I

COMMUNICATION, BOOK READING,
AND THE PUBLIC LIBRARY

Tuis 1s A RePorT on the use of American public li-
braries. It summarizes the empirical research literature on the
users of public libraries and what they use them for. Its pur-
pose is to describe public library service in recent years as
accurately and as completely as the studies in the field allow.
The report does not contain everything one would wish to
know about the use of the public library; it is limited to the
store of knowledge contained in the research literature on
this subject. For the most part, it is a description, not an
evaluation; a critical collation and integration of “factual”
studies, without normative implications. The report attempts
to tell what the public library does, not what it can do or
- should do. This is important enough to repeat: the report
attempts to tell what the public library actually does. It was
put together from various sources, as indicated in detail in the
Appendix. From the bibliography of empirical studies on
library use were critically abstracted all data with some mini-
mum degree of validity and reliability. Generalizations about
library service were drawn from this data Wherever war-
ranted.

To a considerable extent the studies on library use are
spotty in content and faulty in method. Some problems have
been given relatively full attention, and some little or no at-
tention. Some kinds and sizes of libraries have been Vlrtually
neglected by research students, and some studies are obvi-
ously limited by particular local circumstances. Some studies

AT R -