The effects of social change on libraries nationally are presented in order to provide a framework for the Indiana-oriented study of library futures. The two major postwar social changes that have most directly affected libraries are: (1) population changes in growth, distribution and quality; and (2) increased investment in scientific research and development. Four postwar developments in communications have had major effects on libraries: (1) the creation and widespread distribution of paperbound books, (2) the growth of newsmagazines as the dominant printed news medium, (3) the rise of television, and (4) the development of new technology in information storage, retrieval and dissemination. Two important ways in which libraries will be able to meet the challenges of the future are by the use of computers to automate the library's acquisitions, cataloging, circulation, inventory and statistical work and by going out, both psychologically and physically into the community which is to be served and learning to operate in terms meaningful to those they are trying to reach. It is the librarian's responsibility to use the new technology whenever it is useful, to raise and broaden professional standards, to develop broad and imaginative patterns of national cooperation, and to express a keen and pervasive sense of the library's enlarged social commitment. (NH)