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| Main Authors: | , , , |
|---|---|
| Format: | Recurso educativo Open Access |
| Language: | en |
| Published: |
1998
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| Subjects: | |
| Online Access: | https://eric.ed.gov/?id=ED422971 |
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Table of Contents:
- How Does Your Public Library Compare? Service Performance of Peer Groups. Statistics in Brief. Bassman, Keri Lacampagne, Carole Humes, Barbara Korb, Roslyn Childrens Libraries Comparative Analysis Interlibrary Loans Library Automation Library Collections Library Expenditures Library Funding Library Personnel Library Statistics Library Surveys Periodicals Public Libraries Tables (Data) Users (Information) The Public Libraries Survey, with the cooperation of all 50 state library agencies, the District of Columbia, and the United States territories, provides statistics about income, operating expenditures, staffing, size of collection, circulation, interlibrary loans, hours of operation, electronic access, and other items. One popular use of these data is to compare one library's service measures with those of other libraries. The validity of comparisons between two libraries is dependent on the similarity of the libraries being compared; comparisons among similar libraries are called "peer comparisons." The purpose of this article is to help public library practitioners compare their library with its peers, when peer groups are defined in terms of library size. Once libraries were assigned to peer groups based on population of legal service area and total operating expenditures, comparisons of service performance were made. Service performance was defined in terms of five input variables (public library service hours per year, total librarians, total ALA-MLS librarians, total number of subscriptions, and total number of books and serials) and seven output variables (library visits per capita, children's program attendance, circulation of children's materials, interlibrary loans received per 1,000 population, interlibrary loans provided, total per capita reference transactions, and total per capita circulation). (Contains 14 tables.) (AEF)