ALA 2012 State of Libraries Report Issued

Focus on Budgets, e-Books, & Censorship

Last week the American Library Association (ALA) released its annual State of Libraries report. Declaring that "libraries continue to transform lives," the report discusses public library funding trends, e-books and digital content, and censorship and intellectual freedom. Library services to minorities and diversity within the profession are also addressed. School library funding continues to be a perpetual challenge, as do pressures on academic libraries to adapt to increased digitization of information and to demonstrate their contributions to the missions of their larger institutions.

Although report contains many fewer statistical charts than in the past, it does reference a statistical analysis of selected urban libraries in a study conducted by The Pew Charitable Trusts for the Free Library of Philadelphia.

FCC Broadband Mobility Fund Phase I Data Released

Identifies Potentially Eligible Rural Communities

Last month the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) published datafiles and an interactive map identifying areas in the USA that may qualify for mobile broadband access financial support. The program is a part of the larger Connect America Fund, an overhall of the decades-old Universal Service subsidy for telephone service access in underserved communities. The datafiles include census tract and related information. This month the FCC additionally issued the data in GIS formats.

The Connect America Fund aims at increasing public access to broadband in accordance with the National Broadband Plan developed by the FCC. This plan also calls for a Digital Literacy Program be established, including a Digital Literacy Corps. According to the Plan, "The Corps should target segments of the population that are less likely to have broadband at home, including low-income individuals, racial and ethnic minorities, senior citizens, people with disabilities, those with lower education levels, people in rural communities, those on Tribal lands and people whose primary or only language is not English."

ALA has lobbied to position public libraries as central players in the development of digital literacy programs.

Public Library Directors' Summit on Outcome Assessment

Convened by Columbus Metro Library and Library Journal

On December 5th & 6th, 2011 a conference of 150 U.S. public library leaders was held at the Columbus (Ohio) Metropolitan Library to discuss outcome assessment in public libraries. Co-convened by the Columbus library and Library Journal, news of the summit appeared last week in this article.

As reported in the article, outcome studies were considered to be more meaningful for library stakeholders, although study findings were seen as necessarily "squishy." By comparison library output statistics were described as "hard" data and "proof" that libraries have become accustomed to. (Perhaps as the group proceeds they'll come to realize that the exact opposite is true!)

The conference included descriptions of demographic analyses and needs assessments, program planning, library marketing and promotion, evidence-based practice, and even "futurism." An editorial by LJ editor Francine Fialkoff also pushes for assessment of outcomes on a community level. Future summits and articles on these topics are planned.

ACRL Publishes 2010 Statistics

New ACRLMetrics System Also In Use

Last month ACRL released 2010 Academic Library Trends and Statistics, a report of statistics from 1,514 participating academic libraries in the USA and, to a lesser extent, Canada. The report contains statistical data describing library collections, expenditures, electronic resources, staff and services, user-related characteristics (like Ph.D.'s granted and student enrollment), and professional librarian status (faculty, tenure, and so on).

The press release reports a couple of statistical trends, such as the increase in the median cost of monographs in institutions of all types, and the increase in expenditures as a percentage of all collection expenditures in institutions other than those granding doctoral degrees.

The report is available for purchase as a 3-volume set or as separate volumes. Last year ACRL also initiated an automated data system, ACRLMetrics, by which participants submit and access their statistical data. The system, developed and operated by Counting Opinions, is described in detail in an 2011 article in the Journal of Academic Librarianship.

Proceedings of 2010 Library Assessment Conference Published

68 Peer-Reviewed Articles

The proceedings of the 2010 Library Assessment Conference held in Baltimore, Maryland last August are now available. This is the third of these conferences, which are held in the U.S. biennially. The conferences are organized by the University of Virgina Library, the University Libraries of the University of Washington, and the Association of Research Libraries.

There were five keynote speakers at the 2010 conference: Fred Heath (University of Texas), Danuta Nitecki (Drexel University), Megan Oakleaf (Syracuse University), Joe Matthews (JRM Consulting), and Stephen Town (University of York, UK). Besides appearing in the proceedings, their addresses were also published in the January 2011 Library Quarterly.

Attendance at the conferences continues to grow, as does the length of the proceeding (now 788 pages). The 2012 Library Assessment Conference will be held in Charlottesville, Virginia.

4th Edition of LJ Index of Public Library Service Published

Article Examines Recession's Effects on Library Use

The 4th edition of the Library Journal Index of Public Library Service came out today. This is the U.S public library rating system that my colleague, Keith Curry Lance, and I announced in this 2008 article. The LJ Index is sponsored by Baker & Taylor's Bibliostat Connect.

This year 7,513 libraries are rated with 262 earning STAR designations. Both of these numbers are records compared with prior LJ Index rating years. To be rated public libraries must report the four statistical measures used in the index to the Institute of Museum and Library Services via the state library agencies.

The article also explores changes in mean statistical values for each rating peer group, which are based on library expenditures. Plus we examine trends for pre- and post-recession years.

The ratings are accompanied by an editorisl by LJ Editor-in-Chief Francine Fialkoff stressing the importance of library performance statistics in both lean and fat times. The FAQs cover several important measurement issues. Also, I have prepared a set of statistical charts analyzing various data distributions from this year's ratings.

IMLS Issues 2009 Public Libraries Survey Report

Applies New Locale Categories

This month Institute of Museum and Library Services published Public Libraries Survey: Fiscal Year 2009. The report accompanies survey data from the Institute's annual census of U.S. public libraries that were released last July. The document summarizes 2009 library statistics from the 50 U.S. states, the District of Columbia, and outlying territories.

In this year's report IMLS continues to expand on the number of charts portraying multi-year trends for key library statistical measures. A new series of charts has been added exploring statistical trends by what IMLS terms locale type or locality: urban, suburban, town, and rural. In some cases this new breakdown is further divided to compare total services delivered with those delivered to children. The report also examines multi-year trends in collection composition. And several new maps have been included depicting statistical rates state by state.

Ground-Breaking Study of Academic Collections and Circulation

Collaboraton by OhioLink and OCLC

OhioLink and OCLC jointly issued a report entitled Collection and Circulation Analysis Project 2011. These collaborating organizations report that "the goal of the project was to better understand the usage patterns of books in academic libraries." The research was limited to books and manuscripts since these seemed the most pertinent material types for measuring things like decrease in usage over time and level of duplication in holdings.

The project entailed the creation of a mammoth database consisting of 30 million bibliographic records and circulation data for 2007 and 2008 from the 89 institutional members of OhioLink. The data are available for download here.

Examples of study findings are that circulation rates are non-uniform across institutions, subjects, language, and ages of materials; that use of non-English collections is lower than expected; and that 80% of state-wide circulation is driven by 6% of the collection. The researchers note that the study's findings are statistically generalizable only to Ohio institutions.

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