FURTHER RESEARCH NEEDED I1§

they have been made clear in the text from time to time, some
of them may be mentioned again here. They are by no means
all the research problems suggested by this review of the litera-
ture; they merely illustrate areas needing research attention.”

RESEARCH ON LIBRARY CLIENTELE

Opinion Leadership and the Library.—In the first place, fur-
ther studies of the people who use the public library are desir-
able. Enough attention, for instance, has been given to the
relationship between public library use and opinion leadership
_to suggest the primary importance of this concept for library
practice. If the minority which the library serves is a particu-
larly important group in the community, then the library in-
creases in stature as a social institution. The investigation of
this topic reported here should be augmented, both inten-
sively and extensively. The use of the library by opinion
leaders of various kinds and for various groups should be
studied further; especially, the service of the library in the
area where the leadership is exerted should be investigated.
All in all, this idea of library service to the intellectual and
cultural . . . of the community and through them indirectly
to other parts of the community is of considerable signifi-
cance for library practice and for the “philosophy of librar-
ianship.” Any increment of knowledge in this area would be
of special value.

T'he “Deviants” in Library Use.—In social research the most
appropriate subjects for intensive investigation are too often
neglected. Attention is usually directed to the largest group or
to the most typical group, and other problems are by-passed
in this concentration. Yet for many purposes it may be desir-
able to study the nontypical groups in the population. An im-

For other lists of research problems see Hodgson, 1946, and ALA Com-
mittee on Post-War Planning, A National Plan for Public Library Service,

1048.