Professor Williams, University of South Carolina, School of Library and Information Science, has compiled an excellent bibliographic guide to national-scope U.S. library statistics from 1829 to 1999. This thorough work documents an amazing amount of data available about libraries, which were and remain a key part of public information infrastructure. I used an early draft of Prof. Williams’ bibliographic guide to compile U.S. library book circulation per library user from 1856 to the present. Library statistics might also provide insight into the evolution of the geographic coverage of information infrastructure. The geographic distribution of Carnegie libraries in 1920 shows roughly ten times fewer Carnegie libraries per capita in the South compared to the Northeast (data, map). An important resource for studying the geographic distribution of libraries would be Louis Round Wilson’s The geography of reading: a study of the distribution and status of libraries in the United States (Chicago, University of Chicago Press, 1938).