28 LIBRARY USERS

poorly educated persons in the population at large. In 1940
about 6o percent of the population over twenty-five years of
age had had an elementary school education or less; about 30
percent, some high school training; and only about 10 percent
some college education/ Thus, while people with little educa-
tion use the library relatively much less than do the well-edu-
cated, they may still exceed the latter in absolute numbers.
This situation varies from community to community, de-
pending upon local educational levels. For the most part, how-
ever, it is probably from the adult group having some high
school education that the public library’ draws the greatest
number of its users (Table ¢9). Though the adult population
is predominantly made up of people having no more than an
elementary school education, the library clientele is composed
mainly of those with a high school education. And just as
those with less education are underrepresented as library users
(as compared with the proportion in the total population), so
those with a college education are strongly overrepresented.
The importance of education as a determinant of library
use can be demonstrated by relating it to several personal
characteristics. Education, sex, age, and occupatlon which are
for the most part discussed 1ndependently of one another here,
are in reality not only coexistent but also themselves corre-
lated. Thus, men have slightly more formal education than do
women; the young more than the old; people in “higher” oc-
cupations more than those in “lower” occupations. Hence,

some relationships between personal characteristics and public

library use which are descriptively true, such as that younger
adults use the library more than do older adults, may under
more intensive analysis be attributable to another factor. And
the simultaneous cross-tabulation of personal characteristics
here reveals that formal education retains its role as a major
determinant of library use (Table 10). In every case differ-
ences in library use are much greater with regard to educa-

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