What Happens to Library-Circulated Books?

Abstract

SINCE a major function of the American public library is to provide the community with books for home use, librarians have been concerned with the need for refining their measures of that service. For their relationship to governing bodies as well as for their own purposes of self-examination, they have devised statistical methods of representing their impact on the community through the circulation of library books. The percentage of the population registered with the library is one such measure; circulation per capita is another; circulation per registrant is a third. Indeed, certain official standards for public library service are currently stated in terms of the first two measures.2 However, as every librarian knows, these measures are not adequate as indexes of public library service through the circulation of books. In the first place, many librarians feel that the reading of books is so subjective and their influence so subtle that it is impossible to approximate the impact of the public library upon the community through statistical measures. But even disregarding this alleged limitation upon the evaluation of public library service, the adequacy of straight registration and circulation data has been questioned on the grounds that these are not valid indexes of library use (where validity refers to whether or not the index actually measures what it is supposed to measure). Librarians know that registration figures reveal little about the actual use of a library, many registrants making no use of the library during a given time, say a year; and, similarly, they know that circulation statistics may not provide an accurate reflection of actual reading. Circulation data and reading data may differ in two important ways. In the first place, not all the books circulated from the public library may be read; and, in the second place, perhaps more people read a circulated book than the single person on whose card the book is charged. Thus, in one sense, library circulation figures may be inflated when compared with actual reading; and, in another sense, they may underestimate the library's contribution to the community's reading. This is a report on a study of what happens, in these terms, to books circulated from a public library. The investigation was designed to deal directly with the two sources of possible discrepancy between circulation and actual reading which were mentioned in the paragraph above. How many of the books circulated from a public library are actually read, and to what extent? Who actually reads them? To our best knowledge, this is the first time these questions have been systematically studied. The answers to them, when fully documented, will supply valuable corrections for current circulation data. I We are indebted to the staff of the Legler Regional Branch Library in Chicago for their kind cooperation and to Dr. Jesse Shera for his participation in the intermediate formulation of the study.