
 with any luck, he might talk about the same thing. Being a very unlucky 
 person, I now know he did not. Thus, my comments relate to Shane's past 
 writings. 
 
 Shane has stated that knowledge for real educational change already 
 exists; some of tomorrow's answers can be found in the past. For instance, 
 new theories, innovative discoveries and changes in education in the 1960s 
 had already been discussed by educators such as John Dewey and others in 
 the 1930s. I wondered if the same things could also be happening in libraries. 
 Are librarians in the 1970s redoing and rediscovering the 1930s? There is 
 some support for this idea. For example, are not the independent learner 
 programs and information and referral services innovations of the 1960s 
 and 1970s essentially a refinement or reformulation of traditional library 
 services? Aren't we returning to the readers' adviser concept of the 1930s? 
 Wasn't outreach, the big news of the 1960s, also the big news of the 1930s? 
 
 We have learned that learning is based on experience; we learned about 
 poverty from experience. In education we learned that what children absorb 
 in the classroom is mediated by their social and cultural backgrounds, yet we 
 expect all children to meet the same standards of performance in order to 
 move from grade to grade. We know that children are ready for school at 
 different ages and different times, yet we require that they all enter at more 
 or less the same age. In libraries we know that a children's librarian, in order 
 to do a good job, needs a broad background in learning and developmental 
 theories; yet library schools have been remiss in incorporating theories of 
 people such as Piaget and other developmentalists into children's services 
 courses. One of Shane's ideas that should have a tremendous impact on chil- 
 dren and adult public library services is his idea that the divisions between 
 elementary, junior high and senior high schools be dropped and that we 
 should explore the concepts of a lifelong, seamless, open-access learning con-
 
 RESPONSE 127 
 
 tinuum along which people will progress from early childhood to adult edu- 
 cation. 
 
 Let us look at children's services. Children's departments were set up 
 to provide books and materials for children to satisfy their informational 
 needs, to give guidance and to cultivate the enjoyment of reading. I wonder 
 whether, in light of the future envisioned by Shane and in light of education 
 itself today, the present structure is satisfying these needs. Has the separate 
 children's room as we know it become a facilitator or a barrier to the goals 
 we have stated? 
 
 Many children today are ready and able to use more sophisticated ma- 
 terial than is contained in children's rooms. Increasingly, they need to use 
 adult material. Yet in many libraries, children still need special permission to 
 use the adult facilities and even if special permission is not required, some- 
 times just by physically placing a collection of books elsewhere and labeling 
 it "adult," children's access is restricted. On the other hand, many adults in 
 society are not well educated; they do not read well (educational statistics 
 indicate that this trend will continue) . Adults sometimes need the less com- 
 plex material which can be found in children's rooms, but they are too em- 
 barrassed to enter a place labeled "Children's Room." I am certain that 
 everyone here knows at least one story about an adult coming into a chil- 
 dren's room requesting something for a son or daughter, when in reality the 
 adult wants the material for personal use. 
 
 Would I, as a children's librarian, be better able to satisfy the informa- 
 tional needs of the child if I worked with the library's complete collection? 
 Would the adult patron be better served with a nonstigmatized access to 
 children's material? I am not proposing that we eliminate children's services, 
 but I do get questions about the validity of the present pattern. I am not 
 suggesting and do not expect a children's department to be four walls with 
 people working with a certain clientele to avoid a particular abode. Separate 
 children's rooms were often established to protect the child and serve his 
 very special needs. With the current furor over children's rights, do we have 
 the right to set them apart and give them special treatment when that special 
 treatment makes it easier to abridge their freedom? 
 
 In a recent Supreme Court decision, the Court ruled that students in 
 school, as well as out of school, are persons under the Constitution. They 
 possess fundamental rights which the state must respect. Do we respect these 
 rights when we separate these people or make them special? Children's li- 
 brarians and the administrators for whom they work have been loathe to 
 address the question, an assumption on which we base our activities. If we 
 are to remain effective, we must examine the underlying assumption for our
 
 728 CHANGING TIMES: CHANGING LIBRARIES 
 
 services, especially if we take into consideration that more and more educa- 
 tors envision a society in which education is an ongoing, self-motivated activ- 
 ity. Even today teachers are placing more and more responsibility on the 
 child for his own learning. 
 
 In many ways our refusal to look ahead has already started to hurt us. 
 The position of children's coordinator has been dissolved in many libraries, 
 yet nothing appears to have been lost. I believe that this is our own fault. I 
 have worked in two systems where this has happened. In both cases, the 
 coordinators were so busy maintaining the status quo and longing for the 
 "good old days" that they failed to make the necessary shift in orientation 
 and jurisdiction necessary to make their jobs useful and viable. In one system, 
 the coordinator spent most of her time selecting the book to be used for 
 storytelling and making lists of the approved books to purchase. Perhaps this 
 may have been valid (although I have doubts) when she first began to work, 
 which was a time when most children's librarians were not degreed. In 1973, 
 however, when all of this woman's children's librarian staff had master's 
 degrees, this was an outrageous, unnecessary and wasteful activity for a 
 person at her level. Her job was eliminated and I do not think the library 
 is hurting without her! 
 
 What is keeping us from change in the children's area? I believe it is 
 largely a lack of support from the library administrators and their limited 
 view of library service to children. Children's departments have traditionally 
 received only a very small percentage of the total library budget, despite the 
 fact that most children's departments perform a large portion of the library 
 service. Children's departments have never been as well staffed as other de- 
 partments. Change, however, takes time and money. Time is money, and in 
 order to manage the change, children's service coordinators need time to 
 think, time to reflect: Why am I doing what I'm doing? They need time to 
 examine the conceptual basis of the job. I think this is one of the more im- 
 portant things to consider in order for people to effect change. Time is 
 needed to do what is necessary to keep ourselves headed toward our goal. 
 By their actions, their budget allocations and their staff allocations, too many 
 administrators deny children's librarians this time. They appear to be saying 
 to their children's librarians: "You are not important and what you do is 
 not important." This is not the best way to motivate people. 
 
 The lack of research is another factor that has kept us from making real 
 change. Educators have a rich storehouse of research on which to draw; 
 the library field does not. A great deal of research in many areas of library 
 service is needed before we can effect change. 
 
 Fear has also kept us from making changes. Recently, when it was an- 
 nounced that a children's library in Chicago was to be moved to a school
 
 RESPONSE 129 
 
 library, the librarians reacted emotionally rather than intelligently. They 
 feared that they would suddenly lose their jobs. They could not get beyond 
 this fear in order to see how they might fit into a new pattern of service. 
 
 Let me say in closing that I am still optimistic about our future. I feel 
 that the librarians coming out of library school today tend to be dedicated, 
 hard-working people who are already looking toward the future.
 
 HELENA Z. LOPATA 
 
 Center for the Comparative Study of Social Roles 
 
 Loyola University of Chicago 
 
 Chicago, Illinois 
 
 Changes in Sexual Identities 
 
 American society is in the early stages of a very dramatic revolution 
 in the world of work and in its relation to the rest of human life. The foun- 
 dation for this revolution lies in the development of a relatively stabilized, 
 urbanized, industrialized or postindustrial as it is now called middle- 
 class population and culture. 1 Its seeds were the movement of the 1960s, 
 which questioned traditional views of the family, or work, and of our whole 
 value system with its strong emphasis on the economic institution. The youth 
 movement may not have directly revolutionized the "establishment," but it 
 did raise some questions. The now-adult participants, as well as the youth of 
 the 1970s, are not as heavily committed to hard work and making money 
 nor to upward mobility as were the immigrants and the following two (or 
 more) generations, which adhered to the Protestant work ethic with its puri- 
 tanical rigidity and saw obvious rewards in pulling themselves out of the 
 ghetto and into the "good life." 
 
 The seeds of the new revolution are also found in the pre-Friedan move- 
 ment of women out of the isolated home, once the children started or finished 
 grade or high school, and into their own competence-building schooling and/ 
 or paid employment. Betty Friedan's The Feminine Mystique, preceded by 
 Simone de Beauvoir's The Second Sex and the less well known Richard 
 LaPiere's The Freudian Ethic, opened fully the questioning of the logic and 
 consequences of the way our society had developed. 2 The effect of the femi- 
 nist movement is felt far beyond its membership. Recent change-inducing 
 submovements of a variety of forms, including both men's and women's con- 
 sciousness-raising groups, encounter groups, assertiveness training programs, 
 "flexible careers" employment agencies, etc., supported by a mushrooming 
 
 131
 
 132 CHANGING TIMES: CHANGING LIBRARIES 
 
 of literature in the form of books, periodicals, and pamphlets, are the small 
 plants growing out of these seeds. Also growing is the refusal of many men 
 to be geographically transferred at stages of life which they deem bad for 
 the family or to be transferred at any stage. The growing divorce rate can 
 also be seen as a revolutionary symptom, as people get out of traditional mar- 
 riages which stifled them personally, being yet sufficiently unsophisticated 
 and bewildered by all the freedom from constraints to be able to change that 
 marriage creatively instead of trying with a new mate to establish a more 
 fulfilling relationship. 3 The plants of the new social changes are still young, 
 and they must offset centuries of prior change which thrust Europe and 
 America out of the preindustrial societal systems and into their present con- 
 dition. In order to understand what is happening now, we must examine 
 the previous systems and the past changes. 
 
