Describes the activities of the federal government, state governments, and library associations in generating statistics on U.S. libraries, and discusses the problems that arise from a lack of coordination. Issues discussed include standardized definitions, scope and coverage, data collection and aggregation, data analysis and interpretation,…

The public service role of universities and components of a knowledge transfer model are considered, and two case histories of university response to public client systems are presented. In addition, the community services office is described as one strategy for a university desiring to improve its public service role. It is suggested that the…