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126 IMPLICATIONS FOR POLICY
tion as a whole. The adults who use the library have had sev-
eral more years of formal education than have those who do
not. Some people with little schooling do use the library, and
for valuable purposes,’ but they are more of an exception than
the rule. In general practice the public library in the “typical”
town is an institution for those with formal education. For the
unschooled its wares are too complex and too remote from
normal habits and interests.

These two kinds of people—the young and those who have
had more-than-average schooling—are the heavy users of the
library, but other kinds of people are also attracted to it in
greater or lesser degree. Women use it more than do men, but
not as much more as most people think. The skilled workers
use it more than the unskilled, and the people who are eco-
nomically better off use it more than the poorer people. Un-
married adults use it relatively more than married people. And
those who live near the library use it a good deal more than
people who have to travel far to reach it.

. The library clientele, therefore, is not a representative
cross-section of the town’s population. True, the public li-
brary does attract all kinds of people, but not in the pro-
portions in which they exist in the community. The public
library is probably as democratic an institution as is found in
this country, in the sense that it is freely open to all comers;
but its self-selected clientele is a more or less distinctive group
within the community. The library is pretty much a “middle-
class” institution. It is not used much by the rich, who tend to
buy their books, or by the poor, who often find it difficult to
read books. Thus, the extremes of the income structure in the
town are not well represented in the library’s clientele. It is
chiefly composed of people from the “middle classes”—people
with enough formal education to make reading easy and use-

'See, for example, Compton, 1934.