Describes an attempt to study the attitudes of planners and decision makers in government service or large institutions in developing countries to the library services they use regularly. A questionnaire was presented to people on the training courses run during 1987 at the Project Planning Centre for Developing Countries at the University of Bradford. From the results of this survey it is concluded that a sizeable minority of people with the power to allocate resources have both a favourable and realistic attitude to libraries. Librarians should be more prepared to cooperate with sympathetic members of their institutions in improving library service and thus contributing more effectively to the development effort.