Should be measured indi vidually based on criteria developed by local offi cials, who know their libraries' priorities best. \f f ho would have guessed that someone daring to rate America's * public libraries using their own statistics would provoke such a ruckus? In the aftermath of American Libraries' publication of Thomas Hennen's American Public Library Rating (HAPLR) Index, (AL, Sept. 1999, p. 64-68), the library community burned up the telephone and e-mail lines across the country. Among the pertinent questions librar ians asked each other was: Who says this method is the one way to rate every public library in the land? But what exempts public libraries from having their merits?or lack of same?toted up for all to see? After all, public institutions are rated all the time. For instance, US. News and World Report routinely dedicates special issues to rankings of colleges and universities; hospitals; and graduate schools, including library schools. Nonetheless, the prevailing sentiment in public librarianship since at least the early 1980s is that the public library is a creature of the local community to be defined, managed, and evaluated locally. There is no single mold, no one standard that every public library must meet. Of course, these sentiments are not without detractors. Nonetheless, the second?and more fundamental?reason why such a rating index has never been developed in the past is because the data required for such an index simply did not exist. Indeed, one of the chief arguments against the HAPLR Index's validity is that adequate data still do not exist. Besides, statistical evidence suggests there is not likely to be a single index of public library quality. The time has come to take a close look at the methodological merits of a score that is being cited at trustee meetings, published in local newspapers, and broad cast on radio and television.