14th Annual Report, For the Period Ending June 30, 1970

In this report of the Council's fourteenth year, a sum of $1,722,375 was appropriated for the support of 29 new projects and work was continued or completed on a good many more. It has become increasingly evident that the average library will never be able to "go it alone" in some aspects of the new technology--automation, for example. The level of investment required to reap the benefits of the emerging national machine-readable data bases exemplified by MARC is far beyond the individual budgeting capacity of any but the very largest libraries. Agreement is growing that the only possible solution to the dilemma - especially for the medium-sized and small libraries - is for them to band together in local, state or regional consortia and thus pool their assets and efforts. This type of consortia is so expensive and complex as to preclude its development everywhere at once. The Council and other funding agencies should select the most promising of each of several types of development for a concentration of support. In this way uneconomical dispersion of limited available resources will be avoided.