Resources of foreign scientific literature: Acquisition on a national scale

Beginning with the premise that information, like education, is a group responsibility rather than an individual one, a brief historical summary moves swiftly to the present‐day framework which serves information to the country. The current acquisition of information on a national scale requires the participation of federal agencies, academic institutions, commercial enterprise, and individuals. Up to this time, the possibilities for coordinating the efforts of all these diverse sources are not a national systematic program. Even now it is not practical to regiment such diverse parts into a cohesive whole. Nevertheless, there have been recent indications of implicit recognition of the federal responsibility for leadership in this field. Equally important are new, coordinated efforts by groups of academic institutions, by growing numbers of commercial sources, and even by ever‐greater numbers of individuals through their professional associations, each to carry its proper measure of the full load. A plea is made for calm and logical planning by all together in the common interest of assuring full availability, by using carefully articulated physical decentralization with centralized bibliographic control.