 Pre-Industrial Europe 
 
 Aries points out in his Centuries of Childhood that life prior to the 
 eighteenth century, at least in western Europe, was very public. 4 There were 
 no distinct lines separating the family from the rest of the home or the com- 
 munity. In the village, social interaction, work, leisure, and political arrange- 
 ments were made in the road, as people went from one small plot to another, 
 to church, or just out of the homes. Everyone interacted with a variety of 
 others regardless of age or sex, and the work groups consisted of mixed 
 members with a division of labor by age and by sex although cooperative 
 units were formed when needed. The Nobel prize-winning The Peasants by 
 Reymont 5 also describes such a public life in a Polish village, with nonfamily 
 members residing in many homes. This was true, to an even greater extent, 
 in the manor homes. These homes traditionally housed children of other 
 families who served as servants, tutors, scribes, etc., and the large "common 
 room" served many functions at all times of the day and night. Folding 
 tables were brought out at meal time, folding beds at night. Many people 
 were born and died in such rooms. 
 
 Shorter 6 finds life in the towns of England or France also very public. 
 Laslett and Wall 7 enumerate all the people living in a baker's home/shop 
 combination in their book, and many of the new historians cite the work and 
 interaction in shops and streets of both men and women. 
 
 Women were members of guilds, according to Oakley, 8 and widows in- 
 herited the businesses of their husbands with whom they had worked and 
 managed them with the help of different kinds of workers. Mothers did not 
 rear their children, or at least did not do so alone. Among the upper classes 
 in France, for example, mothers sent infants to wet nurses in villages, and
 
 CHANGES IN SEXUAL IDENTITIES 133 
 
 few people invested much attention or affection in young children because 
 of the high death rate. 9 Children as young as seven years of age were sent 
 to other homes to be servants, and returned only at about age fourteen. Mul- 
 tiple child-rearers existed at all levels of the whole society; socialization meth- 
 ods differed among classes. Marriage was embedded in a network of relations, 
 and was not considered to be a primary or affectionate bond. 10 
 
 Early paid labor came in the form of cottage industries, with capitalists 
 farming out raw material to village homes where the wife and children 
 sometimes with the help of the men processed it into a finished product. 
 When factories introduced steam and large-scale machinery, all members of 
 the family left the home to work in them, often moving in order to live near 
 the factory. 11 By then the family had become private, the household struc- 
 ture had developed specialized rooms (with the servants of the upper classes 
 restricted to their quarters ) , and visitors were admitted only during special 
 hours. 
 
 Wars of centralization developed nation-states in Europe, and the break- 
 down of the power of manor lords facilitated the creation of a nationalisti- 
 cally motivated mass education system. Aries claims that childhood as a 
 concept with a set of relations to adults emerged only after the creation of the 
 school system. 12 In any case, boys (and later, girls) were taken from the 
 home and schooled into a literate national culture. The youths learned skills 
 necessary for marketing themselves to employers, and were thus freed of the 
 power of the patriarchal family line. Simultaneously and the new histori- 
 ans disagree as to the major factor causing this change restrictive or so- 
 called protective legislation started moving women out of the factory and 
 into the home to take care of the children. These historians do agree, how- 
 ever, that women lost many rights following the removal of production from 
 the home and their exclusion from the productive sphere of life outside of 
 the home. This loss was particularly strong in societies focusing on the Prot- 
 estant ethic, which judged work for pay to be more valuable than other 
 effort, and economic success to warrant even harmful adjustment by all other 
 institutions. 
 
 By making the focal institution of society the economic one, western 
 Europe and especially the United States developed societies of abundance 
 for most of their members, but at cost to many other aspects of their lives. 
 The older generation was justifiably left behind geographically and culturally 
 during social mobility. Siblings moved in different directions in the social 
 system. Friendship was pushed aside or converted into a mere social com- 
 panionship which was not allowed to interfere with the man's work and 
 career. Religion was modified so it would not interfere with the business 
 world, and life became increasingly segmented with separate value and
 
 134 CHANGING TIMES: CHANGING LIBRARIES 
 
 personality packages. Puritanism ensured that leisure time was spent in "rec- 
 reation" of energy for the workday and "seriousness of purpose was height- 
 ened by strong religious feeling; the average man locked himself in his office 
 and his wife in his home." 13 Even the middle-class home lost its place as a 
 center of societal life ; the husband and children returning to it wanted peace, 
 not excitement. Not surprisingly, the role of housewife lost the stature it had 
 had in the previous world. 
 
 The nuclear family was freed from control by older generations and sib- 
 lings from the male family of orientation, but it simultaneously became boxed 
 into a highly interdependent small unit, lacking automatic external support 
 systems. If a man has to go out of the home to make the money by which 
 the home and the family are sustained, and servants no longer exist as an 
 available set of supports (because better pay is available working in other 
 occupations), then someone must stay home to care for the small children. 
 That someone became the wife-mother, isolated from societal life in all but 
 the upper classes by her 24-hour vigil and held responsible for all conse- 
 quences of her socialization of the children. The burden of total emotional 
 and social support all day long between the mother and the children is re- 
 portedly dysfunctional to the mental health of both, as psychologists and 
 sociologists have been saying for years. 14 
 
 The stage of intensive child-rearing is, however, short; by midlife, the 
 American woman faces thirty years of healthy and energetic life with no 
 major function, especially during the approximately fifteen years when she is 
 separated from her husband due to his death, or possibly before that as a 
 result of divorce. In the meantime, the husband has had to make a life- 
 constraining decision about which occupation he will pursue, and he must 
 continue working there, with one or two shifts in his career, until he dies 
 or retires. As Fromm pointed out, 15 the marketing mentality of American 
 society even deprives him of some of the pleasure of retirement, because his 
 worth as a man is measured by what he is worth to employers, and retire- 
 ment implies that he is no longer worth anything. 
 
 By the late 1950s American society had settled down, having absorbed 
 millions of immigrants who accepted the basic value system. Nevertheless, 
 there were tremendous intergenerational struggles as people were socialized 
 into a different type of world than the village, or as the ethnic community 
 fought with their children who wanted to "make it" the American way. An 
 elaborate ideology and value system justified our entire way of life as "natu- 
 ral" with the help of neo-Freudians such as Helene Deutsch. 18 Women were 
 supposed to stay at home contentedly and not be involved seriously in the life 
 outside it. Voluntary associations and volunteer work were permissible, but 
 only if such activities did not interfere with the flow of life at home. Men
 
 CHANGES IN SEXUAL IDENTITIES 135 
 
 were taught to put all their efforts into their jobs, accepting any demands 
 made upon them as an inevitable consequence of a system which paid them 
 for sacrifices, so that they could own homes, cars, and have well-fed and 
 well-clothed families. In order to function this way, they were taught always 
 to protect themselves from others and to be "strong," i.e. never to show phys- 
 ical or emotional weakness. 
 
 Social Roles of Americans, Now and in the Future 
 
 I began to study American urban women between 1956 and 1966 be- 
 cause I was aware of the tremendous gap between what I observed as a 
 foreigner and sociologist and what I was reading about the family in this 
 country. I came directly from Poland to Champaign-Urbana for high school, 
 received my M.A. at the University of Illinois, and went on to the University 
 of Chicago for a Ph.D. When we finally settled in a suburb of Chicago, I was 
 startled to meet women who were entirely different from those I had been 
 reading about in American books and periodicals. These were the years of 
 Generation of Vipers, 17 The Lonely Crowd 18 The Organization Man 10 and 
 Modern Woman: The Lost Sex. 20 Although the behavior of young Chicago- 
 area women displayed competence and creativity, their self-definitions were 
 not positive. "I'm just a housewife," was the most frequently given answer to 
 occupational questions. At the same time, these women did not feel right 
 about wanting to go back to work, because they accepted the idea that wives 
 and mothers should stay at home. The double-bind effect, of living in a 
 society which trained them to be competent and then both put them in a 
 role defined as not requiring competence and forbade other roles, took an 
 enormous toll on these women. Society simply did not understand the social 
 forces which made life for them so difficult at three stages : ( 1 ) when they 
 suddenly left social roles outside of the home and found themselves in the 
 home alone with a small infant, (2) when they were left with an "empty 
 nest" for varying amounts of time when only halfway through life and with- 
 out new direction, and (3) when they became widowed. 
 
 Despite a complete lack of societal support and understanding, Ameri- 
 can women began in the 1960s to create their own solutions to these prob- 
 lems. Coffee-klatches provided opportunities for the sharing of solutions, in 
 much the same way that brainstorming sessions do for people in other occu- 
 pations or work groups. Sharing child-care and housewife activities became 
 commonplace. Spock's book 21 and books by other experts provided greater 
 feelings of competence in the role of mother than were provided by many 
 pediatricians. New subcultures were developing in the suburbs and inner
 
 736 CHANGING TIMES: CHANGING LIBRARIES 
 
 city which lessened the heavy pressure of traditional norms. Gradually, wives 
 and mothers were slipping out of the back door of the house, going to school 
 and even to work. That movement has grown considerably since the 1960s, 
 aided by the feminist movement and particularly by the door-opening book, 
 The Feminine Mystique?* which caught women's imaginations more than 
 any other book that analyzes the ideology rigidifying their lives. Although 
 few women are members of the divergent branches of the feminist movement, 
 its influence on them and on men has undoubtedly loosened the mold 
 of the past and will provide the impetus for future revolutionary changes. 
 
