58 WHY PEOPLE USE THE LIBRARY

munity in the distribution of books within the nonfiction cate-
gory are almost nonexistent. To a large extent this is due to
the withdrawal of nonfiction titles by a relatively homoge-
neous group of library users, namely, students, persons with
more-than-average schooling, and especially professional
people.

In these terms, what kinds of books does the public library
supply compared to other sources? In a survey in Los Angeles,
the readers were asked about the sources of the books they
had read during the previous week. Their replies identified
the public library as a representative source of books in the
community (Table 29). And if one assumes that actual read-
ing is an index to demand and interest, then the public library
is the agency following most closely the pattern of public
demand. The distribution by the public library of popular
fiction, popular nonfiction, “masterpieces,” textbooks, and re-
search materials corresponded almost exactly to the total dis-
tribution of such reading in the community. The books which
people bought or read from their home collections corre-
sponded closely to those borrowed from the public library.

Proportionately, the public library circulates much less
fiction than the rental library. A survey of a public library
branch and a large rental library serving the same com-
munity in Chicago revealed that about 6o percent of the pub-
lic library circulation was fiction, as against fully 94 percent
of the rental library’s circulation.” In addition, the clientele
of the two agencies differed in this regard: just under one
half of the public library users devoted most (at least three
fourths) of their book reading to fiction as against more than
two thirds of the rental library users. And 30 percent of the
public library users borrowed fiction one half or less of the
time, as compared to only 7 percent of the rental library

"Cole, 1948.

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