Figure

V-18a: Per Capita Operating Expenditures of Public Libraries, Fiscal Years 1995–2018 (Adjusted for Inflation)*

* Values presented are for the 50 U.S. states and the District of Columbia. Calculations were performed on all libraries treated by these jurisdictions as public libraries, not only those meeting all Federal-State Cooperative System criteria for public libraries, and are based on the total unduplicated population of libraries’ legal service areas (see “About the Data” for details). Expenditure amounts were adjusted for inflation using the annual gross domestic product deflators produced by the U.S. Department of Commerce’s Bureau of Economic Analysis. Deflators were obtained from Budget of the United States Government, Fiscal Year 2021, “Section 10--Gross Domestic Product and Implicit Outlay Deflators,” Table 10.1 (Gross Domestic Product and Deflators Used in the Historical Tables: 1940–2025), https://www.govinfo.gov/app/details/BUDGET-2021-TAB/BUDGET-2021-TAB-11-1/context.
** Includes expenditures for binding, supplies, repair or replacement of existing furnishings and equipment, and costs of computer hardware and software used to support library operations or to link to external networks, including the Internet; also includes expenditures for service contracts, such as costs of operating and maintaining physical facilities, and fees paid to consultants, auditors, architects, attorneys, and so on.

Source: U.S. Department of Education, National Center for Education Statistics, Public Libraries Survey (1995–2005); Institute of Museum and Library Services, Public Libraries Survey (2006–2018). Data analyzed and presented by the American Academy of Arts and Sciences’ Humanities Indicators (www.humanitiesindicators.org).

The per capita values included in this graph are based on the total unduplicated population of libraries’ legal service areas, as reported by libraries themselves. A library’s legal service area is the geographical area that by state or local statute a library is mandated to serve. “Unduplicated” refers to the fact that the population figures have been adjusted to compensate for overlapping service areas. To simply sum the populations of all service areas within a state would be to double count those people residing in areas served by more than one library.

Under the Federal-State Cooperative System, a public library is an entity established under state enabling laws or regulations to serve a community, district, or region, is supported in whole or in part with public funds, and provides at least the following:

1. An organized collection of printed or other library materials, or a combination thereof;

2. Paid staff;

3. An established schedule in which services of the staff are available to the public; and

4. The facilities necessary to support such a collection, staff, and schedule.

A library, in this instance, refers to the administrative entity, which could be a single-outlet library or a multibranch library system. In fiscal year 2017, the most recent year for which information was available at the time of publication, 9,045 libraries operating in the 50 U.S. states and the District of Columbia met the criteria above. These entities provided services via 16,557 central and branch libraries, and 672 bookmobiles (M. Pelczar, L. M. Frehill, K. Williams, and E. Nielsen, Supplementary Tables: Public Libraries in the United States Fiscal Year 2017 [Washington, DC: Institute of Museum and Library Services, 2019], 1–2, https://www.imls.gov/sites/default/files/fy2017_pls_tables.pdf).

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