A Voice for National Interests

As ISOLATED INDIVIDUALS, the members ~ of a profession have great difficulty in making their influence felt in public matters. With the development of group consciousness and group organization and the erection of machinery of contact with other groups, they become more important social factors. While professional associations lack the financial resources of business groups and while they lack the numbers of labor and agricultural associations, they possess assets which are of prime· importance in public affairs today: namely, the technical knowledge of their members and strategic places their members fill in modern society. Yet the importance of librarians to modern society seems to be equaled only by their modesty and timidity and, all too often, by their frustration. They are charged with care of that great collective brain of modern technological civilization, the printed page. It is the corporate memory of things past and the great medium of communication and integration of thought for the present and future. But by their very selfless devotion to it, librarians sometimes fail to save it from those who would destroy it or from those who, from ignorance or indifference, would starve it. There is evidence that we as a profession are beginning to know and appreciate compelling economic, political, and social facts. The American Library Association plan to establish a Washington representative is a most welcome sign that the professional association is seeking to keep in step with the times and that the zeal to greater service which moved the founders in I 876 is glowing anew. Although the national Constitution does not so provide, it is increasingly apparent that there are two levels or bases of representation in our government. The first and highest is that which always has ·existed, that of duly elected officials, broadly representing parties and localities. The second basis of representation is. that of groups of citizens with common interests. While each individual citizen still has the ancient right of petition, in effect it has been devaluated by the tremendous increase in the number of citizens and by the complexity . and interrelationships of each citizen's needs and desires. It is only through the group and with expert testimony, effectively presented, that the modern citizen can be heard.