 In the meantime, some of the hidden hostility between men and women 
 in American society, so apparent to visitors and new members, surfaced. The 
 middle-class, middle-aged man, working hard to earn more money while 
 fearing that his death was around the corner, deeply resented the initial 
 stages and the more vocal branches of the feminist movement which labeled 
 him the "oppressor." The movement has mainly shifted focus to the system 
 within which both men and women are functioning, trying to change its 
 inflexible demands and discriminatory policies. For the most part, men have 
 not joined forces with the women because they are still fearful of their own 
 careers and reputations to a degree which makes them unwilling to challenge 
 the system (despite the benefits they as well as their wives could accrue 
 from changes) . It will take an immeasurable amount of time before the fears 
 instilled in boys will weaken sufficiently to permit them to go through the 
 painful reexamination of values and goals when they reach adulthood (or at 
 any time, for that matter) which women are now undertaking. It may take 
 another generation of boys growing up with less sexist socialization by self- 
 examining mothers before women and men become willing to join forces to 
 push for a greater balance and flexibility in the life course, and for a change 
 in the values that serve as guides for involvement in social roles. So far, 
 men's sensitivity groups are appearing mainly on campuses, while the business 
 world has focused, not surprisingly, more on encounter groups and assertive- 
 ness training. 
 
 Thus, the feminist movement and Betty Friedan 23 is one of the spokes- 
 women and leaders of this movement has caused a realization by women 
 that the system must be changed through cooperative effort in order to free 
 life into a variety of time segments, worked out through teamships. People 
 who are reexamining both the relationship between work and other social 
 roles and the rhythm of occupational engagement are finding a variety of 
 solutions to the current problems of men and women. There is no economi- 
 cally insolvable reason for work and other roles to be organized in the way 
 which they currently are in America. Two people can hold a single job 
 more efficiently than can one in a majority of occupations, whether the team
 
 CHANGES IN SEXUAL IDENTITIES 137 
 
 be composed of a husband and wife or two persons with similar training who 
 do not want to work full-time for other reasons but cannot afford part-time 
 pay. Abbott Laboratories has a chemist position which is currently being filled 
 very satisfactorily by two people. Gustafus Adolphus College has split an 
 academic job in a similar manner, and librarianship positions would appear 
 to be naturally suited to this practice. 
 
 Flexibility can be introduced differently at many stages of the life course. 
 For example, if a couple decides to share a life together, they can plan the 
 most efficient set of role complexes possible. If both cannot continue school, 
 the man can probably drop out with a higher income from a job than can 
 the woman, who can then continue to be trained for a better-paying and 
 more satisfying occupation than those held by most women. The child-bear- 
 ing and -rearing stage does not have to be entered by a couple in their teens 
 or young twenties, when it is more logical for the couple to invest in further 
 training, a start at a career and saving money for their years as parents. 
 Careers do not have to have a steady line; in fact, much of the recent re- 
 search shows that most people do not have steady careers anyway, for a 
 variety of unplanned reasons. 24 When a child is born, the couple can alternate 
 parenting, either by both taking 2-person jobs, or by handling a traditional 
 2-person single job, held by the mother or the father. There is a variety of 
 ways in which being parents and working can be combined in the early years 
 of a child's life. In addition, these years when a child is young comprise a very 
 short segment of a person's life, and other, social roles can be pushed into the 
 background because of the importance of the parental role for both the 
 mother and the father. The isolated household is also dysfunctional, if not 
 harmful, at that time, so joint households or across-threshhold cooperative 
 ventures can be initiated without tying people down to such arrangements 
 for decades. 
 
 The next stage of the life course can involve both partners and children 
 in a variety of social role complexes, depending not on tradition or happen- 
 stance, but on planning with long-range goals and values in mind. Some 
 couples may opt for a heavy concentration of effort on the career of one 
 member; others may find ways of comfortably containing dual career ar- 
 rangements with high levels of concentration and commitment. A third type 
 of dyad may distribute efforts more evenly among several roles at varying 
 stages of the life course, including enjoying friendships, leisure-time pursuits, 
 contributing to voluntary organizations upon which communities are depen- 
 dent, parenting, etc. 
 
 Higher education has become much more flexible and responsive to a 
 variety of people in the past few years; there are all kinds of students in 
 libraries. The area of societal activity which is only now beginning to open
 
 738 CHANGING TIMES: CHANGING LIBRARIES 
 
 up occasional and exceptional flexibilities is the economic one, and it is here 
 that basic values and activity patterns must shift in the future as people 
 become less willing to sacrifice other aspects of their selves and social roles for 
 the job and the money it pays. The current organization of work into time 
 slots and occupational packages, with the constant emphasis on the career 
 line (varied as it is within different occupations), has made life rigid to the 
 extent that people are increasingly dissatisfied. We are now experiencing not 
 only a "revolt of the client" but a revolt of the professional and other occu- 
 pation-holders as well. 25 There is consistent evidence that increasingly com- 
 petent human beings are, and will be, making demands on the system to 
 change and become more flexible. Organized protests are being supplemented 
 by the less visible ones, such as the patient referral system and the changing 
 patient-doctor relations created in one-to-one interaction. 26 
 
 There have been dramatic changes in the lives of Europeans and Ameri- 
 cans in the past few centuries. Some of these are judged by most observers as 
 generally beneficial in that they have increased health and longevity, opened 
 up a variety of resources to a variety of people, and created economically 
 abundant societies. Some of the social roles and relations of these people have 
 suffered, however, from the strong emphasis on the economic institution and 
 the insistence that other institutions adjust to its demands, as well as from 
 the rigidification of work engagement and schedules. The relatively isolated 
 nuclear family, the high-pressured male breadwinner, and the underutilized 
 abilities of women for a major part of their lives are costs (particularly in 
 America) which many people are no longer willing to pay. Various indica- 
 tors of change are apparent on the American scene and they are apt to 
 grow rapidly in the near future, pushing on the world of work to become 
 more flexible and more evenly balanced in its control over the other social 
 roles of its participants, including all those people who are now discouraged 
 from participating. Changes in interpersonal relations are in greater evidence 
 in America than are changes in the way people are engaged in the large bu- 
 reaucratic organizations, particularly in those relations where most men, half 
 of the women, and those close to them are now economically dependent. 
 
 REFERENCES 
 
 1. Of course, there are still large segments of this population who, because of 
 discrimination or recent arrival, are still members of the lower class, not fully ur- 
 banized and lacking sophisticated occupational skills; however, they form a smaller 
 proportion of the total than was true, for example, at the turn of the century.
 
 CHANGES IN SEXUAL IDENTITIES 139 
 
 2. Friedan, Betty. The Feminine Mystique. New York, Norton, 1963; Beauvoir, 
 Simone de. The Second Sex. H. M. Parshley, trans. New York, Alfred Knopf, 1953; 
 and LaPiere, Richard. The Freudian Ethic. New York, Duell, Sloan and Pierce, 
 1959. 
 
 3. Fromm, Eric. Escape from Freedom. New York, Farrar & Rinehart, 1941. 
 
 4. Aries, Philippe. Centuries of Childhood. Robert Baldick, trans. New York, 
 Knopf, 1962. 
 
 5. Reymont, Ladislas. The Peasants: Fall, Winter, Spring, Summer. 4 vols. 
 Michael H. Dziewicki, trans. New York, Knopf, 1925. 
 
 6. Shorter, Edward. The Making of the Modern Family. New York, Basic 
 Books, 1975. 
 
 7. Laslett, Peter, and Wall, Richard, eds. Household and Family in Past Time. 
 Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1972. 
 
 8. Oakley, Ann. Woman's Work: The Housewife, Past and Present. New York, 
 Pantheon Books, 1974. 
 
 9. Shorter, op. cit 
 
 10. Ibid. 
 
 11. Oakley, op. cit. 
 
 12. Aries, op. cit. 
 
 13. Dulles, Foster R. America Learns to Play: A History of Popular Recrea- 
 tion, 1607-1940. New York, P. Smith, 1952, p. 98. 
 
 14. Bernard, Jessie. The Future of Motherhood. New York, Penguin Books, 
 1975. 
 
 15. Fromm, Eric. Man for Himself. New York, Rinehart, 1947. 
 
 16. Deutsch, Helene. The Psychology of Women. New York, Grune & Stratum, 
 1944. 
 
 17. Wylie, Philip. Generation of Vipers. New York, Farrar & Rinehart, 1942. 
 
 18. Riesman, David, et al. The Lonely Crowd. New Haven, Conn., Yale Uni- 
 versity Press, 1950. 
 
 19. Whyte, William H., Jr. The Organization Man. New York, Simon and 
 Schuster, 1956. 
 
 20. Lundberg, Ferdinand, and Farnham, M.F. Modern Woman: The Lost 
 Sex. New York, Harper & Brothers, 1947. 
 
 21. Spock, Benjamin. Baby and Child Care. New York, Pocket Books, 1956. 
 
 22. Friedan, op. cit. 
 
 23. Speech presented at the Conference on Women in Mid- 
 life Crises, Cornell University, Ithaca, N.Y., Oct. 28-31, 1976. 
 
 24. Lopata, Helena Z., and Norr, Kathleen. "Changing Commitments of 
 Women to Work and Family Roles." Proposal for study submitted to the Social 
 Security Administration, 1975. (unpublished) 
 
 25. Haug, Marie R. "The Deprofessionalization of Everyone?" Sociological 
 Focus 8:197-213, Aug. 1975; "The Erosion of Professional Author- 
 ity: A Cross-Cultural Inquiry in the Case of the Physicians," Health and Society 
 
 54:83-106, Winter 1976; , and Sussman, Marvin B. "Professional 
 
 Autonomy and the Revolt of the Client," Social Problems 17:153-61, Fall 1969; 
 
 and . "Professionalism and the Public," Sociological Inquiry 39: 
 
 57-64, Winter 1969. 
 
