PRESIDENT'S REPORT TO THE TRUSTEES

                                     December 13, 1966



1    COMMUNITY COLLEGE STUDENTS TO FORM COUNCIL

      An advisory council of community college students which will serve in a liaison
capacity with the University President and the Dean of the Community College System now
is in process of formation, At a meeting with President Oswald and Dean Ellis F.
Hartford in early December, representatives of student government groups in the
community colleges agreed in principle to the organization of such a council, The
structure and functions of the council now are being discussed among student government
leaders at the separate colleges, A second meeting with the President and Dean Hartford
is to be held in January,



2e    LIBRARIES TO REQUIRE 'INFORMATION SCIENTISTS'

      Automation, in the form of information-retrieval systems, soon will bring wide-
spread transformation to the nation's libraries, Development of a graduate curriculum
for training the "information scientists" who can establish and operate these systems
effectively is a major goal of the Department of Library Science, under the direction
of its new chairman, Dr. Lawrence Allen,

      Although the concept of the librarian as a custodian of books is widely accepted
as outmoded, the librarian's new role as an information scientist still is not fully
developed, says Dr. Allen,  It is clear, however, that as libraries move to supply the
demands placed upon them by the "information explosion" of the past decade, they will
require more and more personnel trained in the use of computers for instant retrieval
of information,

      It is probable that more printed matter of a scholarly nature has been produced
in the last 10 years than in all previous publishing history, according to Dr. Allen,
Science and technology have given libraries the systems for coding this flood of printed
matter and storing it in space of minuscule proportion.   It is now possible, literally,
to store the contents of 1,000 books in a space equivalent to the head of a pin, In the
not distant future, Dr. Allen believes, a library patron will need only to push a button
to have the information he seeks flashed on a screen before him- The information could
be transmitted from one part of a library to another or between libraries a continent
apart. Training personnel who can operate these libraries of the future is among the
major plans of the Department of Library Science,