NCES—evolving to IMLS—PUBLIC LIBRARY DATA

IMLS public library page

This page has data and publications from various sources on U.S. public libraries a good bit of which is not yet on the IMLS page:

Public Library Survey
Restricted Use Data
Publications about Public Libraries
ICPSR archival NCES data

Compare Public Libraries

During the transition from compilation of these data by the U.S. National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) to their compilation by the U.S. Institute for Museum and Library Services (IMLS), there are a few publications currently listed on the NCES site that have not yet made it to the IMLS site. These are indicated below.

In addition, I have taken the liberty of adding the data that I found from various sources to this Web site:

• At NCLIS, Kim Miller had accumumlated an archive of the original data diskettes, with various related publications. At the time, these early years were not available from NCES
• 1991 came from Libby Law on a 5 1/4" floppy
• There were even older data. The Inter-University Consortium for Political and Social Research (ICPSR) had earlier data that had, practically speaking, disappeared from the ken of NCES but which NCES had earlier deposited at ICPSR for processing and archiving. These files include the pre-1992 public library data and also the LIBGIS data which go back to 1973.

  At the time I gathered these data, ICPSR had them available for download by the public. Subsequently, they made these files available for members only and I was only able, I felt, to make bibliographic entries on the NCLIS site at the time. The data are in the public domain and were made available earlier this year in the two-CD set the "Library Data Archive" from NCLIS—and copies are still available if you are intersted. During the work on this archive, I was able to talk to folks at ICPSR and found them most hospitable to publishing these old data on the CDs. In order to make these data accessible to anyone, they are now available through this Web site.

There are also related publications that I had only been able to identify bibliographically that have been collected from various sources and which are not available from NCES nor from IMLS. They are listed below in the tables in purple to make them stand out with links to the copies I have collected. Barbara Holton contributed some of these older publications. There are many, many more that could be added to such an archive as this partial attempt at identifying the publications of NCES and predecessors to our understanding of libraries. Some of the publications identified there are available through this page.

If you feel that you would like to have these data arranged in longitudinal files for trend analysis, do take a look at two datasets: State Summary/State Characteristics Longitudinal Data File (PUSUM) and the Enhanced Longitudinal Public Library Data File (PLDF3)

How to obtain a Restricted Use license.

Infrastructure and history

I believe that this category may prove the most useful to those interested in public library data. This first publication comes from Barbara Holton and is well worth reading. It would be hard to argue that any other library data effort has been more successful than the FSCS. Certainly the ARL data cover a longer period and because of its consistent, long-term focus is the best series for long-term trends, but the FSCS covers many more diverse institutions. One of the great contributions of NCES to the understanding of libraries has been the attention paid to methodology. This is but one publication in a long and distinguished history. I do hope more follows.

ICPSR Data--Access to ICPSR is restricted to members, as indicated. The information and links about these ICPSR publications has been included above. I have delinked these entries in case I have inadvertently left something out above.

February 28, 2008