LJ Index of Public Library Service 2009

America's Star Libraries:
The LJ Index of Public Library Service 2009

The LJ Index of Public Library Service is a new public library national rating system instituted by Library Journal and sponsored by Baker & Taylor's Bibliostat Connect web-based statistical analysis software for public libraries.

This 2009 edition of the LJ Index is based upon 2006 public library statistical data published by the Institute of Museum and Library Services.

The LJ Index rates U.S. public libraries with total expenditures of $10,000 or more that serve populations of at least 1000. Ratings are based on four per-capita service indicators:

~ library visits
~ circulation
~ program attendance
~ public Internet computer uses

Find your library by searching this document @
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. . . a June 2008 LJ article explaining the idea, design and detail of measures of the LJ Index of Public Library Service.

“My psychiatrist told me I was crazy and I said I want A Second Opinion.
He said okay, you're ugly too.” Rodney Dangerfield / Henny Youngman

Too Much Too Late
AL Inside Scoop Blog
March 3, 2009 by Leonard Kniffel

. . . . . I talked with Tom Hennen this morning about the new rankings (which take up eight pages in the February 15 issue of LJ ). “Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery,” he laughed, but he also said he was “perplexed” by many of the claims that Lance and Lyons make for the superiority of their system. “They make a big point of saying my weighting of the factors is arbitrary,” Hennen said, “ but not weighting them is just as arbirtrary because they end up saying that visits, circulation, electronic resource use, and program attendance are all of equal weight, which is in itself a value judgement.”

Hennen also noted that Lance once said that the right way to rank is “to figure out what it takes to make a good library and use those elements and not just take readily available elements and turned them into an index.” But readily available elements are precisely what he and Lyons have used. There are many differences between the HAPLR rankings and the LJ Index, Hennen told me, “but the fundamental difference is that HAPLR includes input measures while the LJ Index does not. The LJ Index looks at only one side of the library service equation, while HAPLR looks at both sides.” The new index winds up saying that input measures such as staffing, materials budget, and funding levels are not essential to the measurement of the all-important output: public service.

I’ll leave further comparisons and criticisms of the methodology to the statisticians, but I will say that after 10 years of criticism, Hennen’s major detractors have come up with a ranking system that adds little to our understanding of what makes a public library successful . . . . READ MORE