Report Of The Library Funding Task Force

This report describes the work of the Community Information and Referral (CI & R) Services Task Force, which was appointed by the National Commission on Libraries and Information Science (NCLIS) to investigate the status of CI & R in libraries and social service agencies and to make recommendations regarding the appropriate role for libraries in the field of CI & R. CI & R is defined as the active process of linking people with needs to resources (agencies, programs, people, or institutions) that can handle those needs. The body of the report is divided into four sections: (1) a concise statement of the problem and the history of the Task Force; (2) a definition of the scope of CI & R services and an analysis of these services, from the perspective of users, the government, and CI & R providers; (3) a list of organizational, staff, and administrative criteria that contribute to the provision of high-quality CI & R services and an analysis of possible ways to provide these services, with the conclusion that CI & R is an interdisciplinary task best accomplished by the coordination of social service agency and library efforts; and (4) a series of 13 recommendations in the areas of education, policy/legislation, promotion of services, and experimentation and study. Also provided are an executive summary and a Task Force membership list. (Author/ESR).