The status of public library funding 2003-2005: Impact of local operating revenue fluctuations

Public Library Quarterly

Volumn 25, Issue 1-2, 2006, Pages 5-26

  Davis, Denise M ^a  

^a American Library Association   (United States)

Author keywords

Budget shortfall; Fiscal planning; Library expenditures; Library funding

Indexed keywords

EID: 34548531414     PISSN: 01616846     EISSN: 15411540     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1300/J118v25n01_02     Document Type: Article

References (4)

1. Legal Basis Code is defined in the National Center for Education Statistics, Public Libraries in the United States: Fiscal Year 2003, ED Tab NCES 2005-363 as "the type of local government structure within which the entity functions. It reflects the state or local law which authorizes the library."
2. 1,950 public libraries were randomly selected from a universe of 9,211; 468 libraries responded yielding a 24% response rate.
3. Because the number of libraries per state varies so greatly, and because many states have relatively few libraries, a state-representative sample would require obtaining survey responses from 7,150 of the nation's 9,212 libraries. That would have been a sample of 78 percent. A voluntary survey such as this one-even one endorsed by ALA-cannot expect such near-universal cooperation. In about half of the states, a successful sample would have required responses from virtually every library in the state. This fact about state-representative sampling of U.S. public libraries indicates the earlier wisdom of ALA in encouraging the development of the Federal-State Cooperative System (FSCS) for Public Library Data. Under these conditions, one might as well conduct a universe survey as attempt to sample on this intensive a scale.
4. One study in particular is the Public Libraries and The Internet series by John Carlo Bertot, Charles R. McClure, et al. .