The development of Resource Description and Access, the planned replacement for Anglo-American Cataloguing Rules, Second Edition anticipated for a 2009 release, has not been without controversy, as AL Associate Editor Dan Kraus detailed in an October 2007 report (p. 66-67). It's perhaps not surprising that the adoption of AACR2 wasn't without its strains as well.

Before AACR2's publication, the Library of Congress had announced a January 1980 date to adopt it. The controversy first hit AL's pages in the May 1978 issue, in in a brief before-the-table-of-contents wrap-up. The "Page One" department reported that OCLC Director Fred Kilgour had announced resistance (p. 254). "There have been enough statements... to suggest that adoption of AACR2 may increase library costs without an increase in benefits to library patrons. If such should turn out to be the case, OCLC would have to oppose adoption," Kilgour explained, in a quote from the Chronicle of Higher Education.

He wasn't the only one with concerns. At an August 3 summit at ALA Headquarters (Sept., p. 450), 21 representatives of several library organizations (including the Association of Research Libraries, the Council on Computerized Library Networks, the Council on Library Resources, and the National Library of Medicine) unanimously passed a resolution urging LC to delay AACR2's adoption by a year—an action LC did, indeed, take.

Not that that needed to end anything. AACR2 co-editor Michael Gorman published a November article (p. 620-621) scolding the delay and the "proposals for another set of shabby compromises" that came after it. The only way to achieve efficiency, progress, and reader service, he argued, was to "by starting new catalogs based on a single standard of descriptive cataloging (AACR2) and upon a rational system of subject headings."

Despite the delay, Gorman predicted ultimate victory: "Historians of cataloging in the 20th century will see that the reactionaries always win the battles and the progressives always win the wars," he wrote.

Gorman's article was rebutted in the December issue by Susan K. Martin, who praised the delay: "The year's delay in adoption of AACR2 is hardly capricious; haste could create a financial and bibliographic monster." (p. 689-691.)

She also, however, called for active preparation for the switch. "We cannot sit on our hands bewailing our plight. We must attempt within our own libraries and within the profession to assess the tasks to be performed and devise techniques to yield more information so that we can make intelligent decisions."

—Greg Landgraf, American Libraries editorial assistant.

Coming in the November 2007 issue, we've got a piece from consumer advocate Ralph Nader. To preview, his article is a remembrance piece, recollections of the role of books and libraries in his childhood.

Nader returns to AL's pages after a 34-year absence (apart from a couple news briefs and incidental mentions within other stories, and a 2003 1-page story introducing his D.C. Library Renaissance Project). In 1973, "Ralph Nader called up and invited himself to the wake for libraries at ALA's midwinter meeting in Washington," as the introduction to his May 1973 (p. 275–278) article explains.

Ralph Nader and an unnamed delegate at the 1973 Midwinter Meeting

His speech and article addressed the federal budget, which threatened to zero out the Library Services and Construction Act for 1974 and cut other education programs that provided library funding. But much of his text could have easily been written today.

Take, for example, Nader's explanation of why LSCA was in danger. "The cutting in this area is not a reflection of any reflection. It's a reflection of the belief that there will be no real yelling as a result... Politicians were the first to realize that: they will cut in those areas where they will get the least defiance and the fewest repercussions." Indeed, concerns over the librarian image—and calls to change it—are nothing new.

More chillingly familiar are Nader's comments on the growth of presidential power, echoing modern-day concerns about the Patriot act, National Security Letters, wiretapping, and presidential powers generally. "Building on his predecessors' more modest usurpations, the President can now do the following things in contradiction of the fact that these powers belong to Congress: the President can make war; the President can impound or refuse to spend funds appropriated by the Congress; the President can reorganize the Executive Branch very fundamentally without obtaining the approval of the Congress; the President can unilaterally change the tax system particularly in areas such as depreciation ranges for corporations; the President can sweep up the powers of the Cabinet secretaries, put them in the hands of presidential assistants, who are neither confirmed by the Senate nor subject to hearings and interrogations by the Senate or the House because of the doctrine of executive privilege; and the President can make foreign commitments without seeking the advice and consent of the Senate by calling his treaties 'executive agreements.' "

—Greg Landgraf, American Libraries editorial assistant.

The first White House Conference on Library and Information Services (WHCLIS) was, quite literally, decades in the making. It was first proposed in 1957, and finally took place November 15–19, 1979.

