How Does PVLD Stack Up?

I've had the Public Library Association 2007 Statistical Report sitting on my desk for a while, and finally had a bit of time to look at it. The following table compares PVLD to some other California libraries of a similar size, as well as to the national average (nothing scientific about which libraries were chosen – Redondo Beach is right next door, and Newport Beach and Redwood City are libraries I consider to be comparable to PVLD in terms of service ethic) –

	PVLD	Newport Beach Public Library	Redondo Beach Public Library	Redwood City Public Library	National Median
Legal Service Population	67,200	83,361	67,112	76,087	75,099
Total Expenditures Per Capita	$74.96	$68.48	$54.31	$75.13	$34.13
Expenditures on Library Materials Per Capita	$8.99	$9.90	$5.45	$6.84	$4.40
Public Service Hours/Week	102.0	233.8	102.0	105.0	102.0
FTE Employees	45.4	63.5	31.4	65.0	40.0
Annual Circulation Per Capita	7.74	12.61	12.71	14.73	7.32
Annual Visits Per Capita	9.3	7.16	6.54	9.25	4.91
Annual Reference Transactions Per Capita	1.55	1.58	0.84	0.95	0.78
Library Holdings Per Capita	3.84	3.71	3.07	2.28	2.9
Library Cardholders As % of Population	46.7	118.6	97.5	76.1	57
Circulation Per Cardholder	16.58	10.63	13.04	19.35	14.48
Program Attendance	31,039	28,740	8,360	103,808	15,602
InterLibrary Loan to Other Libraries	610	263	591	57,756	1884

*For libraries with a service population of 50,000 to 99,999

One challenge is that it can be hard to tell whether we are "comparing apples to apples". For example, the number of registered cardholders per capita is influenced both by geography (How easy is it to get to the library from other communities? Do they get a lot of commuter or tourist traffic?) and by library policies and practices (How often do they purge the cardholder database? ) In the case of PVLD we caught a data error following submission of our data and actually have closer to 63 cardholders per capita. We're also perceived to be a bit geographically remote, and don't get the same amount of non-resident usage that a Silicon Valley community like Redwood City or beach-side towns like Newport or Redondo would get.

Sometimes the situations are different – for example city libraries are likely to be in buildings that are owned and maintained by city staff, unlike PVLD which is responsible for all aspects of library operation. Even if the maintenance costs are factored into the reported expenditures for a city library there is likely some economy of scale to be gained from receiving services from another city department.

Sometimes the numbers reflect a very different operating model – for example Redwood City is part of a cooperative system that has a shared catalog and robust delivery system, so one of their cardholders can place a hold on an item in another library and have it delivered to the Redwood City Library for collection. That's a very different model for "inter-library loan" and this is reflected in Redwood City's statistics.

And sometimes the numbers just don't make sense…like when Newport Beach shows over 2x the number of public service hours per week but lower total expenditures per capita than PVLD.

Even with all of the data questions I still find the statistics a useful tool for getting a sense of how PVLD is doing. While it would be nice to see higher circulation statistics its nice to see that on measures like visits per capita and program attendance we do pretty well – especially given the relative size of our staff.