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Show Utahns Urged to Seek Aid For Public Library Act Utah is participating in this much-needed library development. develop-ment. Already our state is establishing estab-lishing a state library. Prior to this act Utah was the only state in the nation without a state library. The Utah State Library is starting to loan collections of books to small rural libraries and shortly will have a bookmobile bookmo-bile to aid in loaning books in the rural areas of Utah where there is no library. Duchesne county under the simulus of this act has created a county library and with aid from the state library li-brary will be able to give library li-brary service to 6,506 residents of the county who have been without such service in the past. Without the federal help to get started most of these activities will have to be curtailed. Citizens of Utah this week were urged by the American Library Association and the Utah State Library to write to their Senators Sena-tors and Representatives to vote the full $7,500,000 fiscal appropriation appro-priation for the nation's first federally assisted public library expansion program provided by the Library Services Act. Under the legislation, the states match federal funds and the state library extension agencies conduct con-duct their own programs in rural areas. Utah is among the states that are participating, and the programs pro-grams already started in the state cannot be fully carried forward unless the appropriation is made. Congress authorized grants of $7,5000,000 a year and for five years when the act was passed in 1956 but only $2,050,000 was appropriated for 1957 and $5,-000,000 $5,-000,000 for 1958. This was cut to $3,000,000 in the president's buetary request recently pre- sefitecl to CohgreSS: Arthur H. Parsons, Jr., director of Enoch Pratt Free Library, Baltimore, Md., who is president of the Public Library Association declared: "It is necessary for citizens to write to their congressmen and rescue from disastrous curtailment curtail-ment this important program at the very time when America's basic educational needs are being be-ing recognized as vital to the national security. If the state of the world makes it necessary for us to spend billions on missiles, it is even more necessary for us to spend a few millions to help give our people the means to evaluate properly the issues that make necessary the billions for missiles. The role of good public libraries in our democracy will always be vital; this is particularly particu-larly evident at this time." |