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Should public sector libraries, primarily not‐for‐profit service agencies, use cost accounting? The answer is an emphatic yes. Frequently, non‐librarians with little knowledge of the library world judge our work and make important organizational decisions from an accounting viewpoint.

Allied forces commanded by the American five star General Dwight D. Eisenhower won the War in Europe on May 8, 1945, and Western Europe was liberated. Immediately thereafter, in 1947, President Truman signed the Marshall Plan to make funds available for the economic reconstruction of war-ravaged Europe. To the applause of thousands of Europeans, President Kennedy stood at the high podium facing the Berlin Wall and proclaimed, “I am a Berliner.” President Reagan called for the end of the Cold War and the Berlin Wall came down in 1989. During the conflicts in Southeastern Europe in the 1990s, President Clinton led the war under North Atlantic Treat Organization (NATO) command, with full support of European allies, and stopped the massacre of innocent peoples in the region. Since WWII, the core of America's European policy has been one of participation and cooperation.

When it passed in the summer of 2002, the Sarbanes‐Oxley Act was hailed as the most significant reform legislation of the markets since the Great Depression. An initial flurry of activity, including several high profile arrests, suggested that the accounting profession and Corporate America generally were in for a heightened level of scrutiny and enforcement. But politics and missteps by the White House and SEC have cooled the enforcement climate considerably and a return to historically low levels of investor confidence may just be around the corner. Given the current environment, it is incumbent on shareholders, particularly institutional investors, to assert leadership for restoring confidence to the markets. They have the resources and Sarbanes‐Oxley provides the tools for them to pick up the slack and take on a more aggressive private enforcement role.