A Search Through Local Revenue Sources

It’s that time of year again: the Library Research Service (LRS) has received and reviewed the latest Public Library Annual Report (PLAR) data and can begin to dig into it to see what we find! This 2023 PLAR data is still preliminary, but a snapshot of certain statistics are available on our website and our survey platform, Counting Opinions. While it’s tempting to transform this treasure trove of information straight into shiny, new visualizations, this is an important time to remind ourselves that fully understanding a data set is key to the successful analysis and visualization of it. 

So, in this post, we’re going to dive right into one of the most important and complex pieces of public library data which is libraries’ local operating revenues. But before we visualize this data, we’ll take an in-depth look at each revenue type to make sure we fully grasp the information at our fingertips…

Continue reading this post on LRS.org and check out more posts on research in a library context from Library Research Service.

LRS’s Colorado Public Library Data Users Group (DUG) mailing list provides instructions on data analysis and visualization, LRS news, and PLAR updates. To receive posts via email, please complete this form.