A Librarians Open Shelf | Page 4

half would read it to the end, or that not one of five
persons who essayed Dickens's "Mutual Friend" would succeed in
getting through it.

Those who think that there can be no pathos in statistics are invited to
ponder this table deeply. Can anyone think unmoved of those two
dozen readers who, feeling impelled by desire for an intellectual
stimulant to take up Hume, found therein a soporific instead and fell by
the wayside?
A curious fact is that the tendency to attempt to "begin at the
beginning" is so strong that it sometimes extends to collected works in
which there is no sequence from volume to volume. Thus we have the
following:
Vol. Vol. Vol. Vol. Vol. Vol. I. II. III. IV. V. VI.
Chaucer, "Poetical Works" 38 9 5 Milton, "Poetical Works" 19 8
Longfellow, "Poetical Works" 14 15 2 10 3 3 Emerson, "Essays" 48 13
Ward, "English Poets" 13 2 6
There are of course exceptions to the rule that circulation decreases
steadily from volume to volume. Here are a few:
Vol. Vol. Vol. Vol. I. II. III. IV.
Fiske, "Old Virginia" 26 24 Spears, "History of the Navy" 44 39 36 36
Andrews, "Last Quarter Century" 8 8 Kennan, "Siberia" 15 13
In the case of the two-volume works the interest-sustaining power may
not always be as great as would appear, because when the reader
desires it, two volumes are given out as one; but the stamps on the
dating-slips show that this fact counted for little in the present
instances.
I would not assume that the inferences in the present article are of any
special value. The statistical facts are the thing. So far as I know, no
one has called attention to them before, and they are certainly worthy of
all interest and attention.

WHAT MAKES PEOPLE READ?
Does the reading public read because it has a literary taste or for some
other reason? In the case of the public library, for instance, does a man
start with an overwhelming desire to read or study books and is he
impelled thereby to seek out the place where he may most easily and
best obtain them? Or is he primarily attracted to the library by some
other consideration, his love for books and reading acting only in a
secondary manner? The New York Public Library, for instance, carries
on the registry books of its circulating department nearly 400,000

names, and in the course of a year nearly 35,000 new applications are
made for the use of its branch libraries, scattered over different parts of
the city. What brings these people to the library? This is no idle
question. The number of library users, large as it is, represents too
small a fraction of our population. If it is a good thing to provide free
reading matter for our people--and every large city in the country has
committed itself to the truth of this proposition--we should certainly try
to see that what we furnish is used by all who need it. Hence an
examination into the motives that induce people to make their first use
of a free public library may bring out information that is not only
interesting but useful. To this end several hundred regular users of the
branches of the New York Public Library were recently asked this
question directly, and the answers are tabulated and discussed below. In
each of sixteen branch libraries the persons interrogated numbered
forty--ten each of men, women, boys and girls. Thirty answers have
been thrown out for irrelevancy or defectiveness. The others are
classified in the following table:
A B C D E F G H I J K L Totals
Men 6 64 10 .. .. .. 37 20 3 1 9 4 154 Boys 38 63 28 .. 4 3 9 6 5 .. .. 3
159 Women 12 67 14 4 .. .. 20 21 2 1 2 5 148 Girls 33 69 34 .. .. .. 5 3
3 .. .. 2 149 Total 89 263 86 4 4 3 71 50 13 2 11 14 610
Col. A: Sent or Told by Teacher Col. B: Sent or Told by Friend Col. C:
Sent or Told by Relative Col. D: Sent or Told by Clergyman Col. E:
Sent or Told by Library Assistant Col. F: Through Reading Room Col.
G: Saw Building Col. H: Saw Sign Col. I: Saw Library Books Col. J:
Saw Bulletin Col. K: Saw Article in Paper Col. L: Sought Library
It will be seen that the vast majority of those questioned were led to the
library by some circumstance other than the simple desire to find a
place where books could be obtained. Of more than six hundred
persons whose answers are here recorded only fourteen found