 26. Freidson, Eliot, ed. The Professions and their Prospects. Beverly Hills, 
 Calif., Sage Publications, 1973.
 
 140 CHANGING TIMES: CHANGING LIBRARIES 
 
 GERALD R. SHIELDS 
 
 Assistant Professor 
 
 School of Information and Library Studies 
 
 State University of New York at Buffalo 
 
 Buffalo, New York 
 
 Response 
 
 It was refreshing to hear Lopata discuss something that I have been 
 talking about for a long time, while not always rinding the justification I 
 needed for saying some of the things I do about librarianship. Sometimes I 
 have a tendency to annoy people by trying to reduce librarianship to human- 
 ism, but I feel very strongly that this is where its base must rest if it is going 
 to be a part of the society we are talking about. 
 
 Shera and several other library historians have told us that libraries were 
 born in an age when the household was formed for a specific economic pur- 
 pose. At that time, people's roles in life were generally predetermined and it 
 was very difficult to achieve an upward mobility. It was hard to come by the 
 means for role change. The education system in this society took a long time 
 to get going, and libraries only slowly developed a reputation for being the 
 university of the poor, as well as being the continuing university for the well- 
 to-do. Now, people's roles in society have changed, as Lopata has indicated; 
 society's needs also have changed to the point that libraries are saying: "I 
 guess we are going to be extinct any moment now!" "We're about to drop 
 through the cracks in civilization!" "Close the door and let's all go home!" 
 
 Such remarks are all hogwash. It is not true! Society needs information 
 now more than it has ever needed it before, and it needs it in the form of 
 stored knowledge. Knowledge comes in multiple forms, as we know. To say 
 that the library is solely an institution of education, or solely an institution 
 of recreation, is to misapply what society is asking of libraries. Society is 
 asking us to recognize, as Lopata has said, that people want to be their own 
 competent contenders with life. There was a time when a doctor would 
 treat his patient by applying spider webs and poultices; similarly, in Gone 
 with the Wind, "run and get the hot water and lots of sheets" set the scene 
 for "birthin' babies." Everyone expected to contend with the problem. 
 
 It is very difficult for most human beings to communicate today with a 
 doctor. It is extremely difficult for human beings to communicate with law- 
 yers. It is extremely difficult for human beings to communicate with each
 
 RESPONSE 141 
 
 other, because we are a multilevel society based on a multiplicity of values. 
 We are told, for example, that national values are changing, yet in order to 
 change our old values, we need to measure ourselves against the values we 
 know and the values being proposed. We do not like to do this in public, for 
 we have been conditioned to believe that life is no longer public, it is private. 
 We hide in our houses and apartments, and in our automobiles with the 
 windows rolled up so that we can talk to ourselves, but not to others. We 
 listen to radios talk to us; we allow television to show us things and talk to 
 us. We don't talk back. We need two-way communication and one of the 
 few places to find it is in the library, because the library allows us to carry 
 on a dialogue with a book, and indulge our insecurities without embarrass- 
 ment and in privacy. 
 
 As Lopata pointed out, career patterns are not consistent. Life itself is 
 not consistent. We never know from one day to the next what problems we 
 will have to face. We do not know what changes are going to take place, and 
 if we do not have the ability to access the information we need to deal with 
 change, we go down for the count. All of us know people who have been 
 unable to cope. We have known of entire societies that have been unable to 
 cope. Therefore, we must build change into institutions at the same time that 
 we are encouraging change in human beings. 
 
 A fair amount of research in the area of speech communication points 
 out quite clearly that we cannot exist without communicating. We start 
 communicating almost from the very first moment of life. We receive mes- 
 sages, send messages, and miss messages. We do this as long as we draw 
 breath . . . and there is even speculation that we do it thereafter. Once we 
 realize that there is this consistency of communication need and demand, it 
 becomes easier to comprehend why human beings become so frustrated, hurt 
 and withdrawn when they cannot fully exercise the joy of communication, 
 i.e. when they cannot find the things they need to know in order to function. 
 So when we say that we need to push institutions to change, we need to ac- 
 cept wholeheartedly the fact that we ourselves change every moment. 
 
 The words spoken at the beginning of this institute cannot be retrieved. 
 They have gone into time and are going to stay there, and no amount of 
 wailing or editing of the transcription is going to change the communication 
 that took place here in these last few moments. We are all in a continuum 
 of time; to try to go back and change things in the past is futile, but to 
 accept the fact that we are changing now, and will change tomorrow, is 
 pertinent. 
 
 Someone asked earlier this week if the library was an agent of change 
 because of its seemingly natural stance as a knowledge-transfer agent. Li- 
 braries are effective change agents when they meet a need; neutrality doesn't
 
 142 CHANGING TIMES: CHANGING LIBRARIES 
 
 work. There are some notable examples in literature. I still think that one of 
 the most moving sections of The Autobiography of Malcolm X is the discus- 
 sion of what the library did for the man. I think some of the most moving 
 experiences I have had are those of people honoring me by coming to the 
 library to ask me to help them develop some knowledge they need. Some of 
 the knowledge people sought was of the kind librarians downgrade, simply 
 because they did not realize they were being communicated with as a prehu- 
 man. One woman who had lost her two children in a concentration camp 
 wanted to read every book in a series that appeared after the war recounting 
 concentration camp life. Several of the staff tried to thwart her in this, say- 
 ing that she was hurting herself and she was indulging herself. She was not. 
 She was exorcising her fears and her sense of guilt because she was not able 
 to save her children. She had every right to this knowledge transfer. She got 
 it, and eventually found the peace for which she had searched. 
 
 This is the kind of knowledge transfer I am talking about. It happens 
 at the academic level, too. I see it with my students who act as transfer 
 agents in their social science courses when they are assigned research. They 
 are sent off to discover what knowledge might exist that the professor is 
 looking for on which to base research, and where it might be found. The 
 first few ventures of this exchange between the student and the client is one 
 of fear and distrust on both sides. The exercise ends up with both the client 
 and the student congratulating each other on a successful information trans- 
 fer, and hoping they may do it again soon, because they both learned, prof- 
 ited, and found a kind of peace and comfort. 
 
 Libraries are changing, and they help people change. They are agencies 
 of social justice, and they should be. It is very difficult for librarians to ac- 
 cept this. It is too easy just to sit back and not to worry about justice, or 
 about what materials blindly handed out at a library can do to individuals, or 
 about the value of the individuals themselves. Such librarians do not try 
 to help people; they just dispense whatever pills happen to be on the shelf. 
 We all want justice, and are demanding a nation with a new, hard set of 
 ethics. I think the ethics of librarianship is something to be very proud of 
 when practiced, not preached. 
 
 Shera used the words, "the clients of libraries are the elite." In our eyes, 
 the elite of librarians are those who understand us, who understand the cata- 
 loging system (God help them) , who understand why we are there in spite of 
 ourselves. I have seen some very adroit elite outfox many a librarian who 
 was spread-eagled over his or her collection. I have also seen many people, 
 who had no intention of being the library elite, find the knowledge, peace 
 and joy they were looking for in the library in spite of the librarian and the 
 system.
 
 RESPONSE 143 
 
 When the library is functioning as a change agent, as a social justice 
 agency, the client discovers that the library is merely there to facilitate the 
 individual's confidence in whatever is needed. There are no strings attached 
 no exams, no tests, no certificates to carry under your arm. It is what goes 
 on in your mind that counts. Thus, the library elite are the people who accept 
 the library with joy and constant use for the rest of their lives. 
 
 When we say we are trying to reach out, that is what we are trying to 
 reach out for: to pass on to people the ability to understand for themselves 
 who they are. One of the best places they can find it is in searching for 
 themselves in the materials that are available in libraries. 
 
 I don't want to be a doctor; I just want to feel that when I need medical 
 help, I'm getting justice. I don't want to be a lawyer; but I want justice, 
 and I can't get it if I don't know how, when or where to look for it. If one 
 can accept some of the premises offered by Lopata and evaluate them in 
 terms of the social changes that we know have taken place, then it will be 
 understood that it is people we are talking about, people who need to be 
 communicated with, and who need only to find the knowledge they want 
 whether it be to bake a cake, build a house, discover a new idea, or find 
 peace.
 
 HUGH C. ATKINSON 
 
 University Librarian 
 
 University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign 
 Urbana-Champaign, Illinois 
 
 Response: Creating the Conditions for Change* 
 
 Before I respond to a paper you haven't heard or read, I want to 
 categorize some of the concepts of change that have been discussed here, and 
 to try to apply those to the processes of library activity. After that I will say 
 a few words about the processes themselves. First, we can categorize those 
 concepts which are available now. Many of them involve quickening the 
 speed of response; for example, automation activities and the computer- 
 assisted instruction of PLATO are all a part of the quest for efficiency. These 
 might be called examples of "quick change." There is also a group we could 
 call "small change." These are no-growth alternatives, the alternatives of 
 lifestyles. The effects of automation on organization, for example, will result, 
 I believe, in smaller organizations and units, and those effects would be a 
 "small change." We also have "loose change" the concepts which we know 
 will affect librarianship and us, but we are not sure how. We know they 
 exist, and can see changes occurring in society, yet just how they will affect 
 the library is still unclear although the fact that they will affect is not at 
 all unclear. Concepts such as "women in society," the "end of our present 
 hydrocarbon age," and "changing attitudes toward work" are all examples 
 of "loose change." 
 
