Comparing Libraries: from Official Statistics to Effective Strategies

Comparing libraries: from official statistics to effective strategies Tord Høivik Associate professor at the Faculty of Journalism, Library and Information Science, Oslo University College, Norway Arguing with numbers Statistics is the art of arguing with numbers. In this paper I discuss libraries in the light of official statistics. They are called “official” because they have been collected by governments. But the collector does not really matter. People tend to believe that official statistics are more authoritative than research data. This is not automatically so. Statistics are statistics, whether they are gathered by researchers or by public officials. The methods are similar. We always have to evaluate the methodology used. The main difference is this: governments are bureaucracies. They have the capacity to produce statistical series: the same data are collected and presented every year. Bureaucracies are stable and conservative like farmers. Researchers are more like hunters. When we get excited about a question, we organize a special expedition - or a project - to hunt down the data we need. Official statistics are standardized. They are meant to be compared: over time, between libraries, and - increasingly - between countries. Project data are much more idiosyncratic. Every library researcher tends to develop her own way of collecting and presenting information. This weakens the impact of research. Library research often suffers from a lack of integration. We end up with a multitude of library snap- shots - not a systematic body of knowledge. To understand libraries, we need better pictures of the social landscape. A good approach is to study official statistics in depth - and to combine regular statistical data with project information. Official statistics show the broad framework, while project data provide depth and detail. Both sources should be utilized. Arguments from statistics and arguments from surveys should also be confronted. They do not always tell the same story. I feel encouraged, however, by the growing sophistication of library statistics and library research. Let me mention three examples: 43 1. In Europe, the European Commission is investing heavily in cross-national projects. The LibEcon (Millennium) study published in 2001 (see Bibliography) represents a great advance in standardizing and comparing library statistics between countries. 2. In Great Britain, the Department of Information Science at Loughborough University runs an outstanding research and information centre (LISU) that con- centrates on library and information statistics. They publish a wide range of publications. The two volumes called Perspectives of public library use (1995, 1999) are particularly valuable. These books gather information from widely scattered sources and present it within a common framework. 3. In Norway, funding of higher education is increasingly based on results. Since the results must be measured, we now have much stronger systems for collecting data on students and on outputs from research. This means we can monitor the flow of library students (1) and of library related publications (2) much more closely than before. Quantitative research and official statistics The gap between official statistics and academic research is diminishing. Government actors are becoming more data hungry. They are willing to invest more in data collection and data management. They increasingly turn to occasional (or peri- odic) surveys to gather detailed information on particular topics - like time budgets, media use and cultural statistics. Such data are highly relevant for library researchers. In the past, official statistics had to be gathered from printed publications. We could not go beyond the formats and the cross-tabulations that the statistical agency had chosen. Today, more and more countries make their statistics available as databases. The most advanced countries - which definitely include Norway - encourage users to select, manipulate and download complex sets of information from these databases. This increases the value - one could even say the productivity - of the data. We get the same type of access to official statistics that we have to our specially gathered project data. Combining them is both economically efficient and methodologically exciting. At the same time, research communities are building stronger infrastructures. The institutions that fund research want research programs rather than individual projects. Collective undertakings create social links between researchers and lead to more cumulative studies. Projects build on previous projects. The bricks are stacked in walls rather than scattered on the ground. This means that research data approach official statistics. Surveys may be repeated on a regular basis. The LISU unit at Loughborough is one example, with publications like the annual Survey of Library Services to Schools and Children. 44 We find more longitudinal data, where people or institutions are studied over long time periods. In Norway, we can mention StudData - a massive study of students in twenty different professions - including librarians. The project uses a cohort approach (3). It will run for ten years and provide a vast amount of data on edu- cational choices and career experiences. An administrative view of the world Here we consider the role of official statistics rather than statistics in general. Official statistics are usually collected for administrative purposes. Statistical systems provide, we might say, an administrative view of the world. Since data collection is costly, official statistics tend to concentrate on data that are gathered in any case, as a part of the normal work of the organization. All libraries register their book stocks, their accessions and their loans. Thus we have good data on collection size - but not on collection quality. We know the number of new books, but not their relevance. We have detailed information on loans, but not on reading. The statistics we are offered give, necessarily, a limited and biased picture of libraries. We must use them with caution. When we study the library world, we should keep data at a distance. If we start with statistics, we are easily caught by the administrative worldview. It is better, I believe, to start with the questions we want to explore. Relevant questions are more important than random facts. The proper use of library statistics requires good theories, good models and good questions. Official bodies often seem myopic. They watch their numbers too closely. They tend to discuss tables rather than the issues tables are meant to illustrate. The simple inductive approach is dangerous. It is very hard to draw interesting conclusions directly from data – with no theory to guide your analysis. Data must be interrogated closely and forced to answer our questions. Corporations speak about data mining: extracting valuable information from the barren rock that surrounds it. The total amount of information on European libraries is vast and growing. In our computerized society, data systems generate much more information than we can digest. To survive, we must retreat from the flood. The ocean of data should be watched from a distance. To develop interesting questions we need a conceptual platform beyond statistics. Data bound research tends to be boring research. In other words: explore your data from above. The countries of Europe are turning from industrial to knowledge based societies. In that process the social role of public libraries is changing. Their main services continue as before. Libraries still lend books, answer questions and provide space for a great variety of social and cultural activities. But the interpretation of library services change. In industrial societies, culture and education are secondary sectors, 45 somewhat divorced from real work. Our children were educated before they started working - and adults enjoyed culture as a form of recreation outside working hours. A skilled worker was skilled for the rest of his life. In knowledge societies, production is based on constant learning and continuous innovation. Technologies and markets change rapidly and need organizations - as well as individuals - that are able to adapt, learn and develop. Culture and leisure are becoming major economic sectors in their own right. Highly educated people try to fill their lives with rich, intense, and meaningful experiences - both at work and in their spare time. This is a challenge to public libraries. Libraries are funded by the government, national or local. They depend, in the long run, on the willing support of the electorate. Their role in industrial society was well defined and widely accepted. Politicians and voters understood the value of library services and were willing to pay for them. But their role in knowledge societies looks less evident. The traditional arguments have lost much of their force. Politicians often seem less committed: their hearts are not engaged. If voters follow their lead, public libraries will loose their broad political support. In several European countries, we believe, this is starting to happen. The art of counting Mathematics deals with numbers in their pure form - the properties of number as such. Statistics deals with numbers from the real world. Official statistics is mainly concerned with numbers derived from counting. The natural and social sciences get much of their data from measurements - of size and weight, of strength and color. Such common-sense categories

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