ABSTRACT
No matter how much money is available some planning must accompany its expenditure if the resultant benefits are in any way to match the expectations of those who provide the money. When there is less money the setting of plans for its expenditure is even more critical. For many years in the 60s and early 70s the supply of money seemed if not without limit at least higher than libraries had ever experienced before. The keywords were growth and expansion! 1 Competition was for size—more books, more people. To be just, some of this heady growth made up for a much longer period of neglect and it also corresponded with enormous growth in education and research, both of which grew to require resources on an unimaginable scale. Academic libraries struggled to keep up with the proliferation of programs; public libraries with the expanding social goals of federal, state and local governments. The myth of growth as the solution to all problems began to wear thin by the mid 70s and now in the 80s words like cutback and priority have replaced growth and comprehensiveness. 2
