These tables are based on calculations on the Public Library State Summary/State Characteristics Data File for 2002. Documentation and data are available from the National Center for Education Statistics. A longitudinal file derived from this same series for the years 1992-2002 is available on the NCLIS site.
The calculations done on these data are preliminary and will be replaced when the 2002 ED Tabs is released. These preliminary tables are created by programs that attempt to emulate the calculations done to create the rank order tables appearing annually in the ED Tabs. For the large majority of cases, these emulations duplicated the 2001 tables--but not all. The differences rarely affect the ranks but in some cases they do. Whether the 2002 emulation is more successful is not clear now.
This table lists the ranks by states for the 2002 variables. The titles of the variables have been truncated and abbreviated to make them fit in a small space. These row titles are linked to the related tables above.
PDF files from Public Libraries in the United States: Fiscal Year 2001. E.D. TABS, June 2003. (NCES 2003399.pdf). These rank order tables are in the Appendix to this report. The spreadsheet containing the rank order data is from NCES but they were subset into separate table spreadsheets so any errors are not NCES's fault.
Spreadsheet of all 2001 State Ranking Tables. (247K). Each separate file is 21K so they will be easier to download on a slow connection. If you click on the file and get gibberish, do a file, save as and save the file with the .xls extension. The software should suggest the name of the file. The convention followed is that Table A1 is named TableA1.xls, and so on.
Table A1--Number of library visits and reference transactions per capita: Fiscal Year 2001. PDF, Excel.
Table A2--Number of circulation transactions per capita and interlibrary loans received per 1,000 population: Fiscal Year 2001. PDF, Excel.
Table A3--Number of book and serial volumes per capita and audio materials per 1,000 population: Fiscal Year 2001. PDF, Excel.
Table A4--Number of video materials and current serial subscriptions per 1,000 population: Fiscal Year 2001. PDF, Excel.
Table A5--Number of paid FTE staff and paid FTE librarians per 25,000 population: Fiscal Year 2001. PDF, Excel.
Table A6--Number of paid FTE librarians with ALA-MLS and other paid FTE staff per 25,000 population: Fiscal Year 2001. PDF, Excel.
Table A7--Total income and state income per capita: Fiscal Year 2001. PDF, Excel.
Table A8--Local income and other income per capita: Fiscal Year 2001. PDF, Excel.
Table A9--Total operating expenditures and collection expenditures per capita: Fiscal Year 2001.PDF, Excel.
Table A10--Total staff expenditures and salaries and wages expenditures per capita: Fiscal Year 2001.PDF, Excel.
PDF files from Public Libraries in the United States, Fiscal Year 2000. E.D. TABS, July 2002. (NCES 2002344.pdf). The spreadsheet containing all data is from NCES. However, NCES did not subset them into separate spreadsheets so they are not responsible for any errors.
Spreadsheet of all 2000 State Ranking Tables. (236K). Each separate file is 21K so they will be easier to download on a slow connection. If you click on the file and get gibberish, do a file, save as and save the file with the .xls extension. The software should suggest the name of the file. The convention followed is that Table C1 is named TableC1.xls, and so on.
Table C1--Number of library visits and reference transactions per capita: Fiscal Year 2000. PDF, Excel.
Table C2--Number of circulation transactions per capita and interlibrary loans received per 1,000 population: Fiscal Year 2000. PDF, Excel.
Table C3--Number of book and serial volumes per capita and audio materials per 1,000 population: Fiscal Year 2000. PDF, Excel.
Table C4--Number of video materials and current serial subscriptions per 1,000 population: Fiscal Year 2000. PDF, Excel.
Table C5--Number of paid FTE staff and paid FTE librarians per 25,000 population: Fiscal Year 2000. PDF, Excel.
Table C6--Number of paid FTE librarians with ALA-MLS and other paid FTE staff per 25,000 population: Fiscal Year 2000. PDF, Excel.
