Data Collection Project

We have a very exciting milestone to share-  we’ve completed Phase 01 of For the People's Data Collection Project!

For every public library system in the United States, we attempted to find their official website and their method of selection for new library governance board members (appointed versus elected) as well as 6 other key pieces of information. We've now exhausted online research options for all 9,000+ public library systems that we set out to research, and we successfully collected both a website and the method of board-member selection (appointed versus elected) for 7,000+ of them!

Thank you SO much to everyone who helped with this research! Nothing like this has ever existed before, and now it does, thanks to you!!!

One of the main things we wanted to know about each public library in the United States was how they select their boards. Are they selected by appointment? Or a public election? Or a mix of appointment and election? Now that we have that information for a little over 80% of public libraries in the United States, we have a much better sense of the breakdowns. 

Overall (for libraries where we have this information), board selection methods appear to be:

• 83% appointed

• 15% elected

• 2% mixed

Stay tuned to the FTP Newsletter for more analysis soon.

Appointed Boards

Elected Boards