FURTHER RESEARCH NEEDED I13

and occupation, although for some problems categories deal-
ing with the psychological characteristics of the patron would
be more relevant. Moreover, the locales of many of the inten-
sive studies of library service have been chosen largely for
reasons of proximity. As a result, some types and sizes of public
libraries (that is, the small or the poor or the reference library)
have been rather generally neglected in the literature, which
may thus be based upon a maldistributed sample of institutions.

In addition, there is one general deficiency in the literature
which this review has made strikingly apparent; that is, the
concentration of the studies upon certain kinds of problems,
but not others, and mainly upon those dealing with the char-
acteristics of the library’s clientele. This has given rise in
library circles to some deprecation of what are called quanti-
tative results. Many conscientious and responsible librarians
have disparaged research of the kind reported here because of
its “quantitative” nature, asserting that book reading and li-
brary service are too subtle and too “subjective” to warrant
such treatment. This is an unfortunate view of the situation,
because it obscures the real point. The problem is not that the
findings of much library research are expressed in numbers
(which themselves may refer to qualitative attributes of the
things described, whether people or books). It is rather to de-
velop research into matters of more significance to the library
than some of those reported on in this survey of the literature.
For example, the student might investigate the socio-psycho-
logical uses of book reading instead of the personal character-
istics of the clientele of still another branch library. The
results would be framed in quantitative terms—since it is sci-
entific generalization which is sought—but they would be
richer in that they would refer to a more significant problem.
It is not the form of the research (that is, quantification)
which is important, but the content (that is, the significance
of the problem). The problems selected for investigation de-