CONSUMER ADVICE IN THE LIBRARY: The case for the direct involvement of libraries in training adult readers to use their reading skills more effectively Available to Purchase

IT IS PERHAPS NOT TOO MUCH OF AN EXAGGERATION to say that most people now use a library as a source of information rather than as a source of entertainment or of cultural enlightenment. Other media have largely taken over the entertainment function and there was never more than a small number of readers who were interested in what we might loosely term cultural enlightenment. There is evidence to suggest that this new primary function of libraries as sources of information is already well established and that the influence of media such as television will make it even more pronounced in the future. (Increases in borrowings have, in the last ten years, been more noticeable in informative and ‘practical’ books than in other kinds.)