Annotated Bibliography of the Public Library Inquiry

In order to complement the preceding essays, which generally have focused on the recommendations contained in selected reports, I was invited to provide summaries describing the nature and extent of the research that was done on each topic. The abstracts therefore provide detailed research profiles that outline the scope, methodology, and findings of each study as well as its recommendations. In addition to abstracts of all twelve reports that resulted from the Public Library Inquiry, the bibliography includes much shorter annotations for English language articles and reviews that deal with the Inquiry or with the individual studies. In arranging Part I of this bibliography I have respected the order in which the reports were listed in the Public Library Inquiry publications; therefore the general report is listed first followed by other volumes pub lished by Columbia University Press (in alphabetical order by author); these are in turn followed by a listing of the mimeographed reports and then by the proceedings of the Forum on the Public Library Inquiry held at the University of Chicago. The shorter annotations in Part II are ar ranged chronologically. Entry numbers of those reviews and articles that relate to specific studies are shown in parentheses following the title of study on the list below.

The second part of this bibliography, which contains selected articles and reviews, was compiled by searching for the" Public Library Inquiry" in Library Literature between 1947 and 1992; in addition the names of the authors of the individual studies were searched. Because the bibliography is limited to only the items that were listed under these headings, it does not include any articles, books, dissertations, or ALA documents (such as Allie Beth Martin's 1972 survey A Strategy for Public Library Change) that dealt with the findings of the Inquiry, but were indexed under a broader term. As a further limitation, this preliminary bibliography includes only articles that appeared in major British and American library periodicals; state and local library publications are not represented.