Visitors to public libraries in Canada and the United States have no trouble knowing they are in a library. There are books and other materials, staff, and computer terminals, and you can check items out. However, a preliminary comparison of comparable data from the two countries’ libraries shows differences in how each country provisions library service and how the citizens of each use their libraries. This is a first look at what I have found so far, as part of the Normative Data Project for Libraries.

The U.S. data come from the U.S. National Center for Education Statistics (NCES), but I am using the version I recompiled – available at the U.S. National Commission on Libraries and Information Science site. This is a national survey of all 9,200 public library systems in the United States. There is no similar national survey of Canadian public libraries. But the Canadian Urban Libraries Council (CULC), an organization composed of the largest public libraries in Canada, publishes a series of data on its members that reports many statistics similar to those available from NCES. The data are compiled by Don Mills, director of the Mississauga Library System in Ontario. The latest year we have for both sets of libraries is 2003 when CULC records data from 65 of the 90 members. They range from 51,000 population served to slightly fewer than 2.5 million. There are slightly more than 1,000 U.S. libraries in that same population range, so this comparison is between these two groups of libraries.

These Canadian libraries are larger on average than their U.S. counterparts. The mean population served at Canadian libraries is 244,000, while the similar U.S. figure is 183,000. As we might expect from these numbers, the average size in reported volumes held for Canadian libraries at 729,000 is larger than the 453,000 for U.S. libraries. The average Canadian library has 133 full-time equivalent (FTE) total staff, while the average U.S. library employs 83 people.

However, the method by which most in the public library world compare libraries of different size is not to use totals but per capita figures. We expect the bigger Canadian libraries to have larger staffs than U.S. libraries, but what about the number of staff per capita? Canadian libraries have more total staff per capita than U.S. libraries (12.71 vs. 11.69).

Volumes held per capita are also higher in this set of Canadian libraries (2.9 vs. 2.5), as are current serials per 1,000 population (22.9 vs. 6.3) – although the serials numbers seem peculiarly different, don’t they? Is this result real or an artifact of the numbers?

Consider the comparable interlibrary loans per 1,000 population figures for Canadian public libraries (34.9) vs. U.S. libraries (71.1), which is the relationship you would expect if the serials ratios are correct. Canadians visiting their libraries would be more likely to find a periodical (and book for that matter, as we see) than a U.S. citizen and, hence, less likely to need to borrow something on ILL.

It also appears Canadians use their libraries more as visits per capita (5.6 vs. 4.4 in the United States) and circulations per capita (9.2 vs. 6.9) show. However, U.S. libraries have more public use terminals per capita 2.5 (per 5,000 population served) vs. 2.1 in Canadian libraries.

There is more analysis yet to be done. One is the comparison of the two currencies. The Association of Research Libraries has Canadian and U.S. members and has dealt with this matter by a variable that compares the currencies. Using this method, U.S. public libraries spend more than Canadian libraries on all of the financial ratios used most commonly in the United States. A few of the differences are substantial. The matter of comparing currencies is a complex undertaking, and I want to spend more time on this question before presenting the results.

We can get a more rounded view of the situation by looking at both sets of libraries through time as each responds to its environment. The conclusion means construction of a time series for Canadian library data. Also, there are other Canadian public library data that it would be good to include in the analysis. So, there will be further work on this topic ahead.