66 WHY PEOPLE USE THE LIBRARY

newly established and well-stocked demonstration libraries).
At the least, however, it seems that perhaps half the public
library’s circulation may be composed of “poor” fiction, as
defined in Table 31. The public library may distribute more
“poor” fiction than it does “good” and “best” fiction com-
bined.* At the most, it appears that given a favorable condi-
tion of availability (that is, a “high quality” book stock, as in
the Wilson & Wight case), the public library can circulate a
sizable proportion of “good” writing (although perhaps at
the expense of volume).

But the public library is not the only distributor of fiction
within the community. How does the “quality” level of its
circulation compare with that of other sources of books?
Does the public library supply most of the “better” books in
the community? One study already cited'® suggested that the
public library is a typical supplier of adult books in terms of
a combined form and “quality” classification. Other availa-
ble data are equally limited and inconclusive. For example, in
Foster’s elaborate analysis of “quality” levels of fiction,* a
correlation was made between the “quality” of the authors
and the sources from which books were obtained by their
readers. The authors whose books were supplied more fre-
quently by the public library tended toward the lower level
of “quality.” The average scores of authors whose books were

**Circulation is obviously conditioned by the nature of the book stock avail-
able in the public library. In one atypical case for which such data are
available (Scott, 1943)—dealing with the reading of Negro adults in an Ala-
bama county—there was a higher turnover of books on the lowest “quality”
level.

Percentage of Percentage of
Holdings Circulation
High 13 9
Intermediate 37 30
Low 50 61

“Field and Peacock, 1948; in Table 29.
"Foster, 1935.