Focuses on the role that citizen groups--both grass roots and nationally affiliated--play in local communities, examines the history of these groups, describes their activities, presents research findings, and sketches library service trends in several communities. References are included. (FM)

Literacy education volunteers during 1988 numbered 77,000, two-thirds of whom served as tutors in basic literacy and English-as-a-second-language classes. The other third served in supportive roles as administrators, recruiters, teacher aides, counselors, and providers of child care and transportation. The number of volunteers rose from 34,500 in…