Statement of the American Library Association to the Subcommittee on Science, Technology, and Space Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation for the hearing record of March 5, 1991 on S. 272 The High-Performance Computing Act of 1991 The National Research and Education Network, which S. 272 would create, could revolutionize the conduct of research, education, and information transfer. As part of the infrastructure supporting education and research, libraries are already stakeholders in the evolution to a networked society. For this reason, the American Library Association, a nonprofit educational organization of more than 51,000 librarians, educators, information scientists, and library trustees and friends of libraries, endorsed in January 1990 and again in January 1991 the concept of a National Research and Education Network. ALA's latest resolution, a copy of which is attached, identified elements which should be incorporated in legislation to create the NREN, a high-capacity electronic highway of interconnected networks linking business, industry, government, and the education and library communities. ALA also joined with 19 other education, library, and computing organizations and associations in a Partnership for the National Research and Education Network. On January 25, 1991, the Partnership organizations recommended a policy framework for the NREN which also identified elements to be incorporated in NREN legislation. Within that framework, ALA recommends the following additions to the pending NREN legislation to facilitate the provision of the information resources users will expect on the network, to provide appropriate and widely dispersed points of user access, and to leverage the federal investment. NREN authorizing legislation should provide for: A. Recognition of education in its broadest sense as a reason for development of the NREN; B. Eligibility of all types of libraries to link to the NREN as resource providers and as access points for users; and C. A voice for involved constituencies, including libraries, in development of network policy and technical standards. NREN legislation should authorize support for: A. High-capacity network connections with all 50 states; B. A percentage of network development funds allocated for education and training; and C. Direct connections to the NREN for at least 200 key libraries and library organizations and dial-up access for multitype libraries within each state to those key libraries. Prime candidates (some of which are already connected to the Internet) for direct connection to the NREN include: - The three national libraries (Library of Congress, National Agricultural Library, National Library of Medicine) and other federal agency libraries and information centers; - Fifty-one regional depository libraries (generally one per state) which have a responsibility to provide free public access to all publications (including in electronic formats) of U.S. government agencies; - Fifty-one state library agencies (or their designated resource libraries or library networks) which have responsibility for statewide library development and which administer federal funds; - Libraries in geographic areas which have a scarcity of NREN connections; - Libraries with specialized or unique resources of national or international significance; and - Library networks and bibliographic utilities which act on behalf of libraries. The National Science Foundation, through its various programs, including science education, should provide for: A. The inclusion of libraries both within and outside of higher education and elementary and secondary education as part of the research and education support structure; B. Education and training in network use at all levels of education; and C. Experimentation and demonstrations in network applications. ALA enthusiastically supports development of an NREN with strong library involvement for several reasons. 1. The NREN has the potential to revolutionize the conduct of research, education, and information transfer. As basic literacy becomes more of a problem in the United States, the skills needed to be truly literate grow more sophisticated. ALA calls this higher set of skills "information literacy"-knowing how to learn, knowing how to find and use information, knowing how knowledge is organized. Libraries play a role in developing these skills, beginning with encouraging preschool children to read. Libraries as community institutions and as part of educational institutions introduce users to technology. Many preschoolers and their grandparents have used a personal computer for the first time at a public library. Libraries are using technology, not only to organize their in-house collections, but to share knowledge of those collections with users of other libraries, and to provide users with access to other library resources, distant databases, and actual documents. Libraries have begun a historic shift from providing access primarily to the books on the shelves to providing access to the needed information wherever it may be located. The NREN is the vehicle librarians need to accelerate this trend. In Michigan, a pilot program called M-Link has made librarians at a group of community libraries full, mainstream information providers. Since 1988, M-Link has enabled libraries in Alpena, Bay County, Hancock, Battle Creek, Farmington, Grand Rapids, and Lapeer to have access to the extensive resources of the University of Michigan Library via the state's MERIT network. The varied requests of dentists, bankers, city managers, small business people, community arts organizations, and a range of other users are transmitted to the University's librarians via telephone, fax, or computer and modem. Information can be faxed quickly to the local libraries from the University. Access to a fully developed NREN would increase by several magnitudes both the amount and types of information available and the efficiency of such library interconnections. Eventually, the NREN could stimulate the type of network that would be available to all these people directly. School libraries also need electronic access to distant resources for students and teachers. In information-age schools linked to a fully developed NREN, teachers would work consistently with librarians, media resource people, and instructional designers to provide interactive student learning projects. Use of multiple sources of information helps students develop the critical thinking skills needed by employers and needed to function in a democratic society. This vision of an information-age school builds on today's groundwork. For instance, the New York State Library is providing dial-up access for school systems to link the resources of the state library (a major research resource) and more than 50 public, reference, and research library systems across the state. The schools had a demonstrated need for improved access for research and other difficult-to-locate materials for students, faculty, and administrators. 