Library Service at the Junior-College Level

During the past four decades there has developed an important new unit in our educational system-the junior college. Located in forty-four states, the District of Columbia, and the Canal Zone, there are today 627 junior colleges with a total enrolment of 267,406.1 The 279 public junior colleges and the 348 private junior colleges enrol, respectively, 197,375 and ?,0,031 students. Junior colleges include a wide variety of educational institutions. Typically, thejunior college has a curriculum which extends two years beyond the high school; an increasing number of junior colleges now, however, have a four-year curriculum (Grades XI to XIV, inclusive). Some junior colleges have fewer than twenty students; others enrol up to several thousand. Some junior colleges are church-related institutions; others are public. Some junior colleges are boarding schools where students participate in a curriculum which extends throughout the twentyfour hours of the day; others are night schools-others, day schools. Some junior colleges charge high tuition rates and attract an economically select student body; others charge no tuition and enrol an economically underprivileged student group. Some junior colleges limit courses to a restricted college-preparatory curriculum; others include in their curriculum hundreds of courses designed to meet the needs of a student body with a wide variety of vocational plans. The place of the library in such a complex educational unit as the junior college cannot be stated simply, for the library must adapt itself to the needs of its particular patrons and to the philosophy of the educational program of which it is a part.