COMMUNICATION AND READING 5

brary as an agency to institutionalize opportunity for its citi-
zens. Just as other community services became specialized and
centralized, so the public library became the community’s
depository of knowledge, information, and entertainment—
in so far as they are contained in library materials.

From its origins on the eastern seaboard during the seven-
teenth and the eighteenth centuries, the American public li-
brary has spread to every part of the country. In the United
States today, according to the latest statistical compilation,

there are about 7,400 public libraries offering service to a popula-
tion of over 100,000,000 people. They contain over 125,000,000
volumes and they add over 7,000,000 volumes a year. They circu-
late over 350,000,000 volumes annually. About 25,000,000 people
are registered for use with the public libraries of the country. The
libraries spend about $65,000,000 a year and they employ about
40,000 workers, 15,000 of them professional librarians.*

In comparison with its own antecedents and with its con-
temporary counterparts in other countries, the American
public library is a big institution.

POPULAR USE OF THE MAJOR MEDIA OF COMMUNICATION
Any review of the use of the public library should begin
with some reference to the use of the communication media
in general. The five major media of communication providing
the chief sources of public information in this country today
are books, magazines, newspapers, movies, and the radio. Be-
cause the major activities of the public library deal with com-
munication processes of one sort or another, it is important to
locate the institution within the framework of the other agen-
cies of communication. Such over-all orientation is needed in

*U.S. Office of Education, Library Service Division, Public Library Statis-
tics, 1944—45. Bulletin No. 12, 1947. The bibliography contains brief annota-
tions of all titles cited throughout the report.

   

  

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