Twenty papers were selected from the Technical Program of the First Mid-Year Regional Conference of the American Society for Information Science, held at the University of Dayton, Dayton, Ohio in May 1972. The papers cover a range of subjects related to the general theme of cost reduction in libraries and information centers. Following an overview, which provides a state of the art report and specific sources, the second section covers the more general costing applications such as consumer research and capital investment, helpful hints and dialog on cost reduction and cost justification, and a few "devil's advocate" approaches to the true possibilities of cost reduction. In the third section are personal experiences dealing with small computers and magnetic tape files, methods of input data manipulation, and useful techniques and procedures for cost reduction. The fourth section is a mini-tutorial on costing practices. There are charts, diagrams, lists of references, and an index. (Author/LS)