Not surprisingly, American Libraries covered WHCLIS's development extensively throughout the 1970s, mostly in reports of the surprisingly twisty path to the passage of a bill authorizing it. A July-August 1973 report, for example, claimed (erroneously) that the idea for a White House Conference "Was born on the eve of the worst image setback suffered by the American library community at the hands of a federal administration"—President Richard Nixon's March request that Congress not fund libraries in the 1974 budget. (p. 410) The Conference was proposed for 1976, "in connection with" the Bicentennial.

The Senate approved the bill in 1973, and the House took it up the next year. Shown, the House Select Subcommittee on Education holds hearings on the bill to authorize WHCLIS. Shown are (from left) Peter Peyser (R-N.Y.), John Brademas (D-Ind.), William Sudow, assistant to Brademas, Jack Duncan, counsel to the subcommittee, and Orval Hansen (R-Idaho). (Feb. 1974, p. 89)

While the subcommittee's body language is less than promising, the bill passed the subcommittee and the House Education and Labor Committee, although the committee moved the conference back to 1977, either for wholly nonpolitical reasons or to reduce Nixon's potential influence. Patsy Mink (D-Hawaii), who proposed the postponement, claimed that 1977 would provide needed time for planning. But, "Asked if the 1977 date she proposed was related to the incumbent and beleagured President Nixon, Mrs. Mink replied 'Somewhat.'" (July-August 1974, p. 348)

In the House, the real concern was less finding votes for the bill—it was widely supported by representatives of both parties, including Vice President-designate (and cosponsor) Gerald Ford—as it was getting the bill passed before adjournment. It did, on December 12; the conference version of the bill passed December 19, but not before the Senate added amendments, including another delay to "not later than 1978." (Feb. 1975, p. 78)

Of course, that authorization bill didn't provide any actual funding. A 1975 education appropriations bill initially provided $3.5 million, but that got cut in the final compromise version of the bill. (Sep. 1975, p. 469)

Still, the conference had a friend in the White House. Gerald Ford was a cosponsor of the House bill authorizing the conference in 1974, and on July 19, 1976 he declared "I am today announcing my intention to convene the White House Conference on Library and Information Services," with a promise to request the funding within the next few months. (Sep. 1976, p. 491) Democratic presidential candidate Jimmy Carter also expressed his support for the conference in a letter to ALA President Clara Jones, which garnered both candidates a resolution of commendation from ALA Council.

Ford did follow through on his promise to seek the funding, but it wasn't approved until 1977. When the slightly reduced funding ($3 million) was provided, things got moving quickly. Georgia held the first state preconference September 15–16 that year (Nov. 529). From there, the path was a lot smoother: librarians and "lay people"—educators, business people, students, community leaders, homemakers, and, at the Pennsylvania conference, Kitty Carlisle (Dec. 1977, p. 593)—met in nearly all of the states and many U.S. territories in preparation for WHCLIS.

Of course, nothing can go completely smoothly. Alabama librarians were miffed, and not without reason, when ALA moved its 1979 Midwinter Meeting out of Chicago due to Illinois' failure to pass the Equal Rights Amendment. Midwinter moved to D.C. that year, but the date also switched, forcing a conflict with Alabama's WHCLIS preconference (Oct. 1978, p. 509). Leadership of the conference changed late in the planning process, when White House Conference Advisory Committee Chair Charles Benton clashed with NCLIS Executive Director Al Trezza, and named Marilyn Gell to replace him as WHCLIS chair. South Dakota, meanwhile, skipped WHCLIS altogether. "I seriously fear the White House conference will be a boondoggle with no effect," said South Dakota State Librarian Hershel V. Anderson (Oct. 1979, p. 525.). "I couldn't justify the $20,000–$25,000 cost to South Dakota."

And there was a bomb on a flight carrying 12 delegates and two AL editors to the conference—"An incendiary bomb which had filled the aircraft with smoke and forced an emergency landing at Dulles in the nick of time," wrote AL Editor Art Plotnik in a preliminary report. (Dec. 1979, p. 634).

WHCLIS passed 25 resolutions, seeking a national information policy ensuring full access to publicly funded information, access to library positions and boards for deaf and disabled people, expansion of books and documents available in a computer-processible form, a National Indian Omnibus Library Bill, and no-fee access to information in publicly supported libraries, among other topics. Detractors, however, were well-represented in AL's coverage. John L. Burch, a lay delegate from Kansas, derided the conference as "a catharsis for librarians." Ann Lynch, president-elect of the Nevada Parent-Teacher Association, was quoted in the Las Vegas Review Journal as being "lower than a snake's belly" over the passage of a resolution calling for federally mandated guidelines for a library in every school (Jan. 1980, p. 18). Even Plotnik, in his preliminary report, called the content of the conference "generally unexciting," although he said "the people and their passions made up for it."

