Needed: a System

It is nearly 300 years since a crotchety Boston artillery captain named Robert Keayne died and left his city money for a fine new building with "a convenient roome for a Library & a gallery or some other handsome roome for the Elders to meete in and conferr." That, in 1658, gave Boston the first public library in the U.S. Since then, U.S. communities have kept right on building, now have 7,408 of them. How well do they serve?

To find out, a special Public Library Inquiry, headed by onetime Bennington College President Robert D. Leigh, went to work three years ago with a $200,000 grant from the Carnegie Corporation. Part of the money went for a nationwide poll of reading habits. Last week the inquiry's answer, The Public Library in the United States (Columbia University Press; $3.75), pronounced the state of the nation's libraries only fair.

One big trouble, concluded the inquiry, is public apathy. U.S. citizens spend $100 million a year on their libraries, but that is only two-thirds of what they spend on bowling alleys and billiards. Furthermore, although 90% of U.S. adults listen to the radio every day, and 50% of them go to the movies at least once a fortnight, about half (48%) never read a book from one year's end to another. Only one in ten is a library regular.

How much of a selection does the average regular get when he does go to his library? Not much, reports the inquiry. Ninety percent of U.S. libraries are in towns of under 5,000 to 25,000 people. Many of them have fewer than 6,000 books, struggle along with budgets of less than $4,000, are able to buy only 330 books a year, including replacements of worn-out favorites. At least two-thirds of all U.S. libraries have no adequate stock of reference works, make too little attempt to enrich their shelves with classics.

Most disturbing of all, says the inquiry, is the fact that one-third of the nation is without any public-library facilities whatever. The obvious reason: many rural areas and villages lack the means to provide and maintain them. If the U.S. as a whole is to get adequate library service, concludes the inquiry, existing libraries must give up their isolation. Instead, they should be linked together in regional networks, buying in common, exchanging books, records and films, supporting a common staff of experts.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.