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INTRODUCTION
U.S. National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) are available from
the U.S. National Commission on Libraries and Information Science
(NCLIS) and are used here to investigate the state of public library trends.
Through the 12 years between FY1992 and FY2004, U.S. public li-
braries faced a difficult budget picture even as their overall circulation
increased. Signs of strains on budgets are clear and recent years showed
declines in real-dollar income. Revenue increased through 2004, offset-
ting some but not all of the previous real-dollar losses (Table 1).
Summary data from NCES show that the population served by U.S.
public libraries increased by 16.5% through the period 1992-2004, rising
from 243 million to 283 million. Total circulation, meanwhile, increased
by 28.5% to over 2 billion in FY2004. Nationally, circulation per capita
went up 10.3%, rising from 6.4 per year to 7.1 during the period.
Based on these three measures, we can say that in aggregate, demand
for circulated materials in the nation’s public libraries rose through the
period because more people checked out more materials from their pub-
lic libraries.
LIBRARY INCOME
Income per capita rose still more slowly, going up 52% through the
period, from $20.60 per capita to $32.21 per capita. Moreover, when in-
flation is taken into account, the purchasing power of these per capita
revenues rose only about 15%. The value of these per capita revenues
actually fell in 2003 although they rose again in 2004.
LIBRARY EXPENDITURES
Through the period, total operating expenditures rose 90%. Hence, ag-
gregate library expenditures rose faster than the 82% in new revenues li-
braries obtained to pay the bills. Consequently, library budgeting officials
reallocated available funds: Their general solution was to increase the
percent of total revenues they were spending on operations. Specifically,
operating expenditures as a percent of revenues rose from 90.7 to 94.7%.
That change translated into less discretionary revenue in library budgets.
Given the increases in population and in circulation (used in this article
as a surrogate for all library services delivered), there was a squeeze on
the purchasing power of libraries. That squeeze reached its nadir nation-
ally in 2003 but eased slightly in 2004. When the 2005 and 2006 figures
are available, we will know whether library revenues have kept up with
the demand for operating expenditures or whether they continue to lag.
2002 at $1.16 billion and fell to $1.15 billion in 2003 and further to
$1.14 billion in 2004.
More telling is Figure 2 where the current collection expenditures per
capita are graphed (solid green line) with constant 1992 dollars (dotted
green line). I have also added two other constant dollar figures: for 2000
and 2002, to highlight the downturn that occurred in this important fig-
ure. As indicated, the data show that per capita expenditures for collec-
tions peaked in 2001 and have fallen each year since then.
Library decision makers lowered the money they invested in collec-
tion development even as the demand on the collections increased.
Expenditures for electronic materials have been tracked only since
1995 but they went up steadily from $22 million in 1995 to over $100
million in 2004. The first year figure is probably low as new variables
are notoriously underreported. The 2004 figure was 35 cents per capita
for these electronic materials, while the figure for all collection expen-
ditures was still over $4 per capita even after declines since 2001.
STAFF EXPENDITURES
Note: Current collection expenditures per capita are graphed as solid green line with constant 1992 dollars
as dotted green line.
Source: Data from annual Public Library Surveys, National Center for Education Statistics
2004 (to 90,977) from its 2002 peak of 91,300. These latter two catego-
ries dragged total FTE employees from a peak in 2002 of 136,219 to
136,014 in 2004.
The implications of the staffing changes are enormous. Libraries
chose to hire degreed staff and to cut back on the numbers of support
staff and non-ALA-accredited library technicians. Degreed staff will
have to pick up on the work done previously by other staff, raising the
hourly cost of that work as it gets accomplished–and probably lowering
per-dollar staff productivity in the process.
OTHER EXPENDITURES
Source: Data from annual Public Library Surveys, National, Center for Education Statistics
Solid green line = current dollars
Blue line = constant 2002 dollars
Red line = constant 2000 dollars
Dotted green line = constant 1992 dollars
SUMMARY
Received: 01/07
Accepted: 02/07
doi:10.1300/J118v26n03_05