From 1972 to 1974, the Illinois Minorities Manpower Project (IMMP), a joint effort of ALA Office for Library Personnel Resources (OLPR) and the Illinois State Library, established the National Minority Referral Network to assist graduate library school programs in identifying qualified minority students interested in pursuing a library career. Since the ALA Office of Recruitment was then defunct, one of the IMMP recommendations was to create another task force for that purpose within ALA, which became ALA’s Minority Recruitment Task Force. By 1974, a total of 22 library schools advertised active recruitment programs aimed at minorities. Studies of federal fellowship programs showed that they were successful in generating an increase in the percentage of minorities trained in library school from 8.2 percent in 1977 to 10.1 percent in 1979.