Plots of Expenditures
These plots are a bit more complex than the single variable plots because an attempt has been made here to correct for the effects of inflation on library budgets. There are several ways to go about doing this correction and each has its strengths and weaknesses and at best any choice is an approximation because the actual effects of inflation vary in numerous ways. The obvious choice would be the price indexes done by Kent Halstead at Research Associates of Washington. The Bowker Annual publishes The Public Library Price Index and the Academic Libraries Price Index and the former is a tempting choice but given that it starts in 1992 and eventually the series of public library data will be available earlier than that, the choice here was to use the Consumer Price Index which has been calculated back at least to 1913 and which is well-known and requires no explanation. The numbers used here come from the Bureau of Labor Statistics. I think the effect of inflation on libraries is apparent in these plots.
Total Expenditures
- Total Expenditures, New York State Library, 1994-2001
- Total Expenditures, Oregon State Library, 1994-2001
- Total Expenditures, West Virginia Library Commission, 1994-2001
- Total Expenditures, Wisconsin State Library, 1994-2001
- Total Expenditures at Oregon Public Libraries, 1992-2001
- Total Expenditures at West Virginia Public Libraries, 1992-2001.
Expenditures per capita
This number is calculated from the State Summary data by dividing the total operating expenditures (TOTOPEXP) by the population (POPU_ST) for each year. The expenditures per capita for 2001 is correlated at over .9 for both the state's mean score of 20 ranks and the rank of this score. These data are shown in Rank Order Tables elsewhere on this site. See also the map of Expenditures per Capita on Libraries for 2001. This is the strongest relationship between variables I have seen in library data.
Expenditures per capita on libraries
Caveat emptor
Graphs can trick the eye. Compare the graph linked to above of Total Expenditures at the New York State Library with this one and compare the graph of Total Expenditures, West Virginia Library Commission with this one. The data have not changed but there is now a 0 and the scale of the vertical axis on these two new graphs is the same. As a result, these graphs would make comparing behavior at the two libraries easier but each deemphasizes the real effect of inflation on the two libraries. Each of these sets of plots has its advantages and its disadvantages and given this reality, traditional statisticians will often avoid these kinds of graphics in analyzing data.
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