This study sought to determine if there were differences in the types of reading interests of seventh- and eighth-grade pupils associated with their racial origins, their socioeconomic status, or their school environments. It also sought to consider the strength of reading interest scores as related to other variables and to consider the relationship between these scores and the number of hours spent in reading and the change in amount of reading since the previous school year.

The purpose of this research was to determine if an extended loan period, released tine, and incentive pay increased the student assistants' shelving and shelf-reading rates. The first quasi-experiment utilized loan, time, and pay given across the board as motivators. Because the population for this study was small, a questionnaire, intended to strenghten the study's results by identifying additional libraries which effectively use similar motivational techniques, was mailed to the forty private university libraries throughout Texas. A second questionnaire polled the student participants about their feelings about shelving and shelf-reading and about the motivators used in the study. The second quasi-experiment motivated the student assistants by pay tied to productivity. Gender, grade point average, and academic classification were control variables for this study.