56 WHY "PEOPLE USE THE LIBRARWY

The 300s, embracing the social sciences, includes books on
costumes, etiquette, civil service manuals, and how to get
ahead in the armed services. The use of such broad categories
does not provide an accurate record of the library’s distribu-
tion of certain categories of related books. For example, most
books on social and political problems would fall in' the
social science group (along with many others not really be-
longing in this category), but some would be found in his-
tory, some in biography, a few, perhaps, in travel and philoso-
phy, and many in fiction. But with such reservations, how is
public library circulation distributed in these classes of books?

Fiction makes up about 6o to 65 percent of the total cir-
culation of the American public library (Table 28). This
proportion varies consistently with the size of the population
served. The smaller the library, the larger the proportion
of the fiction in the circulation. Fully two thirds of the cir-
culation in communities of 25,000 to 50,000 population is
fiction, as compared to just over half of the circulation in
metropolitan centers.® This can be attributed to the greater
use of the larger libraries for research purposes, to the greater
use of the larger libraries by professional people, to the pres-
ence of more advanced students and people with more school-
ing in the populations of the larger cities, and to the greater
proportion of nonfiction holdings in the book stocks of the
larger libraries. In general, fiction represents the major item
distributed by American public libraries—from just over half
in the largest libraries to three fourths or more in the smaller
ones.

The various classes of nonfiction are fairly evenly distrib-
uted by the public library, regardless of size. (Table 28).
All the major classes of books get a small, but consistent, share

°In the smaller libraries, in towns of 10,000 and under, the proportion of
fiction is still higher. In one state the proportion was more than go percent
in 37 percent of such libraries, and between 81 percent and go percent in
another 43 percent (Illinois State Library, 1935).