In 1988, the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) and the National Commission on Libraries and Information Science (NCLIS) created a task force with representatives of the two federal agencies and of national and state organizations to plan a program for the annual comprehensive national collection of public library data. This action plan provides the basis for the first national education survey to be reported, edited, and tabulated completely in machine-readable form. This report presents: (1) a summary of the action plan; (2) actions needed to create and operate the new system; (3) Congressional authorization and appropriations for the new system; (4) the task force; (5) background information; (6) a rationale for the program; (7) the components of the action plan (establishing a universe file of all U.S. public libraries; the 41 data elements in the bank of information; definitions and standards for the data; data collection and reporting; analysis and publication of data; training programs for participants, strategies and resources, and state data coordinators; general recommendations; and information about state library agencies); and (8) the federal state partnership, including state participation in the system and requirements for full participation and effective operations. A list of abbreviations used and sources of information on the new cooperative system are also provided. The four appendices, which include a copy of the survey instrument and technical information about the programs, make up more than half of the report. (SD)