Now that the deadline for the public library survey has passed, perhaps it might be beneficial to reiterate the importance of collecting this data. If, as you were collecting and reporting this data, you might have been thinking that this is all a complete waste of time, today the Dude will attempt to illustrate that not all of your work was done in vain. And please, while thoughts are fresh in your head, feel free to e-mail suggestions about how things might be better for next year’s survey. Are there questions that are no longer relevant in your opinion? Questions that were ambiguous? Edit checks that didn’t make sense (admittedly, the Dude got tired of looking at “we did not loan any items to other libraries”)? No suggestion is too trivial for consideration!
As many of you know, the public library survey is a requirement for your library if you are accredited, and if you aren’t accredited, there is candy dangled in front of you in the form of 200 bucks if you complete the survey. This program is called
Dollar$ for Data. Now aside from these perceived bribes and threats to complete the survey, what are some of the other reasons for doing it? There certainly are some, aren’t there? Well, let’s first mention some of the national reasons, as every state (and U.S. territory) must collect and submit public library survey data to the Institute of Museum and Library Services (a/k/a IMLS). IMLS, in case you didn’t know, is an independent agency created by the U.S. federal government, and is responsible for the primary support of the libraries and museums in the nation (and U.S. territories). This involves many things such as the formulation of policies, research, and collaboration with state library administrative agencies (such as the Library Commission). But part of all this is that IMLS also distributes funding and grants to libraries and museums. Data collection and analysis is a part of the development and continuation of those federal programs.
At the state and local level, collecting this data is important for those same reasons. An example is that it would be hard to demonstrate funding requests for things like the Nebraska OverDrive consortium without having any data, statistics, or trend files that illustrate the use of electronic materials. What about strategic planning? Many of you might already know that every library in the state has what are called “peer libraries”. These are libraries that are identified as similar to your library. Most of the time this means that they are within a certain range of your legal service area (or LSA). At the local level, this is important because you can then compare things like your collection, staffing, budget, and other library services with your peers (a/k/a keeping up with the Joneses). Some of the peer libraries are Iowa libraries because there aren’t enough comparable libraries in Nebraska.
Finally, if you want data for your peer libraries (and after this year’s survey cycle is over, we will re-calculate your peer libraries – most likely this coming summer, so keep that in mind), you can contact the Dude and he will extract and send (E&S) those data files to you. There is also the
IMLS compare public libraries tool, which allows you to pull comparable nationwide data. Keep in mind, however, that the data for the compare tool is usually a year behind the data that many states (including Nebraska) collect and publish. It might, however, be a good starting point to identify similar libraries. Finally, if you are looking for more current data from states other than Nebraska, the
Colorado Library Research Service provides a page that has links to the data files for each state, if those are available. Shaka.
