A comprehensive strategy for allocating New York's resources for combating illiteracy must be adopted. The state's education department must become more active in coordinating literacy education efforts by publishing and circulating a directory of all public, private, and volunteer literacy services currently available. The state education department's existing regional literacy task forces must better monitor and coordinate volunteer efforts and incorporate private sector initiatives. The state should finance a study to determine the long-term effects of state-funded literacy training efforts so that the costs of illiteracy and the benefits of training can be quantified more accurately. The state should improve the type of data available on literacy programs and illiterate adults. The private sector should play a more active role in addressing adult literacy by establishing on-the-job literacy education programs, donating financial resources, recruiting volunteers, offering meeting space, supporting public awareness programs, and participating in regional literacy programs. In order to help expand private sector literacy activity, the public sector should fund research on the effectiveness of various approaches to literacy instruction, disseminate information on the occurrence of literacy throughout the state, and fund literacy programs for target populations likely to be missed by private sector efforts. (The document contains 53 references.) (CML)