 All of us have to live within this changing society, and changing insti- 
 tutions, including changing libraries, are condemned to it. When our socio- 
 logical models, which Ely will discuss, are relatively rational planning pro- 
 cesses and systems which can be plotted through the identification, planning, 
 
 * As an example of "experimental change" arranged by the chairman of this final 
 session of the institute, the response was presented before the concluding, prepared 
 paper. 
 
 145
 
 146 CHANGING TIMES: CHANGING LIBRARIES 
 
 and processing of the change, the resulting decision-making (at least some 
 of it) will seem rational. Ely will present graphs showing relatively neat 
 sociological diagrams of how this works; but I suggest that many of the 
 things that we in libraries are most worried about are not so neat at all. They 
 are, in fact, more likely to be akin to those discussed in recent studies on 
 earthquakes and other natural disasters, phenomena which can have tremen- 
 dous effects and produce enormous changes. Those changes, however, are not 
 the result of rational or quasi-rational decision-making that takes place in 
 implemented and planned change. It should be noted that, after the fact, 
 change can be diagrammed as if it were planned, whereas at the time of the 
 change, such neatness simply did not exist. 
 
 The effects of change on the family, as we learned from earlier discus- 
 sion, seemed to develop through a long, slow process of approximately 200 
 years, during which there was a shift from village economy and life to urban 
 life. Remember, however, that the Black Death in Europe, in a space of two 
 or three years, speeded up that process enormously. One fortuitous accident 
 of the plague, i.e. depletion of the labor force, probably hastened the de- 
 velopment of coinage for purposes other than taxation and international 
 trade. When workers began to be employed for pay, labor was no longer 
 dealt with as a responsibility or as a barterable commodity. Thus, we see that 
 some enormous changes occur accidentally, and while they are within a 
 generally rational framework, they do not follow a rational decision-making 
 system. Sometimes the causes are political, e.g., the Enclosure Laws; some- 
 times they are technological, e.g., the inventions of the spinning jenny and 
 the steam engine; and sometimes they are sociological, e.g., the rise of fas- 
 cism. These phenomena produce something like a starburst of change, oc- 
 curring in almost a circle around the center. The parallels to "catastrophe" 
 are obvious. 
 
 Sometimes the results are only minicatastrophes; they don't have to be 
 outrageous or world-shaking events. For instance, if the legislature or the 
 city council suddenly cuts the library's budget, the resulting minicatastrophe 
 will produce a series of changes not planned for, since there was no time to 
 do any planning. Nor are planning committees useful at this point. The situ- 
 ation must be dealt with immediately. I was talking to a gentleman today 
 who had lost a significant portion of his audiovisual collection in a fire on a 
 delivery truck. Suddenly, he had to respond to a catastrophic occurrence and 
 the normal pattern of preparing for change was useless. The creation of 
 OCLC, or its sudden failure, are types of sudden changes that simply don't 
 follow patterns. I suggest that this kind of change, about which we are most 
 likely to be worried, will probably best be understood in light of the research 
 now underway on earthquakes and other natural disasters.
 
 CREATING THE CONDITIONS FOR CHANGE 147 
 
 In his presentation, Ely will discuss Elizabeth Stone's list of priority 
 items for change drawn from a survey in 1973. At the time of that survey, 
 a representative sample of librarians felt that the greatest need was for con- 
 tinuing education. That list posits a library that is essentially like any other 
 library, but only slightly different. It assumes the same fundamental struc- 
 ture of libraries, which is wrong. 
 
 Let us now try to apply beforehand the six seemingly necessary pre- 
 requisites for change which Ely will present: (1) dissatisfaction with the 
 present situation; (2) the librarian's knowledge about possible innovations 
 and possession of the skills to implement them; (3) commitment by all per- 
 sons involved; (4) resources to do the job (I'm including time as a resource; 
 Ely talks about it as a separate item) ; (5) reward for the effort; and (6) 
 leadership. Apply these prerequisites to "quick change" change which is 
 available now in such forms and concepts as the PLATO system and "infor- 
 mation as power," which are associated with efficiency. I think that we all 
 generally agree that there is dissatisfaction with present instructional ser- 
 vices. There is certainly a high level of agreement that the instructional role 
 of the library is not meeting the needs expressed by our clientele, and that 
 this lack is producing dissatisfaction. Sometimes that dissatisfaction is a result 
 of not having enough people. We wouldn't have to use PLATO, for in- 
 stance, if only we had seventeen more undergraduate assistants to help out 
 with those tours we all worry about. Viewed in this way, it is a question of 
 alternatives, of various possible methods for meeting a need. It is evident 
 from the PLATO demonstration you saw earlier that PLATO interactive 
 instruction is probably far more efficacious than any guided tour, because 
 we simply cannot afford one librarian for every student or teacher. We must 
 face therefore the realization that a one-to-one alternative is not the solution. 
 
 On the concept of information as power, there is not as much agree- 
 ment. Whenever a librarian says, "I can't get the board (the university 
 administration, the city council, or the state legislature) to fund a new in- 
 formation service," it becomes clear that the idea that information is power 
 is not generally accepted outside the library world. Nevertheless, I think that 
 a change is going to occur, and that in some cases, the question of dissatis- 
 faction may be not a perceptual problem but a real one. There may truly 
 be an unmet need whether or not anyone on the board, in the city council, or 
 in the university administration perceives it. When someone demonstrates the 
 need, however, a change may well occur. 
 
 Regarding small change, I am not sure that the dissatisfaction question 
 is a real one, or is one that will effect change. Some changes will occur be- 
 cause of the structure. It seems unlikely, for instance, that when decentralized 
 automated circulation, cataloging, acquisitions, and even reference (as in
 
 148 CHANGING TIMES: CHANGING LIBRARIES 
 
 some information retrieval or current awareness services) are provided, one 
 can avoid the restructuring of the libraries involved. Library staffs seem to 
 be growing, yet we know that groups larger than about twelve cannot work 
 together efficiently. For every group of twelve people in the system there 
 should be a unit head and that may be too high a price to pay. Librarians 
 know that this kind of administrative overhead is enormous. At the same 
 time, we see that people want to go backpacking or live a simpler life, and 
 we see economic and technical forces also pushing for smaller units. Thus, 
 restructuring may be forced on us not only by economics, but by the energy 
 situation and/or by change in the whole lifestyle. This combination of ability 
 and desire (which may be the same as dissatisfaction with the present situ- 
 ation) is also forcing change; that combination may indeed be the first rule 
 of change. 
 
 In discussing loose change, I have more difficulty applying the dis- 
 satisfaction criterion. I defined loose change as those concepts, activities and 
 predispositions which will have an inevitable, but as yet an indeterminable, 
 effect on the library. Certainly the changing world produces some dissatis- 
 faction with the present situation so change will happen. Current chang- 
 ing concepts of different work, different lifestyles, shared jobs, different ap- 
 proaches to life's game, should not bother us, however. As we change, so 
 will our communities; complaints and pressures from this changing clientele 
 will also change. If we are like our clientele (which we should be), then the 
 drives and the changes occurring within us should be occurring within them 
 and will more or less correspond. 
 
 The second prerequisite for change is the librarian's knowledge about 
 possible innovations and the possession of the skills to implement them. This 
 precondition again assumes a rational change a change to MBO, a change 
 from typed cards to keysort, a change of rules in the catalog, of vendors in 
 acquisition, in bibliographic abilities, and changes which are relatively minor. 
 Such change is a slow process. If we identify dissatisfaction, we can probably 
 also identify those measures which will cure or alleviate the dissatisfaction 
 without having to be experts in the techniques. It isn't necessary to know 
 how an internal combustion engine works to be a fairly good driver. But 
 there is a needed commitment by all persons involved, although that com- 
 mitment can be passive to the method of change. We must agree on the 
 solution, but not necessarily on the process. 
 
 It is absolutely true that the resources must be provided. The problem 
 that children's librarians have in integrating children into the rest of society 
 into the same reference service, the same guidance service, the same col- 
 lections, and the like is one example. It is not just a question of providing 
 funds with the implication of more funds; it may be a question of reallo-
 
 CREATING THE CONDITIONS FOR CHANGE 149 
 
 cation both of funds and, certainly, of time. Even when you don't have a 
 choice, you must respond. A response had to be made to that delivery truck 
 fire, a response must be made to a budget change, and a response will surely 
 be made to the energy crisis. 
 
 There must be some reward for effort, and the obvious reward is sur- 
 vival. The bureaucracies that we work in have the same drive for survival 
 as we ourselves have. The problems associated with change when people do 
 not see the results as being good may be considerable. People may not see 
 that there is a reward. It is in this area that we are going to have some of 
 the great conflicts in library work: between large groups and small. The 
 final prerequisite is that there must be leadership, and here all of us have 
 a responsibility. I suspect we will lead when necessary, not because we are 
 all so enamored of change, but because we, too, want to survive. 
 
 Ely finishes his paper by pointing out that life has changed and that we 
 don't have the time to reflect on it. We are now geared toward jet aircraft 
 and computers. I would suggest that we in the information business, in the 
 communications enterprise, are probably less affected by jets and computers 
 than other people are, even though we may use jets and computers, and use 
 them constantly. 
 
