It was our opinion that we could benefit from regular opportunities to communicate with our colleagues engaged in serving the education community in this manner. The problems worthy of attention are many. We find ourselves administering collections of growing complexity as the media for presenting curricula become more varied. The abstracting and indexing services for the literature of interest to educators today fall far short of our needs. The U.S. Office of Education has committed itself to

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... major program in indexing and disseminating the research literature of the profession-a program with implications for each of us. How can we voice our concern about these and similar problems and participate in rational solutions to them? We believe the first step is through the American Library Association. In the same letter, they informed their fellow education librarians that, at that ti me, there were four subsections in the Subject Specialists Section of the Association of College and Research Libraries, and that: By petition it would be possible for twenty-five members of ALA to initiate action to form an Education Subsection. Early action is advisable in order to bring this matter before the ACRL Planning and Action Committee at the ALA Midwinter Meeting, 1968. Favorable action at that time could permit the subsection to hold its organizational meeting during the 1968 Conference in Kansas City, June 23-29. The petition for the formation of an Education Subsection caught the attention of librarians from the East to the West coast, and they joined in the proposal. From these 27 names were drawn a mailing list for a newsletter written by Mr. Dillon. The newsletter ran to four issues, from November, 1967 to May, 1968. He did not intend it to be an official publication, but a means of communication during the early stages. At the same time he conducted a survey of education libraries. In the f irst newsletter he reported a suggestion from Wayne Gossage that the petition be broadened to include psychology and sociology. At the request of Mrs. Marks, Mr. Dillon drafted the statement of purpose for the proposed subsection in November, 1967. This statement of purpose and scope, which was submitted to the Association of College and Research Libraries at the 1968 ALA Midwinter Meeting 2 was approved: The Purpose of the Education and Behavioral Sciences Sub-section of the Subject Specialist Section is to provide a forum for the discussion of common problems in providing library service to educators, psychologists, and sociologists. This Sub-section will concern itself with any issues related to its purpose. Among these are: the collection and indexing of instruments to test and measure intelligence, aptitude, achievement, skills, and attitudes; methods for handling the variety of media now employed in the publication of information, particularly curriculum materials; access problems regarding audio tape, video tape, and film records of teaching and counseling styles; and the presently uneven and limited abstracting and indexing services for these subject fields. The development, scope, and quality of any government, society, or commercial services which publish information or produce products for the bibliographic control of information useful to education and behavioral science library collections will be appropriate subjects for the review of this Sub-section. Consistent with the Constitution and Bylaws of the Association and Division, this Sub-section shall have the authority to draft and issue statements of position on issues falling within its scope of interest. Further, an extensive mailing from Wayne Gossage, Immediate Past Chair, in September 1976, clearly defined expectations for committee members and charges for the newly formed ad hoc committees. The current foci of EBSS are a direct outgrowth of this organization of the Education and Behavioral Sciences Section. Charge: To plan and produce a directory of collections in libraries and special collections. To facilitate the identification, retrieval, and access to test resources for students, faculty and researchers.