Vermont public libraries

Another post commenting on Chapter 20 of Give Us a Dollar and We’ll Give You Back Four (2012-13)–now available as a $9.99 Kindle ebook or $21.95 paperback with ISBN 978-1481279161 on Amazon, along with the usual Lulu options. Note that Lulu prices for the paperback and hardback versions are now lower.

The 152 profiled libraries in Vermont (32 were omitted) are fairly evenly distributed throughout spending levels, although somewhat more spend between $21 and $30.99 than elsewhere. Circulation is on the low side, with only 30% circulating at least eight items per capita (compared to 50% overall); patron visits are slightly low. Program attendance is strong, with half the libraries reporting at least 0.5 attendance per capita (compared to 33% overall), while PC use is typical.

Libraries by legal service area

LSA Count % Outliers
<700 6 3.9% 9
700-1,149 25 16.4% 13
1,150-1,649 21 13.8% 3
1,650-2,249 21 13.8% 1
2,250-2,999 24 15.8% 2
3,000-3,999 18 11.8% 1
4,000-5,299 8 5.3% 1
5,300-6,799 8 5.3%
6,800-8,699 7 4.6%
8,700-11,099 4 2.6%
11,100-14,099 2 1.3%
14,100-18,499 5 3.3%
18,500-24,999 2 1.3%
34,500-53,999 1 0.7% 1
54,000-104,999 0.0% 1

Circulation per capita and spending per capita

Circulation per capita correlates very strongly (0.82) with spending per capita.

Circulation per capita plotted against spending per capita

Circulation per capita (rounded) occurrence by spending category

Note that the horizontal axis is only linear through 14

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This work by Walt Crawford is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International

This entry was posted on Monday, March 25th, 2013 at 7:20 am and is filed under $4. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.

2 Responses to “Vermont public libraries”

  1. Jessamyn West says:
    March 31, 2013 at 8:40 pm

    So glad I got my RSS reader back up and running so I could see this!

  2. Walt Crawford says:
    April 1, 2013 at 6:45 am

    Jessamyn: Glad you enjoyed it. The scatterplot for Vermont is unusual–not only a *very* high correlation between spending and circulation, but the highest-spending/highest-circulation library is almost precisely on the trend line. I deliberately avoid looking at library names; you probably know which library spends so much more per person (and circulates so much more per person) than any other in the state.