ACRL College & Research Libraries News

College & Research Libraries News

From Inside the DLP

By Dr. KATHARINE M. STOKES

College and University Library Specialist, Library Planning and Development Branch, Divisin of Library Programs, Bureau of Libraries and Educational Technology, U.S. Office of Education, Washington, D.C. 20202.

The initials for our Division did not change on February 10 when we became a part of the BLET instead of the BAVLP, but those of you who are familiar with government structure will realize that this is an important change. The new Bureau of Libraries and Educational Technology to which we now belong has been created as a sister bureau to the one for Educational Personnel Development (BEPD), and the two bureaus will be headed by the Deputy Commissioner for Instructional Resources, who has not yet been appointed. The BEPD is headed by Associate Commissioner Don Davies, who will be acting head of the BLET also until an appointment is made. The two other agencies with us in the new Bureau are the Educational Broadcasting Facilities Program headed by Raymond Stanley, and the Educational Media Program. The programs administered by the Library and Information Research Branch, now headed by Lawrence Papier are being transferred from the Office of Information Dissemination to the BLET.

Our Division personnel remains the same, headed by Director Ray Fry and his administrative staff, with four branch chiefs, as follows:

1. Mrs. Elizabeth A. Hughey (Library Program and Facilities)

2. Frank A. Stevens (Library Training and Resources)

3. R. Kathleen Molz (Library Planning and Development)

4. Paul C. Janaske (Library and Information Science)

The first branch is concerned with Library Services and Construction Act grants administered through the State Library agencies. The second dispenses Higher Education Act, Title II-A awards for college library resources and Title II-B awards for institutes and fellowships for library education. The third and fourth are planning branches, one devoted to library education and the other to all types of libraries and their activities. This third branch includes specialists on public, school, special, and academic libraries and one on public library services for children and young adults.

All this is preamble to my thanks to all of you who answer requests for copies of your annual reports. Planning is a very vague sounding activity, but any projection into the future has to be based on very definite information about past experience.

Your reports give us some insight into academic libraries—the changes in your budgets, for better or worse; the changes in your staffing as library technicians become available for nonprofessional tasks and automatic data processing necessitates the employment of systems experts and computer programmers; the development of resources for graduate work as your institutions offer new programs; the expansion of your services as you acquire more space in new buildings; the sharing of your resources with your neighbor libraries to offset rising costs as interest on endowment funds shrinks and government grants grow smaller.

We look forward to reading about the progress you are making, e.g., at Northern Illinois University where a Special Purpose Type A grant in 1967 under the Higher Education Act, Title II-A has been helping in building resources for an expanding graduate program; at the University of North Carolina where a Small Library Services and Construction Act, Title III, grant has helped to boost the local and regional tradition of cooperation to a new level of statewide usefulness among all types of libraries; at Indiana University where Higher Education Facilities Act grants helped to finance a new building that not only fosters excellent services for the academic community, but also provides a fine setting for an accredited library school.