Carnegie Corporation Aid to College Libraries

C and reference librarians are the representatives of a big business. They are engaged actively and persistently in the business of advancing and diffusing knowledge and information. They are social philosophers, specialists, and experts, devoting themselves to a great public enterprise. In their charge are 63,000,000 bound volumes on the shelves of 1300 colleges. They annually aid 145,000 students to receive the Bachelor's degree; 18,000 to receive the Master's degree; and 2800 others, the doctorate. Associated with them in this huge business are 110,000 full time educational staff members. The annual supply of raw material is 1,200,000 students, and the educational budget is $420,000,000, 4 per cent of which is for libraries.