 The real model-setter for us is the telephone, as unpleasant a thought 
 as that may be. It is probably, in most of our patrons' minds, the obvious, 
 efficient, useful, cheap application of new technology the effective com- 
 munication device. One picks up the telephone, and within one or two sec- 
 onds hears a dial tone. That tells the person the system is working. (We do 
 not have that kind of response in the library!) It then takes only some twelve 
 seconds to dial, and one knows from clues all along whether the system is 
 working; if it doesn't work, the person hangs up within four to eight seconds. 
 That is the extraordinary response time that we all expect. (We are not 
 matching it in libraries!) The telephone system is extremely accurate. If we 
 get a wrong number, we assume right away that it is our fault, not the sys- 
 tem's fault, and that is an extraordinary admission. The company produces 
 a catalog once a year that is quite efficient as a system for indexing. (By the 
 way, if Bell ever gets approval for charges for directory assistance and for 
 information, I suspect that libraries can start charging at the reference desk.) 
 Society uses the telephone system as a model so much so that it is, in fact, 
 going to make or break us. Living with the model of "Ma Bell" may be an 
 annoying or scary idea, but I think it is true. 
 
 Ely's paper expresses some ideas about external and internal forces for 
 change. I will leave you with the idea that some of the concepts discussed at 
 this institute have been external, e.g., the community information idea, aging, 
 the demography change, the demand for accountability, and perhaps chang-
 
 150 CHANGING TIMES: CHANGING LIBRARIES 
 
 ing continuing education. There are, however, also some internal forces : the 
 children's library problem, internal automation, efficiency, and the like. 
 
 DONALD P. ELY 
 
 Professor of Instructional Technology and Director, 
 Center for the Study of Information and Education 
 
 Syracuse University 
 
 Syracuse, New York 
 
 Creating the Conditions for Change 
 
 We must dispose of the notion that social change is a process that alters a tran- 
 quil status quo. Today there is no tranquility to alter. Given the swift transfor- 
 mations in our world, even institutions that are fairly young, as history goes, find 
 themselves woefully out of date. The rush of change brings a kind of instant an- 
 tiquity.' 
 
 Humanity has always lived in a time of change, but in the past 70 
 years the conditions of life have been altered more than in all of the previous 
 2,000 years. The only constant seems to be change itself. 
 
 Today we are living through a change in the human scene that chal- 
 lenges the ideas and the activities which we have inherited from the past. 
 The transformations of our natural environment, the relationships among 
 people, the new technologies, and the apparently inverted value systems call 
 for new ways of coping with the changes that are about us. 
 
 The unsettled time in which we live has been brought about by a va- 
 riety of new developments, some of which can be isolated as the causal fac- 
 tor; consider, for example, the population explosion; the pollution of air, 
 land and water; the demand for energy, computers and automation; and the
 
 CREATING THE CONDITIONS FOR CHANGE 151 
 
 rising expectations of people. All these contemporary concerns press upon 
 us, and we often find ourselves unable or unwilling to cope with them. 
 
 Changes will occur, and to resent them makes us less able to make the 
 necessary adaptations. If the prospect of change fills us with anxiety, the 
 least we can do is to analyze the situation, determine the worst that can 
 happen, and try to improve upon that; or, better, we could estimate the 
 best that might happen and try to enhance the factors that will help to bring 
 about the best results. The anxious person will run away from change with 
 the hope that it will disappear. This is clearly a time of coping, not retreat- 
 ing; it is a time for deliberate movement rather than passive response. The 
 purpose of this paper is to consider the meaning of change, the process of 
 change, and the conditions for facilitating change so that both the individual 
 and the institution can emerge as proactive participants helping to create 
 the future rather than being shaped by it. 
 
 THE MEANING OF CHANGE 
 
 Change is often synonymous with innovation because innovation infers 
 change. In this paper these terms will be used somewhat differently. "An 
 innovation is an idea, practice, or object perceived as new by an individual."* 
 Acceptance or adoption of an innovation usually demands some type of 
 change. It is possible for an innovation to exist apart from an individual or 
 institution, but as soon as that individual or institution attempts to adopt or 
 adapt the innovation, the process of change occurs : "This view of innovation 
 as a process starting with the recognition of a potential demand for, and tech- 
 nical feasibility of, an item and ending with its widespread utilization is per- 
 haps the broadest use of the term innovation in the existing literature. It 
 blends the idea of invention with that of adoption." 3 
 
 There has been what Rogers calls a "proinnovation bias." 4 This bias 
 assumes that innovation is good and that everyone should adopt the new 
 ideas or practice. Rejection, in this context, is an undesirable or irrational 
 decision. This attitude persists as a residue from the earliest diffusion research 
 which was concerned about the adoption of hybrid corn by farmers. It is 
 no longer adequate. 
 
 Many innovations do not have universal usefulness. Some may be appro- 
 priate for certain individuals or organizations at some point in time but not 
 for others. Neither stability nor change has any intrinsic value. The worth 
 of stability is in the goodness it preserves, while the worth of change is in 
 the goodness it brings about. 
 
 For good or for ill, change is about us. It creates a disequilibrium, a dis- 
 sonance, a division between what is and what ought to be. One simple an-
 
 752 CHANGING TIMES: CHANGING LIBRARIES 
 
 swer to the dilemmas presented by change is to try to understand the process. 
 We need to study the process of innovation and change so that we can use 
 the principles to our advantage. 
 
 THE PROCESS OF CHANGE 
 
 The process of change is at once a simple and a complex concept. The 
 simple dimension presents change in the guise of conventional wisdom. A 
 new idea is presented, considered, and rejected or adopted. The complex 
 dimension portrays change as multidimensional, a process in which an inno- 
 vation "is communicated through certain channels, over time, among the 
 members of a social system." 5 This view considers such variables as decision 
 processes, stages of implementation, control, resistance to innovation, char- 
 acteristics of persons and organizations, feedback mechanisms, and other 
 elements. This "soft" area of social science research is difficult to discuss in 
 simple, empirically-based paradigms. Nevertheless, as an elusive area of re- 
 search, it challenges a small but diligent group of researchers from sociology, 
 anthropology, education, communication, marketing, and other disciplines 
 to seek a more comprehensive understanding of the process. 
 
 The Research Tradition 
 
 Over the past thirty-five years, increasing attention has been given to 
 the process of bringing about change in individuals and organizations. 6 Em- 
 pirical research has centered on the introduction of innovations, with the 
 adoption of an innovation being the dependent variable. Within this con- 
 text, three categories of investigation have emerged, i.e. those concerned with 
 characteristics of: (1) adopters (such as age, status, or attitude) ; (2) inno- 
 vations (such as relative advantage or observability) ; and (3) the change 
 process (such as communications, decision-making) or techniques of intro- 
 ducing innovations. A guiding assumption of these investigations has been 
 that change is needed or desirable, and further, that to identify its correla- 
 tion, to predict outcomes, and eventually to understand and control change 
 will make the process more expeditious. This process is called planned 
 change, to distinguish it from random or chance change. 
 
 A Model of the Process 
 
 Several models of the innovation/change process have been posited. 
 Some models focus on change in the individual, while others are concerned
 
 CREATING THE CONDITIONS FOR CHANGE 153 
 
 with change within an organization. One way of relating the individual to 
 the organization and to the larger society is to consider individuals as dis- 
 crete entities, randomly distributed. When those individuals are brought 
 together, however, institutional groupings emerge, e.g., families, schools, 
 businesses, churches, and the like (see Figure 1). Many of these institutional 
 ties overlap. All of these institutions, which are congeries of people, are 
 elements of a larger society of which all institutions are a part. Change may 
 be brought about by forces external to the individual, e.g., from the organiza- 
 tion or the larger society, or they may emerge from individuals who then 
 affect the institution and perhaps the larger society. Examples of the external 
 forces might be the increasing mass of information and the pervasive nature 
 of computers. On the other hand, internal forces might be exerted by leaders 
 in response to external forces or through creative inventions which arise 
 from an individual without regard to external forces. The recent presidential 
 election might be an example of external forces providing an external stim- 
 ulus to which the new president must respond. During the campaign he did 
 not spell out how his proposals would be carried out, but now he must. An 
 example of internal forces might be observed in the work of John Cage or 
 Charles Ives in music or in Frank Lloyd Wright's work in architecture. 
 
 One good example of a change model oriented to individuals was de- 
 veloped by Rogers and Shoemaker (see Figure 2). Organizational change 
 and innovation is summarized in a comprehensive model developed by Zalt- 
 man, Duncan and Holbek (see Figure 3) . Regardless of which model is most 
 helpful in understanding the process of change, the point to remember is 
 that change is a process. One flaw in thinking about change is to consider 
 change as final rather than continuing, i.e. to believe that the latest change 
 is the last change. 
 
 A useful summary of the topology of innovation is offered by Zaltman 
 in which three dimensions are considered (see Figure 4). The various types 
 of innovation are not mutually exclusive, but certain combinations are more 
 likely to come about than others: "Programmed innovations are usually 
 routine innovations, whereas nonprogrammed innovations, particularly of 
 the distress variety, often appear as relatively radical innovations because 
 they tend to produce changes in the subsystems of the organization." 7 
 
 The paradigms above help to illustrate the process in general, but inno- 
 vation and change cannot be usefully considered in the abstract because 
 innovations are situation specific. The full power of the change models and 
 the generalizations from the research can only be demonstrated when they 
 are superimposed on actual cases. Hagen indicates that there is no such thing 
 as an innovation in the abstract. 8 It must rather be in a specific field, involv- 
 ing specific materials and relationships among people.
 
