6

WHAT FURTHER RESEARCH
IS NEEDED?

So FAR As IT 1s Now KNOWN, then, we have described
the general pattern of public library use in the United States
today—the people who use the library and what they use
it for. If these are the major generalizations about public
library service that emerge from a review of the literature,
what are the implications for research? In what areas is
further study needed?

It is obvious that there are such areas. Time and again in this
review the deficiencies and the voids in the research literature
have been clearly visible. Time and again conclusions have
had to be based upon results that were partial, methodologi-
cally suspect, or improperly classified. The disparity between
what is available as knowledge about the field and what might
reasonably be wanted or expected is considerable. This defi-
ciency of research literature is both general and special.

Some general deficiencies run through most of the studies in
the field. Even in those which are technically satisfactory in
other ways, the classification of library materials and library
clientele is usually dictated by what is easy and convenient
rather than by what is appropriate for the problem at hand.
The types of books lent by the public library are usually de-
scribed simply by the “adult-juvenile” or “fiction-nonfic-
tion” categories, although for many purposes other systems of
classification (by content or by quality or by “level”) would
be appropriate. And the clients of the public library are de-
scribed by the traditional categories of sex, age, education,