The Use of National Public Library Statistics by Public Library Directors

Abstract

U.S. national public library statistical programs have provided information on library activity for over half a century. Utilizing statistics to describe and assess the comparative operation of library activities has become a part of library tradition and has received growing attention in the past two decades from researchers, policy makers, library managers, and professionals. However, studies about how statistics are used in libraries have been scant. We conducted a survey to investigate public library directors' use of the Federal-State Cooperative System for Public Library Data (FSCS) and the Public Library Data Service (PLDS) reports. We highlight the uses directors made of statistics and the aspects of statistics that they found particularly useful. The study's results are intended to provide library administrators with insights into ways that library statistics are used in the managerial process as well as to provide national statistical program administrators with information on the characteristics and use patterns of their products.

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