2. Current Internet users want library-like services, and libraries have responded with everything from online catalogs to electronic journals. As universities and colleges became connected to the Internet, the campus library's online catalog was one of the first information resources faculty and students demanded to have available over the same network. Some 200 library online catalogs are already accessible through the Internet. Academic library users increasingly need full text databases and multimedia and personalized information resources in an environment in which the meter is not ticking by the minute logged, the citation downloaded, or the statistic retrieved. A telecommunications vehicle such as the NREN can help equalize the availability of research resources for scholars in all types, sizes, and locations of higher education institutions. Libraries will be looked to for many of the information resources expected to be made available over the network, and librarians have much to contribute to the daunting task of organizing the increasing volumes of electronic information. The Colorado Alliance of Research Libraries, a consortium of multitype libraries, not only lists what books are available in member libraries, but its CARL/Uncover database includes tables of contents from thousands of journals in these libraries. Libraries are also pioneering in the development of electronic journals. Of the ten scholarly refereed electronic journals now in operation or in the planning stages, several are sponsored by university libraries or library organizations. 3. Libraries provide access points for users without an Institutional base. Many industrial and independent researchers do not have an institutional connection to the Internet. All such researchers and scholars are legitimate users of at least one public library. The NREN legislation as introduced does not reflect current use of the networks, much less the full potential for support of research and education. Because access to Internet resources is necessary to this goal, many libraries outside academe without access to academic networks have developed creative, if sometimes awkward, ways to fill the gap. A number of high schools have guest accounts at universities, but only a few have managed to get direct connections. CARL, the Colorado Alliance of Research Libraries, reaches library users regardless of the type of library they are using or their point of access. The development of community computer systems such as the Cleveland Free-net is another example of providing network access to a larger community of library users. Several Cleveland area public, academic, and special libraries are information providers on the Free-net as well. Most of the companies in California high-technology centers either began as or still have fewer than 50 employees. For these companies, there is no major research facility or corporate library. The local public libraries provide strong support as research resources for such companies. The California State Library has encouraged and supported such development, for example, through grants to projects like the Silicon Valley Information Center in the San Jose Public Library. Library access to the NREN would improve libraries' ability to serve the needs of small business. Support of research and education needs in rural areas could also be aided through library access to the NREN. Even without such access, libraries are moving to provide information electronically throughout their states, often through state networks. An example is the North Carolina Information Network. NCIN, through an agreement between the State Library and the University of North Carolina's Educational Computing Service, provides information access to almost 400 libraries in every part of the state-from university and corporate libraries in the Research Triangle Park, to rural mountain and coastal public libraries, to military base libraries. Using federal Library Services and Construction Act funds, the State Library provides the local equipment needed at the packet nodes to permit access to the system (called LINCNET) to these local libraries. The information needs of rural people and communities are just as sophisticated and important as the needs of the people in urban areas. Because the North Carolina network is available in rural libraries, small businesses in these communities have access for the first time to a state database of all contracts for goods, services, and construction being put out for bid by the state-just one example of network contribution to economic development. The key to the network's growing success is the installation of basic computer and telecommunications hardware in the libraries, access to higher speed data telecommunications, and the database searching skills of the librarians. 4. With libraries and their networks, the support structure to make good use of the NREN already exists. Librarians have been involved in using computers and telecommunications to solve information problems since the 1960s when the library community automated variable-length and complex records-a task which was not being done by the computer field at the time. Librarians pioneered in the development of standards so that thousands of libraries could all use the same bibliographic databases, unlike e- mail systems today which each require a different mode of address. The library profession has a strong public service orientation and a cooperative spirit; its codes of behavior fit well with that of the academic research community. Libraries have organized networks to share resources, pool purchasing power, and make the most efficient use of telecommunications capacity and technical expertise. Upgrading of technological equipment and technological retraining are recognized library requirements, although the resources to follow through are often inadequate. The retraining extends to library users as well. Librarians are familiar with the phenomenon of the home computer or VCR purchaser who can word process or play a tape, but is all thumbs when it comes to higher functions not used every day. Computer systems, networks, and databases can seem formidable to the novice and are often not user-friendly. Expert help at the library is essential for many users. 5. NREN development should build on existing federal investments in the sharing of library and information resources and the dissemination of government information. The Internet/NREN networks are in some cases not technically compatible with current library networking arrangements. However, the government or university database or individual expert most appropriate to an inquiry may well be available only via the Internet/NREN. Access to specific information resources and the potential linkage to scarce human resources is one reason why most librarians are likely to need at least some access to the NREN. As the Internet/NREN is used by various federal agencies, it becomes a logical vehicle for the dissemination of federal government databases. The Government Printing Office, through its Depository Library Program, has begun providing access to government information in electronic formats, including online databases. A unified government information infrastructure accessible through depository libraries would enable all sectors of society to use effectively the extensive data that is collected and disseminated by the federal government. Disseminating time- sensitive documents electronically would allow all citizens, small businesses, and nonprofit groups to have real-time access to