 154 
 
 CHANGING TIMES: CHANGING LIBRARIES 
 
 
 
 c 
 
 J 
 
 a 
 
 I 
 
 5
 
 CREATING THE CONDITIONS FOR CHANGE 
 
 155 
 
 Knowledge 
 
 Persuasion 
 (attitude formation) 
 
 Rejection 
 
 N/ 
 
 Confirmation 
 
 Figure 2. An Individual-Oriented Model of the Change Process
 
 756 
 
 CHANGING TIMES: CHANGING LIBRARIES 
 
 "O 
 
 C 
 rt 
 o 
 bfi 
 
 O 
 
 
 
 c 
 
 a 
 
 'S 
 
 rt 
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 T3 
 
 I
 
 CREATING THE CONDITIONS FOR CHANGE 
 
 157 
 
 Instrumental innovation 
 
 Ultimate innovation 
 
 Programmed innovation 
 
 Nonprogrammed innovation 
 
 Routine 
 
 (variation) 
 
 innovation 
 
 Radical 
 
 (reorientation) 
 
 innovation 
 
 Figure 4. Combinations of Types of Innovation
 
 158 CHANGING TIMES: CHANGING LIBRARIES 
 
 CHANGING TIMES, CHANGING LIBRARIES 
 
 This conference is considering social change in the next twenty-five 
 years and the impact of that change on libraries. By entertaining these future 
 projections and estimating the potential changes which might stem from 
 them, you are taking the first step in helping to create the future in which 
 you want to live and work. Lest you have to wait twenty-five years to put 
 into practice what we know about coping with innovation and change, let 
 us consider some of the innovations which have already raised the anxieties 
 of librarians across this nation and use these innovations as specific examples 
 of changes which are occurring and will continue to occur. Although they 
 may not be as much on the frontier as some of the projections you have 
 heard, they fit the generic definition for innovations an idea, practice, or 
 object perceived as new by an individual. 
 
 In 1974 Elizabeth Stone published a report on Continuing Library and 
 Information Science Education for the National Commission on Libraries 
 and Information Science. 9 In that report she summarized a study she had 
 conducted earlier regarding continuing education content areas that had 
 the highest priority for practicing librarians for the next three to five years. 10 
 (Since the study was conducted in 1973, the 3-5 year period would end 
 1976-78.) While this is certainly not a long-range projection, it still serves 
 as an indicator of needs. In priority order those needs are : human relations, 
 nonprint media, management, automation, and public relations. From these 
 needs may be inferred several innovations and changes which the library is 
 facing and will continue to face in the immediate future. The growing use 
 of nonprint media in the public library 11 and the increasing influence of a 
 wide variety of computer-based information systems are being viewed as 
 major innovations in the library. The management procedures such as 
 management by objectives (MBO), program budgeting, and cost-benefit 
 analysis are new to many library administrators. The human potential 
 movement has introduced new approaches, such as transactional analysis 
 and organization development, which have direct applications to human 
 relationships in the library both among the staff and in serving clients. In 
 the face of these innovations within the library context, there is often a fear 
 of change the necessity of leaving the not-entirely-satisfactory routines of 
 the present and substituting for them the often hazardous decision-making 
 activities of the future. Many persons dread the thought of insecurity, of 
 reorganizing old habit patterns. Innovation is not uniformly relished. 
 
 The resistance factors must be noted and allotted for in any design for 
 innovation and change. The innovations listed above are imminent. Librari- 
 ans must ask how soon each innovation will occur and how library profes-
 
 CREATING THE CONDITIONS FOR CHANGE 159 
 
 sionals can be prepared to cope with the changes which the innovation will 
 demand. In other words, what are the conditions in which innovation and 
 change can be facilitated with a minimum amount of anxiety? There are 
 certain conditions which, if present, will enhance the potential of an inno- 
 vation being accepted and change being brought about. 
 
 THE CONDITIONS OF CHANGE 
 
 Broadly speaking, there are two types of change which occur : 
 
 1. radical those which require significant shifts of personnel, resources, 
 and facilities such as a complete computer-based circulation control sys- 
 tem or integration of the print and nonprint collections ; and 
 
 2. routine those which cause relatively small shifts in procedures, role 
 definition, and management structures such as program budgeting. 
 
 While the major (or radical) changes are much more dramatic and, in the 
 long run, provide the greatest hope for significant new developments in the 
 field, they are much more complex to study than the routine changes. Sub- 
 stantial time and financial investment is necessary to study major changes 
 and this study clearly needs to be done. Routine changes, however, permit 
 microstudies of the change process. By concentrating on minor changes in 
 a programmatic research sense, a series of findings can be parlayed into a 
 synergistic outcome. Once changes are understood in small proportions, the 
 likelihood of generalizations being formulated for the larger problem is en- 
 hanced. Much of the medical research and market research in mass commu- 
 nications follows this procedure. 
 
 The conditions which apply to innovations in general can be applied to 
 the library setting : 
 
 1. There must be dissatisfaction with the present situation. Another way of 
 expressing the same condition is to say that there must be a need to 
 change. If a librarian does not have a problem, innovation will seem 
 irrelevant. Dissatisfaction can arise from such situations as assessment of 
 staff productivity or perceptions of the quality of service rendered to 
 clients. Dissatisfaction may be induced by an increasing amount of client 
 demand or a shortage of resources. 
 
 2. A librarian must know about possible innovations and possess the skills to 
 implement them. Unless a person knows about new approaches to human 
 relations, it is unlikely that any action can take place. A librarian needs 
 to solve his/her own problems on his/her own terms, but often has no 
 idea how to proceed. Individuals must have the skills to develop inno- 
 vative practices.
 
 160 CHANGING TIMES: CHANGING LIBRARIES 
 
 3. A commitment must be made by all persons involved. Psychological own- 
 ership of an innovation is important to the persons involved. If a librarian 
 is going to spend part of his/her time in planning, preparing, and intro- 
 ducing an innovation, there must be a commitment to do so. Likewise, 
 members of the staff must share the commitment if time and resources 
 are to be made available. Related to this condition is the concept of critical 
 mass. If only one person embarks on an innovative activity, no matter 
 how committed, the likelihood of success is minimal; however, if one per- 
 son is joined by one committed and knowledgeable colleague (preferably 
 more), the likelihood of success is enhanced. In addition, if the library 
 executive gives visible and tangible support, success is almost assured. 
 
 4. Resources must be provided. Support services vary depending upon the 
 innovation, but there are generally two types of resources: human and 
 material. Human resources include assistants, secretarial help and knowl- 
 edgeable people often external consultants who can help with the de- 
 sign, implementation and evaluation of the innovation. Material resources 
 include such things as equipment, supplies and space. 
 
 5. Time must be made available. Perhaps time is a resource, and it does 
 require a commitment, but several studies have shown this condition to 
 be so important that it qualifies for separate citation. It is not realistic to 
 expect a librarian to sacrifice personal time to develop innovations, but 
 it is possible to allocate professional time to implement the new activity. 
 Usually time has to come from reallocation of existing responsibilities. 
 
 6. There must be some reward for the effort. Rewards vary depending upon 
 the value system of the librarian. It is sufficient for some to gain intrinsic 
 satisfaction from perceptions of improvement of services resulting from 
 planned change. For others, more tangible rewards are required. For ex- 
 ample, the availability of time and/or resources previously unavailable 
 might be a sufficient reward. Released time gives official recognition to 
 the innovation and hence confers status on it. Extra help from additional 
 staff, if necessary, might provide benefits. The resources and guidance of 
 an empathetic consultant could help as well. The recognition, encourage- 
 ment and visible acknowledgment of innovative effort by a board of 
 trustees or administrative superiors is ego-building. 
 
 7. There must be leadership. Most successful innovations can be traced to 
 a single person who has the vision, persistence, authority, and charisma 
 to move people to action. Leadership is one of the essential conditions 
 for change and must be exercised in an environment which possesses the 
 other conditions. Strong leadership cannot transcend the need for re- 
 sources, time and a reward system. No matter how kindly or inspired the
 
 CREATING THE CONDITIONS FOR CHANGE 161 
 
 leader may be, a staff which possesses the necessary skills and commitment 
 is necessary to carry through the innovation. 
 
 CONDITIONS WHICH HINDER CHANGE 
 
 In a comprehensive summary of the research literature, Mayhew out- 
 lines the characteristics which exemplify unsuccessful efforts to innovate in 
 institutions of higher education. 12 His ideas can be adapted for libraries: 
 
 1 . Lack of relevant, persuasive evidence that innovations or changes produce 
 results different from those obtained through more traditional ways is a 
 significant deterrent. 
 
 2. The lack of a clearly expressed purpose or reason for an innovation or 
 change may be a significant condition for failure. 
 
 3. If a given organizational system is overloaded with too many undertakings 
 at one time, the chance for successful implementation and/or adoption of 
 change decreases substantially. 
 
 4. Related to institutional hyperactivity is the problem of fatigue. 
 
 5. A possible condition for failure of many innovations is the lack of collec- 
 tive memory or actual history as to what has been tried before and to 
 what effect. 
 
 6. Time and time again attempts to innovate appear to be affected seriously 
 by personal relationships, personality peculiarities, or changes in personnel. 
 
 7. A major stimulus to innovation and change is the desire by institutions to 
 satisfy their clientele. Libraries, if they are to survive as social institutions, 
 must detect and respond to social needs, demands, pressures, and changes. 
 
 Knowledge of the conditions which facilitate and hinder change should be 
 helpful in attempting to create an environment in which innovation and 
 change can occur. 
 
