At present not-for-profit information accessing services play a unique role in the information transfer process as they provide long term discipline-oriented access to the subject content of individual primary published documents regardless of country of origin, language, or subject emphasis. While not all of these services are U.S. based or in the English language, neither factor should disqualify them as a fundamental resource for a U.S. national program: they can and should continue to serve in their present capacity in any operation of a national program. Implementation of a national program, to be effective, will have to deal successfully with the widely divergent pressures of the federal agencies, and support will need to be provided for the non-federal services to assure continuity of systematic development of all basic information resources. (RAA)