Librarian Testifies on Hill for National Library Week
Dr. Billington Stresses Role of Public Libraries
The new electronic age makes the nation's 15,000 publiclibraries "more, rather than less, important to the progress ofthe United States in the 21st Century," James H. Billington,Librarian of Congress, told Congress April 21.
Dr. Billington testified before the Joint Committee on theLibrary, chaired by Rep. Charlie Rose (D., N.C.), along withother witnesses, including Dr. Marilyn Miller, president of theAmerican Library Association, on the "state of our nation'slibraries."
Citing cutbacks in locally financed public libraries, Dr.Billington warned that Americans are "in serious danger oferoding a unique legacy laboriously created by our forebears"even as public demands for modern library services increase andtwo-thirds of all Americans use a library in the course of ayear.
Dr. Billington noted that some techno-pundits have arguedthat the community library and even the book are doomed byelectronics to obsolescence. Not so, he said. Electronic online information "will vastly supplement not destroy the book,"he said.
Moreover, he said, converting existing books to be put online is slow and expensive (text alone can cost $2 to $3 per page). Thus, for the foreseeable future, most of the vastexisting paper record of the human past seems likely to remain onpaper in libraries. Electronic entertainment/educationalproducts and "pure" information services--supplying legal data,news, technical papers, etc.--are likely to remain too expensiveor too specialized for all but a small percentage of the nation'sindividual consumers.
"There could emerge two classes of Americans: information'haves' and 'have-nots'", he said. "That is where the publiclibrary comes in" -- not only preserving the paper record butalso serving as local distributor for many, if not all,information services, for free or for modest fees, depending onarrangements with the supplier. Such operations are alreadyunderway in major research libraries and some public libraries. Librarians will assess the utility and user-friendliness of eachinformation service, take the best, and act as knowledgenavigators, saving users' time and money.
As the President and Congress look to the electronic futureand the country's needs, Dr. Billington said, they should payspecial attention to the public libraries. Linked by newtechnology to one another, to university libraries, and to theLibrary of Congress, these local libraries, "unpublicized yetdeeply cherished and heavily used in thousands of communities"can play a vital role in the coming Age of Information.