 NEXT STEPS 
 
 "The rush of change brings a kind of instant antiquity." Gardner's ob- 
 servation is confirmed by the acceleration of all aspects of living. Life is not 
 attuned to the old measurements: lifetimes, generations, years, seasons. It 
 is geared to the speed of the jet aircraft and the computer. Every moment 
 is filled with something that must be done. Futurists are not so concerned 
 with the feasibility of invention, but with the rate of invention. The change 
 of speed has taken us unaware. For hundreds of years before the beginning
 
 762 CHANGING TIMES: CHANGING LIBRARIES 
 
 of the nineteenth century, there had been no major acceleration of change; 
 then came changes in the technology of distance that revolutionized travel 
 and communication. 
 
 The speed of change has confronted the library with massive amounts 
 of information. Coping with this change is the means to survival. The only 
 alternative is flight from reality, which results in decay of all that has been 
 gained over the past two centuries. We need to have not only eyes and ears 
 to learn what is going on, but minds to understand what the consequences 
 will be if we fail to act. 
 
 One simple answer is to understand the process of change, to help pre- 
 pare the conditions for change to occur, and then to embrace those innova- 
 tions which will help to provide information to those who need and seek it. 
 To do less is to accept the dictation of uncontrolled events. 
 
 REFERENCES 
 
 1. Gardner, John W. The Recovery of Confidence. New York, W. W. Norton, 
 1970, p. 25. 
 
 2. Rogers, Everett M., and Shoemaker, F. Floyd. Communication of Innova- 
 tions: A Cross-Cultural Approach. New York, The Free Press, 1971, p. 19. 
 
 3. Zaltman, Gerald, et al. Innovations and Organizations. New York, Wiley, 
 1973, pp. 7-8. 
 
 4. Rogers, Everett M. "Innovation in Organizations: New Research Ap- 
 proaches" (paper presented to American Political Science Association). Sept. 1975, 
 p. 15. (mimeographed) 
 
 5. Ibid., p. 3. 
 
 6. See: Havelock, Ronald G. Planning for Innovation. Ann Arbor, Center for 
 Research on Utilization of Scientific Knowledge, Institute for Social Research, Uni- 
 versity of Michigan, 1969; Rogers and Shoemaker, op. cit.; and Zaltman, et al., op. 
 cit. 
 
 7. Zaltman, et al., op. cit., p. 32. 
 
 8. Hagen, Everett E. On the Theory of Social Change. Homewood, 111., Dorsey 
 Press, 1962, p. 87. 
 
 9. Stone, Elizabeth W. Continuing Library and Information Science Education. 
 Washington, D.C., American Society for Information Science, 1974. 
 
 10. Ibid., p. 2-42. 
 
 11. Brown, James W. New Media in the Public Library. Syracuse, N.Y., Gay- 
 lord Bros., 1976. 
 
 12. Mayhew, Lewis B. How Colleges Change: Approaches to Academic Re- 
 form. Stanford, Calif., ERIC Clearinghouse on Information Resources, 1976. (ED 
 125 607)
 
 ACRONYMS 
 
 ALA American Library Association 
 
 ARL Association of Research Libraries 
 
 EFE Environmentalists for Full Employment 
 
 GNP Gross National Product 
 
 ICBM Intercontinental ballistic missile 
 
 MBO Management by Objectives 
 
 MRAP Management, Review and Analysis Program 
 
 NEA National Education Association 
 
 NSF National Science Foundation 
 
 OCLC Ohio College Library Center 
 
 P.L. Public Law 
 
 PLATO Programmed Logic for Automated Teaching Operations 
 
 SLA Special Libraries Association 
 
 SRI Stanford Research Institute 
 
 SST Supersonic transport 
 
 163
 
 INDEX 
 
 Academic libraries, priorities, 104-05 
 Accreditation, shortcomings, 19 
 Acquisitions, review of, 19-20; academic 
 
 libraries, 104-05 
 
 Administration, women in, 71-72 
 American Library Association, legisla- 
 tion, 54-57 
 
 Association of Research Libraries, man- 
 agement techniques, 108-09 
 Automation, see Communications tech- 
 nology 
 
 Canadian Library Association, interli- 
 brary cooperation, 77-78 
 
 Cataloging, computer-based, 87-88 
 
 Change, effect on libraries, vii-x, 15-22, 
 36, 145-50, 158-62; analysis of, 1-14, 
 150-57; governmental, 23-43; women, 
 59-69; electronic media, 86-95; knowl- 
 edge needs, 97-111; futures research, 
 113-29; sexual identities, 131-38; or- 
 ganizational, 152-56 
 
 Citizen participation, in government, 38, 
 39-41 
 
 Collections, standards, 19-20; academic 
 libraries, 104-05 
 
 Communications technology, impact, 11- 
 12; in libraries, 16-18, 57, 91-95; 
 PLATO, 81-89, 106-07; video disc, 89- 
 91; knowledge needs, 100-01, 104 
 
 Cooperation, see Interlibrary coopera- 
 tion 
 
 Copyright, legislation, 56-57, 78; soft- 
 ware, 87, 90-91, 95, 101, 107-08 
 
 Culture, effects of leisure, 10-11, 109-10; 
 impact of television, 11-12; changes 
 in, 27-30, 32-36, 41-42 
 
 Defense budget, 25-26 
 
 Economics, social change, vii, 9-10, 27- 
 39 passim, 42-43; female employment, 
 59-70 
 
 Education, crisis in, 6-8, 10; of librar- 
 ians, 18-20, 71; legislation, 57; em- 
 ployment of women, 61-62; electronic 
 media, 81-96; knowledge needs, 97- 
 111 passim; futures research, 113-29; 
 of children, 126-29 
 Education Amendments of 1976, 57 
 Educational/Broadcasting Act, 57 
 Electronic media, 81-95, 106-07, 145, 
 147. See also Communications tech- 
 nology 
 Elementary and Secondary Education 
 
 Act, amendments, 57 
 Employment, women, 59-68 
 Energy consumption, 117-18 
 Environmental policies, 27-38 passim 
 
 Federal government, see Government 
 Fees, interlibrary loans, 77 
 Fisher, H.L.A., 12-13 
 Funding, see Legislation 
 
 Prepared by: Mary Kelly Black 
 
 765
 
 766 
 
 CHANGING TIMES: CHANGING LIBRARIES 
 
 Futures research, 115-29. See also 
 Change 
 
 Government, social change, viii, 4-5, 9- 
 10; federal budget, 24-27; future, 23- 
 43; library legislation, 53-58 
 
 Higher Education Act, amendments, 57 
 
 Industrialization, future, 27-37 passim, 
 43, 101-02, 118-19 
 
 Information centers, nomenclature, 76; 
 future needs, 100 
 
 Interlibrary cooperation, special li- 
 braries, 77-78; future needs, 105 
 
 Knowledge, future needs, 97-111 
 
 Leisure, impact on culture, 10-11; use of, 
 
 109-10 
 Legislation, process, 54-57; for women, 
 
 67, 73. See also Government 
 Librarians, qualities, 16-17, 18-20; 
 
 women, 61, 70-79; electronic media, 
 
 91-95 
 Libraries, impact of change, vii-x, 15-22, 
 
 36, 145-50, 158-62; legislation, 55-58; 
 
 women in, 61, 70-79; communications 
 
 technologies, 91-95; future knowledge 
 
 needs, 97-111 passim, 140-43; futures 
 
 research, 124-25 
 Library and Information Services, White 
 
 House Conference on, 57-58 
 Library Services Act, history, 55 
 Loans, see Interlibrary cooperation 
 
 Machine-readable formats, see Com- 
 munications technology 
 Mail, electronic, 88 
 Management by Objectives, 148, 158 
 
 National Education Association, futures 
 
 research, 113-29 
 National Science Foundation, Project: 
 
 Knowledge 2000, 97 '-111 
 Networking, future use, 36, 77-78, 89 
 
 Organizational change, 152-56 
 
 Outreach services, need for, 105 
 
 Personnel, women librarian, 61, 70-79 
 Photocopying, legality, 56-57, 101, 107- 
 
 08. See also Copyright 
 PLATO teaching system, 81-89, 91-95, 
 
 106-07, 145, 147 
 
 Politics, library involvement, 54-57 
 Population trends, 120-21 
 Privacy, electronic communications, 89 
 Programming, PLATO system, 81-89 
 
 Reference services, computer-based sys- 
 tems, 89 
 
 Research, dissemination of, 106 
 Retrieval, see Communications technol- 
 ogy 
 
 Salaries, women librarians, 73-76 
 
 Science, see Technology 
 
 Senior citizens, treatment, 11; increase 
 
 in, 122 
 
 Sexual roles, changes, 59-79, 131-38 
 Social change, see Change 
 Special libraries, employment of women, 
 
 70-75 
 Staff, see Personnel 
 
 Technology, impact, 5-6, 11-12; in li- 
 braries, vii, 16-18, 57, 70, 91-95, 104; 
 and government, 37, 42; electronic 
 media, 81-91; growth of, 100 
 
 Television, popular culture, 11-12; legis- 
 lation, 57; video-disc player, 89-93; 
 use in conference, 97-99 
 
 University of Illinois, PLATO system, 
 81-89, 91-95, 106-07, 145, 147 
 
 Video disc, 89-93 
 
 Vocational Education Act, amendments, 
 
 57 
 Voting trends, 30-40 
 
 White House Conference on Library and 
 
 Information Services, 57-58 
 Women, in labor force, 59-68; librarians, 
 
 61, 70-79; sexual identities, 131-38