The Public Library Inquiry: Questioning the Library’s Position as a Democratic Institution

In the social climate of uncertainty that followed the end of World War II (McCook et al., 2018), American Library Association (ALA) sought to study what role libraries should have in post-war American society.  To do this, ALA commissioned the Public Library Inquiry, a research project which aimed to examine the nation’s public libraries and evaluate whether or not they were meeting their “objectives” and to examine the “public library’s actual and potential contributions to American Society” (Leigh, 1950).

ALA contracted Social Science Research Council to lead this endeavor.  Overseen by political scientist Robert Devore Leigh and funded by Carnegie Corporation, project work began in 1946 and was completed by 1952.  The Inquiry’s process included many surveys, in-person meetings, and discussions at library conferences across the country, results of which were published in multiple volumes of library issues of the day.

The Inquiry team operated under several assumptions, including “that libraries are democratic organizations: focused on providing equal opportunity for all to learn.”  In this frame, libraries were seen as “a social invention designed for the preservation and dissemination of certain cultural products of the nation,” whose goal was to “provide ready and free access to books for all members of the community.”  By serving as the “community’s repository of knowledge, information and entertainment,” public libraries supported “social progress and individual improvement” and could “institutionalize opportunity for its citizens” (Leigh, 1950).

But some of the Inquiry’s findings splashed cold water on these perceptions.  In his report, The Library’s Public, Bernard Berelson, then Dean of Graduate Library School at University of Chicago, found that America’s public libraries were failing to achieve their aims.  Despite increasing society-wide levels of education and literacy, along with record levels of book circulation per capita, Berelson’s report found that most Americans did not use libraries.  Furthermore, the ones who did were “younger, better-schooled, culturally-alert members of the community.”

Individuals who used libraries did so primarily to borrow “light fiction” not “better reading.”  Just 5% of library users borrowed 40% of all books, and 20% of users borrowed 75%.  Libraries also appeared to be skewing their collection development activities to support these users’ reading habits by buying a great deal of popular fiction instead of providing resources for individual self-improvement.

Among adults, libraries were used mainly by white collar workers, and library usage was associated with the “distance separating the user from [the library],” so people who lived closer to a library used it most frequently (Berelson, 1949).  This issue was compounded by systemic factors such as unequal access to educational opportunities and lack of access to library facilities for African Americans in the South.

Many librarians took afront to Berelson’s findings, especially that the public who libraries served were a particular and largely self-selected subset of “culturally alert” individuals, whom Berelson called “opinion-leaders:”

a certain group of people who engage in all sorts of cultural activities, in the broad sense, more than does the rest of the community.  They read more, and listen more, and talk more; they join organizations and are more active in them; and they know more about what is going on…  It is in this context that the differences in political interest and activity between the library users and non-users can best be understood.  Such differences probably do not arise because the former reads more books than the latter, but rather because they are generally more sensitive and responsive to the culture in which they live, and book reading and library use are only one manifestation of that general characteristic (Berelson, 1949).

It appeared that public library users had different values than librarians who served this public.  Librarians surveyed for this project thought that providing reference services and changing reading habits were their key functions, but actions of libraries in response to user behavior showed that circulating books was the “most popular” activity of libraries.

The library’s public seemed to accept this status quo, with 75% of Americans stating they were “satisfied” about being able to “get what they want from the public library,” with satisfied being defined as the library being able to “satisfy their reading or informational demands” (Berelson, 1949).

This finding stood out especially since Berelson’s report showed that libraries were being outcompeted as sources of information by the mass media of the day, namely newspapers, magazines, radio, and the movies.  Public libraries were also pitting their circulation services against rental libraries, whose readers “read more books than public library users,” even as public libraries served these “‘devourers’ of books proportionately less” than public libraries by circulating mainly “lighter titles” and having “greater accessibility” location-wise and “larger holdings of recent” books (Berelson, 1949).

Libraries were trying to respond to this and the changing mass media environment by showing movies, renting films, providing phonograph records, sponsoring study groups, and creating meeting rooms.  Yet Berelson’s study found that adopting these would not “attract new people to the public library”, rather it would “provide fuller and more satisfactory services to people who already use the library.”

If Americans were getting what they wanted from the library, as shown through their expressed satisfaction, why would this be a problem?  After all, libraries were answerable to the public, whether through board or direct city governance, a fact discussed at length in Oliver Garceau’s volume of the Public Library Inquiry, The Public Library in the Political Process.  The library’s public – through government representatives they selected, was supporting the library as it was being used and providing services it supplied:

Library services are lending books, answering reference questions, providing reading/study facilities, and maintaining files of newspapers, magazines, and mass material; facilitating research work, and providing readers advisory, helping clubs, teaching how to use the library, telling stories to children, and more.

Librarians took findings of the Public Library Inquiry seriously, and efforts across the country led to results such as “reformulation of the public library’s service mission” and a great deal of “work to expand library service,” including advocacy that led to the Library Services Act of 1956 and Library Services and Construction Act of 1966.  This legislation provided funding to expand library services in rural and underserved areas, providing access to the estimated 26 million people in the U.S. who lived in areas without public library services (McCook & Bossaller, 2018).

Even with increased funding to expand library service, and efforts to bring libraries closer to those who could not access them, libraries have continued to face challenges.  The challenge of new mass media, which could reduce the library’s perceived importance as a source of information, has been of particular note, with Alice Bryan, one of Public Library Inquiry’s participants, noting that television had just begun to emerge during the study (Bryan, 1994).  In more recent years, another mass media, the Internet, has emerged as yet another source of information, one that is nearly ubiquitous across society, and whose influence has certainly changed and challenged the role and activities of libraries.  Large-scale adoption of AI also looks likely to represent another similar change.

Meanwhile, changing political whirlwinds have led to the largest ever number of challenged titles in libraries across the country (American Library Association, 2024), and many towns have reduced hours of their libraries, closed branches, or completely closed down their libraries, some of which is related to a federal political climate hostile to libraries, demonstrated by federal efforts to destroy agencies like Institute of Museum and Library Services that provide significant resources to libraries that need them most.

While critics have said the activities of libraries are redundant, with “functions… that are either unnecessary or already performed by other public agencies or private groups,” perhaps it’s time for a new initiative to take up the reins of the Public Library Inquiry, where today’s librarians can create a vision for a public library that best serves today’s society.  Now more than ever, we need to examine whether libraries can support our democracy, and how they can best accomplish this.

John DeLooper

References

Berelson, B. (1949). The Library’s Public: A Report of the Public Library Inquiry. Columbia University Press.

Bryan, A. I. (1994). The Public Library Inquiry: Purpose, Procedures, and Participants. Libraries & Culture, 29(1), 12–25.

Leigh, R. D. (1950). Public Library in The United States. Columbia University Press. https://doi.org/10.7312/leig94054

McCook, K. de la P., & Bossaller, J. S. (2018). Introduction to Public Librarianship (Third edition). ALA Neal-Schuman. https://research.ebsco.com/linkprocessor/plink?id=cc97741f-f376-3be2-ad26-6ed1d24c6a1b

McCook, K. de la P., Bossaller, J. S., & Thomas, F., Jr. (2018). Introduction to Public Librarianship (Third Edition). American Library Association/Neal-Schuman.