116 FURTHER RESEARCH NEEDED

portant case in point is found in the field of library use. All the
studies support the generalization that the better-schooled
members of the community use the library much more than
those with less schooling. But in every study some people with
only limited schooling are regular and “serious” library users.
Such people are the exceptions to the major generalization—
the deviants who do not act like the majority of their fellows.
And because they are exceptions, they usually receive less at-
tention than the majority. Yet for many purposes these are
just the individuals to study. If one wishes to build up the li-
brary clientele among the large nonuser group of the less-
schooled, these deviants are the appropriate subjects for study.
In a sense, they are representatives of the dominantly nonuser
group, and to discover their reasons for library use may pro-
vide bases of understanding through which their fellows can
be attracted to do likewise. In other words, there are kinds of
people who do not use the public library as a group, but some
of them do, and it is important to find out why they do. Inten-
sive study may help to make library use the normal rather
than the deviant behavior pattern.

The School-leaving Problem.—The public library has as
clients a large proportion of people in their late teens; it has
only a minority of them as clients ten, or even five, years later.
What has happened? During this period such peaple have for
the most part left the formal educational system and taken oc-
cupations as self-supporting adults. But why should so many
abandon book reading when they leave the school? Is it be-
cause their education has somehow failed to provide them
with skill or incentive for the kind of continuous self-educa-
tion which is often available nowhere but through the public
library? Or is the public library somehow at fault for not at-
tracting them sufficiently during their formative period of
library use? Just which young people continue to use the
library and which do not? How could the latter be retained as