AT i =

108 CONCENTRATION OF USE

else’s card and about 24 percent of the card holders acknowl-
edged that another person was also using their cards;’ and
about 19 percent of the adults living in rural areas borrowed
books for someone else.”® Thus, the surveys generally agree
that the library clientele is augmented by an additional 20 per-
cent or so of indirect users. Consequently, the American public
library in its own official records of circulation is underesti-
mating its total impact upon the community.

More or less intensive analysis of this problem was under-
taken for two branch libraries in Chicago™ and New York.*
In the Chicago study the library was actually serving more
people than the records indicated: for every roo recorded
users of the library’s circulation services there were 148 actual
users. In the same way circulation data undermeasures library
service in terms of books distributed, through multiple use of
the same titles (that is, use of a single book by two or more

PERCENTAGE OF RECORDED CIRCULATION
REPRESENTED BY ACTUAL USE®

Dick & Berelson Pulling
1948 1948
Fiction 12§ 135
Nonfiction 110 123
Both 120 129

“In a rural study (Wylie, 1948) this figure was 123 for adults and 128 for
juveniles.

readers). Recorded circulation thus undervalued actual circu-
lation by from one fifth to one fourth.”® Here again, the li-
brary is doing more than it knows. In the Chicago study,
Field and Peacock, 1948.

“Wylie, 1948.

"Dick and Berelson, 1948.

*Pulling, 1948.

“There are no data on the indirect services performed by the library’s ref-
erence and information departments.