Table C7--Total income and state income per capita: Fiscal Year 2000. PDF, Excel.
Table C8--Local income and other income per capita: Fiscal Year 2000. PDF, Excel.
Table C9--Total operating expenditures and collection expenditures per capita: Fiscal Year 2000.PDF, Excel.
Table C10--Total staff expenditures and salaries and wages expenditures per capita: Fiscal Year 2000.PDF, Excel.
Summary State Rank Order Tables, 1992-2002
The tables in this section are calculated from the longitudinal state summary data available on this site. They present the ranks by state and year. The Analysis of State Rankings which follows below this section analyzed the ranks as numbers and calculated statistics on them for the years 1999-2001.
The summary data are in a longitudinal file constructed from the annual state summary files distributed by NCES with changes as documented. Since 1992, these summary datasets have had data imputed for nonrespondents thus allowing national and state estimates. Per capitas, in keeping with current practice, are calculated using the variable POPU_UND, the unduplicated population of each library's legal service area (LSA) and these figures may disagree with published figures for several reasons--such as data suppression in some years. The figures will, however, be comparable to today's figures.
Table A1, part 1--Number of library visits per capita, 1992-2002
Table A1, part 2--Number of reference transactions per capita, 1992-2002
Table A2, part 1--Number of circulation transactions per capita, 1992-2002
Table A2, part 2--Number of interlibrary loans received per 1,000 population, 1992-2002
Table A3, part 1--Number of book and serial volumes per capita, 1992-2002
Table A3, part 2--Number of audio materials per 1,000 population, 1992-2002
Table A4, part 1--Number of video materials per 1,000 population, 1992-2002
Table A4, part 2--Number of current serial subscriptions per 1,000 population, 1992-2002
Table A5, part 1--Number paid FTE staff per 25,000 population, 1992-2002
Table A5, part 2--Number of paid FTE librarians per 25,000 population, 1992-2002
Table A6, part 1--Number of paid FTE librarians with ALA-MLS per 25,000 population, 1992-2002
Table A6, part 2--Number of other paid FTE staff per 25,000 population, 1992-2002
Table A10, part 2--Salaries and wages expenditures per capita, 1992-2002
An Analysis of State Rankings Reported for 1999-2001
By combining the rank order tables discussed below for 2000 and 2001 with those from the Appendix of 1999's Public Libraries in the United States: Fiscal Year 1999, it is possible to calculate a mean rank by states for each of the three years (that is, 1999-2001) and get the mean of those three years' values by state, then rank the mean of these three means. The Summary of Rank Order Tables: 1999-2001 presents a calculation based on three years (1999-2001) of Rank Order Tables from the appendices of the ED Tabs reports for those years. The links to the 2000 and 2001 publications are cited below.
Although there are minor differences in labels in 2001, the Rank Order Tables for these three years rank the same 20 variables each year. These ranks, apparently, use data from the imputed dataset from the Public Library Survey.
The table has the states in alphabetical order with the mean rank by each of the years, then to the right of the purple line is the mean rank of the three values given here. "STD" is the standard deviation which is a measure of the spread about the mean. The lower the number, the closer each rank is to the mean rank. That is, if a state were ranked 25th in all tables, the mean rank would be 25 and the STD would be 0 (no deviation about the mean). The higher the number, the greater the deviation around the mean--or less the consistency by state for each year. In fact, this measure tells us with numbers something that shows up on even casual inspection of the originals: some of these "states" are not consistent in the ranks they have across the ranked variables. DC has a number of high ranks (1) and low ranks (51) and it has the highest STD. Hawaii has the second highest STD. These two are least like other states for reasons that are obvious.
It is easy to make more of these tables than is there. With the data in the longitudinal Public Library Data file or the longitudinal State Summary Data file datasets one could calculate ranks by whatever variables or ratios one chose so it is not clear that these 20 each year are the best sets of variables to rank libraries.
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