THE AMERICAN LIBRARY ASSOCIATION
The American Library Association is the oldest and largest professional library association in the world. The object of the Association is to extend and improve library service and librarianship in the United States and throughout the world. It seeks to do this by making books and ideas vital forces in American life, by making libraries easily accessible to all people, by improving professional standards of librarianship, and by creating and publishing professional literature.
Its membership includes 26,500 libraries, librarians, library trustees, and other friends of libraries who carry out the programs and projects of the Association by intensive volunteer effort.
Through its projects it has encouraged the development of good library service in such far away places as Burma, the Philippines, and Taiwan. Through liaison with federal agencies it has encouraged the enactment of the Library Services Act which has already extended good library service to more than 25,000,000 Americans who had none or who had inadequate service before.
“Library 21,” one of six or seven core libraries which are envisioned as serving the great regional cities of the future, is an example of an ALA membership project.
HELP WANTED: AT LEAST 20,000 LIBRARIANS
Opportunities unlimited!
This is the subtitle for a career in librarianship today. Positions for United States librarians go unfilled all over the world because of the existing shortage of librarians - at least 20,000 are needed today in the United States, in Armed Forces and U.S. Information agency libraries abroad. Today librarians are engaged on the side of democracy in the most subtle battle for all, the struggle for men’s minds, and their tools are information and knowledge.
Today librarians work in the exciting and rapidly changing world of electronics as in “Library 21.” They serve in great scientific or research libraries aiding mankind in its struggle towards outer space or against disease. Whether he serves in these or in the traditional school, university or public library, today’s librarian is helping to raise the educational and cultural level of our citizens.
As a librarian today “The World Is Yours.”