But groups did take action. Indiana created a committee to implement resolutions from WHCLIS and the state preconference (Apr. 1980, p. 186). Two significant bills incorporating WHCLIS ideas were introduced in Congress that year, and an follow-up conference in Minneapolis Sept. 15–17 elected a steering committee to build a national lobbying framework and gain funds. That committee continued meeting and ultimately planned the second White House Conference on Library and Information Services, which took place July 9–13, 1991.

—Greg Landgraf, American Libraries editorial assistant.

The fact that predicting the future is a tricky proposition doesn't stop people from trying. It makes for good punditry, and by the time the future's arrived, most observers will have forgotten the prediction anyway.

Unless, of course, someone publishes them. Which American Libraries has, over the years—so let's review some excellent, and less so, predictions.

16-hour work week
In the March 1933 issue (p. 133), the Bulletin published a speech made by B. Lamar Johnson, librarian and dean of instruction at Stephens College in Columbia, Missouri, to "Normal School and Teachers College Librarians" at the Midwinter Meeting in December 1932, proposing increasing value for books once the Depression ended. After giving highlights of amazing accomplishments in industrial technology, he declared that "Technocrats suggest that this situation will soon result in conditions which will make it necessary for workers to labor only four hours a day for four days a week. Whether or not such a condition becomes a reality, certainly we can look forward to a civilization in which leisure time and consequently the use of books will play a part of increased importance."

So, a sixteen-hour work week? I wish. I'll give him partial credit for his thoughts on the increased focus on recreation, although most of that credit disappears for his failure to imagine that other forms of recreation might provide harsh competition.

Chicago Branch Plans
The February 1976 issue of American Libraries (pp. 95–96) reported on the opening of Chicago's Carter G. Woodson Regional Library, and reviewed the 1969 study by Lowell Martin, Library Response to Urban Change, that set out recommendations for the city's system.

Martin recommended a central library, ten large regional libraries, and many diversified "branch" programs throughout the cities. The article noted that those ten regional libraries were probably over-ambitious, "even for that healthier economic milieu."

Thirty-one years on, Chicago has just two regional libraries, rather than ten. It opened a central library in 1991 and has in the past two decades focused on building and renovating its network of neighborhood branches.

AACR3
At a LITA program at the 1979 Annual Conference (July/August, p. 413), panelists were asked for a prediction of publication of the 3rd edition of the Anglo-American Cataloguing Rules. As depicted at right, Maurice Freedman predicted, Match Game-style, 1984, while others on the panel suggested "never."

While predicting can be precarious, the Joint Steering Committee for Revision of the Anglo-American Cataloguing Rules has announced an early 2009 release of RDA:Resource Description and Access to supercede AACR2.

Hypertext
At the 1987 Annual Conference (July/August, p. 558), LITA president Ray DeBuse declared that scientists would begin to use hypertext break through the limits of the printed page by the end of the decade. (AL's description of the idea: "You're at the beach browsing through something by Dostoevski on your reading machine when you remember there's a Cubs game going on. You watch an inning or so—on the same machine—then get back to Dostoevski. As you peruse the text, you call up a citation and a critical essay on the novel and check the translation of a Russian word—all on the same screen. You're using hypertext.")

Well, we still call them "computers," it took a couple extra years for the technology to integrate into American life, and I'm not sure how many people combine Dostoevski, the beach, and the Cubs, but overall this one's pretty close.

Economic Understanding
There's one final "prediction"—or more accurately, an implied prediction based on a grand misreading of the current situtation— that I'd like to share. It comes from Edward Eyre Hunt, secretary of the U.S. president's Committee on Recent Economic Changes, who commended Americans' ever-growing economic understanding, with the implication that it would lead to continued prosperity. "In the good old days, Wall Street would never have heard of an article in the Atlantic Monthly by a Harvard professor. But only a few months ago an article by W.Z. Ripley upset the street and every broker and runner had to read that article. And what has been going on in the financial district appears to have been going on throughout the country.

This, I suggest, is a new thing in America and it is to be attributed at least in part to the persistent efforts of the President to educate all of us to think in economic terms."

Lovers of irony may be able to guess that the U.S. president was Herbert Hoover, and Hunt's speech was made May 13, 1929, at the Annual Conference in Washington D.C., less than six months before the stock market crash kick-started the Great Depression, and published in the August conference proceedings (p. 245).

—Greg Landgraf, American Libraries editorial assistant