Which finding, if true, would most weaken the author's suggestion for a 'second ledger'?

Councils like numbers. When a public library asks for funds, it is handed a form on which to record loans, visits and the hours its computers are used. These figures are not worthless, but they flatter the loud and punish the quiet. A man who spends an afternoon in the reading room, borrowing nothing and speaking to nobody, adds one visit to the tally; the same afternoon, for him, may be the only time in a week that he has been among other people. The ledger cannot record that he left a little steadier than he arrived. It would be a mistake, though, to conclude that the numbers should be abandoned. A library that cannot show who comes and why will lose the argument to those who can. The better course is to ask for a second ledger, one kept in sentences: short accounts, gathered each year, of what the building did for particular people.

Answer and explanation

Correct answer: A. Yearly accounts written by library staff were found to describe mostly the staff's own best-known success stories

  1. Step 1: The proposal depends on the accounts being a fair record of what the building does. Step 2. If they feature only chosen successes, they are no more representative than the tally. Step 3. The other findings do not bear on the quality of the accounts. Answer: accounts that reflect selected successes. Why not the others: shared budgets, falling visits and published figures do not undermine the idea of a narrative record.

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