The Library of Things: When Borrowing Does Not Mean Preferring
The passage below is from a practice reading test. It describes a 'library of things' in the town of Minami, where residents borrow tools and appliances instead of buying them. Extract: 'In its first year the library recorded 1,200 loans. The director says this shows that residents prefer borrowing to buying. But a survey of 150 users found that 70 percent had never owned the item they borrowed, and that the five most-borrowed items were camping goods used about once a year. Running costs are covered by the town, and a proposal to charge a small fee was rejected after residents said free access was the library's main attraction.' The student must answer three questions that ask her to evaluate the director's argument rather than summarize the extract.
1. Explain why the director's conclusion ('residents prefer borrowing to buying') is not fully supported by the extract. Refer to two pieces of evidence.
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The conclusion is about preference - what residents would choose if both options were available. The evidence is about behaviour under one particular condition, free access. Two problems follow.
First, 70 percent of borrowers had never owned the item they borrowed. For those people, borrowing may be an alternative to doing without, not an alternative to buying, so no preference between borrowing and buying has been shown.
Second, the most-borrowed items were camping goods used about once a year. For a once-a-year need, buying is economically irrational whatever one's taste, so the borrowing tells us about frequency of use rather than about preference.
A further weakness: the library is free, so cost has been removed from the choice. People may borrow because it costs nothing, not because they prefer it. A valid version of the director's claim would need evidence that borrowers would otherwise have bought the item - for example, a survey item asking 'Would you have bought this if the library did not exist?'
2. A classmate writes: 'The survey of 150 users proves the library is useless.' Evaluate this reading in three or four sentences.
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It overreads the evidence in the opposite direction. The survey reports what borrowers had owned before; it does not report whether they valued the service, and 1,200 loans in a year show the library is used, which is hard to square with 'useless'. It also samples only users, so it says nothing about residents who never borrowed, and 150 users is a small group whose representativeness is never stated. At most the survey undermines the director's preference claim; it does not establish that the library has no value at all. The classmate has confused 'the stated reason is weak' with 'the thing itself is worthless' - a distinction the exam regularly rewards.
3. Which single piece of additional evidence would most strengthen the director's argument, and why is it stronger than simply reporting more loans?
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The strongest addition is evidence about what borrowers would have done without the library. For example, a survey item asking 'Would you have bought this item if the library did not exist?' with a substantial share answering yes, or sales data showing that purchases of the most-borrowed items fell after the library opened. This directly supplies the missing link, which is substitution: it shows that borrowing replaced buying rather than replacing doing without.
More loan counts would only repeat the original evidence. They show use, and use is already conceded; they cannot distinguish 'borrowed instead of buying' from 'borrowed instead of doing without', so they leave the director's inference exactly where it was. The test of extra evidence is whether it rules out the alternative explanation, and only substitution data does that.