Council, Libraries for the Future, and Harvard University's John F. Kennedy School of Government. These sponsors plan to continue and broaden the conversations begun at this symposium, thereby facilitating the efforts of public libraries to serve their communities in the Information Age.

This summary provides an overview of the day's proceedings, including the interaction between panelists and over 100 attendees from the library community (public and private), education, foundations, and other interested groups. The summary is organized as follows:

• Implications of the transformation for the future of public libraries as well as society-at-large and why libraries are uniquely positioned to "grow" from the transformation and also help citizens benefit;

• Background and context for understanding the transformation (technological, institutional/market, social and political forces);

• Lessons learned by public libraries, including a few case studies; and

• A beginning agenda for promoting public library efforts.

PUBLIC LIBRARY CHALLENGES
AND RESPONSES

In opening the symposium, Deanna Marcum, President, Council on Library Resources, noted how Americans, when asked about their view of the public library, have a "warm and often sentimental response." Few citizens, however, think of public libraries as "keepers of democracy," though it is a function public libraries have quietly served for decades. According to Jorge Schement, Rutgers University, "libraries are at the heart of the American conceptualization of democracy." In fact,

The fact that U.S. public libraries are not only a product of American democracy, but are also an essential agent for democracy, sets them apart from libraries in other countries. In fact, Librarian of Congress James H. Billington identified four factors which make U.S. libraries distinct: the dynamic use of an ever-expanding body of knowledge; open access to that knowledge; libraries as expressions of communal unity around pluralistic collections; and libraries as public "shrines" to the culture and values of the book. These factors help us to assess the performance of public libraries. An analysis of these factors today, however, reveals a threat to that performance.

The dynamic use of knowledge in our society, said Billington, is challenged by "the flooding of miscellaneous unsorted, unverified, constantly changing information." Instead of "rising up to wisdom and creativity," he suggested, we may be "sinking down."

Open access to knowledge is today tested by "the constraints" of public institutions and the fact that more people are coming to depend upon "highly priced equipment and highly priced services to deliver information."

Libraries, as expressions of communal unity amidst the "pluralism" of both collections and users (i.e., the one place all citizens used to gather, no matter what church they attended, or which school they selected for their children), are "apparently threatened" by the idea that one can access everything without leaving home. As Billington noted, it is "a kind of deformation of the whole idea that there is a gathering place where people of different backgrounds seeking different answers, nevertheless come together."