government information through an existing organized system of depository libraries. The 51 regional libraries (generally one in each state, many of which are university and other libraries already connected to the Internet) could provide the original nodes for such a system. Together with major libraries capable of providing such support, these libraries could provide access for smaller libraries and selective depositories within their states or regions through dial-up facilities or local area networks. The library community has been assisted and encouraged in its networking efforts by the federal government beginning in the 1960s, and more recently by state support also, in ways that track well with the NREN model. The federal government spends in the neighbor- hood of $200 million per year on programs which promote and support interlibrary cooperation and resource sharing and library applications of new technology. These programs range from the Library Services and Construction Act, the Higher Education Act title II, the Depository Library Program, the library postal rate, and the Medical Library Assistance Act to programs of the three national libraries-the Library of Congress, the National Agricultural Library, and the National Library of Medicine. If academic libraries continue their migration to the Internet/NREN as the network of choice both on campus and for communication with other academic institutions, it will not be long before academic libraries and public libraries find themselves unable to talk to one another electronically. This result will be totally at odds with the goals of every major legislative vehicle through which the federal government assists libraries. In addition, it makes no sense, given the intimate connection of public libraries to the support structure for research and education. While public libraries have long been recognized as engines of lifelong learning, the connection is much more direct in many cases, ranging from the magnificent research resources of a New York Public Library to the strong support for distance learning provided by many public libraries in Western states. Interlibrary loan and reference referral patterns also show that every kind of library supports every other's mission. The academic, public, school, state, national, and specialized libraries of the nation constitute a loose but highly interconnected system. A network which supports research and education, or even research alone, cannot accomplish the job without including this multitype system of libraries in planning, policy formulation, and implementation. 6. The NREN's higher seeds will enable the sharing of full text and nontextual library and archival resources. Libraries will increasingly need the higher capacity of the NREN to exploit fully library special collections and archives. The high data rates available over the fully developed NREN will make possible the transmission of images of journal articles, patents, sound and video clips, photos, artwork, manuscripts, large files from satellite data collection archives, engineering and architectural design, and medical image databases. Work has already begun at the national libraries and elsewhere; examples include the Library of Congress American Memory project and the National Agricultural Library text digitizing project. 7. Libraries provide a useful laboratory for exploration of what services and what user interfaces might stimulate a mass marketplace. One purpose of the NREN bills since the beginning has been to promote eventual privatization of the network. Libraries have already demonstrated the feasibility and marketability of databases in the CD-ROM format. Libraries also convinced proprietors and distributors to accommodate the mounting on local campus systems of heavily used databases. Libraries can serve as middle- to low-end network use test beds in their role as intermediaries between the public and its information requirements. 8. Public, school, and college libraries are appropriate institutions to bridge the growing gap between the information poor and the information rich. While we pursue information literacy for all the population, we can make realistic progress through appropriate public service institutions such as libraries. However, while an increase in commercial services would be welcome, any transition to privatization should not come at the expense of low-cost communications for education and libraries. Ongoing efforts such as federal library and education legislation, preferential postal rates for educational and library use, and federal and state supported library and education networks provide ample precedent for continued congressional attention to own and inexpensive access. In conclusion, the NREN legislation would be strengthened in reaching the potential of the network, in ALA's view, with the addition of the elements we have enumerated above. Our recommendations represent recognition of the substantial investment libraries have already made in the Internet and in the provision of resources available over it, authorization of modest and affordable near-term steps to build on that base for library involvement in the NREN, and establishment of a framework for compatible efforts through other federal legislation, and state and local library efforts. ATTACHMENT WASHINGTON OFFICE American Library Association 110 Maryland Avenue, N.E. Washington, D.C. 20002 (202) 547-4440 Resolution on a National Research and Education Network WHEREAS, The American Library Association endorsed the concept of a National Research and Education Network in a Resolution passed by its Council (1989-90 CD #54) on January 10, 1990; and WHEREAS, Legislation to authorize the development of a National Research and Education Network has not yet been enacted; and WHEREAS, High-capacity electronic communications is increasingly vital to research, innovation, education, and information literacy; and WHEREAS, Development of a National Research and Education Network is a significant infrastructure investment requiring a partnership of federal, state, local, institutional, and private-sector efforts; and WHEREAS, Libraries linked to the National Research and Education Network would spread its benefit more broadly, enhance the resources to be made available over it, and increase access to those resources; now, therefore, be it RESOLVED, That the American Library Association reaffirm its support of a National Research and Education Network, and recommend incorporation of the following elements in NREN legislation: - Recognition of education in its broadest sense as a reason for development of the NREN; - Eligibility of all types of libraries to link to the NREN as resource providers and as access points for users; - A voice for involved constituencies, including libraries, in development of network policy and technical standards; - High-capacity network connections with all 50 states and territories; - Federal matching and other forms of assistance (including through other federal programs) to state and local education and library agencies, institutions, and organizations. Adopted by the Council of the American Library Association Chicago, Illinois January 16, 1991 (Council Document #40) Executive Offices: 50 East Huron Street, Chicago, Illinois 60611 (312) 944-6780