Stellar libraries in the Midwest, disgraces in the miserly South

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Ohio is the top state in Hennen’s American Public Library Ratings this year. And the branch-oriented Cuyahoga County Public Library, encompassing Cleveland suburbs and thriftily headquartered in this plain-looking building, leads the biggest library systems.

The Buckeye State‘s outstanding showing fits a pattern. The Midwest shines in both state ratings and the number of leading libraries on sized-based Top Ten lists from Thomas Henlen, Jr. in Wisconsin.

Hip librarians in Babbitt country

While I cherish the Sinclair Lewis satires debunking the Midwest, I can’t help liking the region, too. Hey, my mother’s from Kansas City, and more relevantly from a TeleRead perspective, some of the most e-book-hip librarians are Midwestern–for example, Tom Peters (Tap Information Services in beautiful Blue Springs, Missouri, some 40 miles from KC), Lori Bell (Mid-Illinois Talking Book Center), Jenny Levine (Metropolitan Chicago Library System), and Cynthia Orr (Cleveland Public LIbrary).

What’s more, Project Gutenberg came out of Michael Hart’s work at the University of Ilinois at Champaign-Urbana. In character, too, the Columbus, Ohio, Metropolitan Library System is the leader among big systems in use of electronic resources, as are several more Ohio libaries in their size categories. Also, OCLC is in–yes, yes–the Ohio city of Dublin, an immortal name among metadata freaks.

Other top states

Here are the other top states based on criteria ranging from physical facilities to collection size: Utah, #2; Oregon, #3; Indiana, #4; Colorado, #5; Washington, #6; Wisconsin, #7; Kansas, #8; Maryland, #9, and Nebraska, #10. Total score among the top 10: 5 midwestern states vs. 4 western states and just 1 in the Northeast.

The South disgraced itself in both state ranks and the number of stellar library systems. The lowest ten states were Mississippi, #51; Washington, D.C. (an honorary Southern state in terms of location and mediocrity), #50; Alabama, #49; Louisiana, #48; Tennessee, #47; Arkansas, 46; Georgia, #45; Texas, #44; California, #43, and West Virginia, 42. Nothing personal. I went to school in the South at a good university. But–pardon my French–the region sucks massively as library territory.

Granted, clear-cut exceptions have distinguished certain smaller places in the South. One is the Central Rappahannock Regional Library in Fredericksburg, Virginia, just down the road from me off Route 95. Via a well-done link, Librarian.net correctly praised the system’s award-winning Web site the other day. But Rappahannock is hardly the Southern norm.

More Ohio victories

In various categories for cities and other localities this year, the leading libraries were Cuyahoga County, Ohio (500,000+ category); Santa Clara County, California (250,000-499,999); Naperville, Illinois (100,000-249,999); Washington-Centerville, Ohio (50,000-99,999); and Upper Arlington, Ohio (25,000-49,999).

Except for the first-rate system in Fairfax County in Northern, Virginia (10th among the big-league libraries) near me and libraries in Chesterfield County, Virginia (6th among 250,000-499,999) and Richland County, South Carolina (9th in 250,000-499,999), not one of the leading libraries cited on the top ten lists this year is in the South. Central Rappahannock Regional ranked seventh last year in its category and surely is still going strong. It just didn’t make the final ’04 cut.

Dixie misers

Plainly, however, the South is a library horror story. At least that would seem the case if you’re not a Rebel diehard and don’t want to include Maryland, where Montgomery County’s Library came in just ahead of Fairfax County’s in the big-library category. Even Montgomery’s showing isn’t enough, actually, given the South’s substandard performance as a whole.

So what does this say about Southern values vs. Northern and Midwestern ones? The South isn’t quite as poor as before. Shouldn’t it want to be a little less stingy toward its libraries?

Scarcity of top ten systems in West

Oh, and just four libraries in Western states have made the Top Ten lists in their categories–Santa Clara County, California (1st in 250,000-499,999), Multnomah County, Oregon (second in the big leagues), Denver Public Library (3rd among the biggest), Douglas County in Colorado (7th in 100,000-249,000).

While the Western states seem to do a good job of spreading resources around, at least if you go by state averages, they don’t have the same number of stellar systems that the Midwest does.

New England worse than expected

What’s more, New England, supposedly the home of culture and learning and all that, is a real loser compared to the Midwest if you’re thinking about stellar libraries. The only library there to make a top ten list was in Newton, Massachusetts (third in 50,000-99,000). If you go by state averages, New England does better. Massachusetts is 16; Connecticut, 21; Maine, 24; Vermont, 35; New Hampshire, 27.

A caveat and a little more perspective: Yes, the Henlen ratings are quantity-influenced, with nary a reward for “service with a smile” or reference whizzes who have memorized the population of Paraguay; and Thomas Henlen is the first to admit the limitations of his approach. But so often there is a clear-cut overlap between quantity and quality. Miserly funding isn’t exactly the best way to promote library usage. Hint, hint to those Dixie misers! If y’all wanna go high tech, you could do worse than to fund schools and library services that help build the basic skills needed for mastery of Java and all that.

More TeleRead-related thoughts: The dramatic state and regional disparities are a powerful argument for a national TeleRead-style approach. The South, Bush Country, badly lags other regions of the country, and if the White House wants to reward its friends, what better way than an efficient, well-stocked national digital library system, which, of course, could benefit the liberal Northern states, too, by also increasing the resources accessible there. A win for all! And an issue that transcends ideology. None other than William F. Buckley Jr. has written two syndicated “On the Right” columns favoring a TeleRead-style approach with more money going for actual books and less spending in the future on massive library buildings downtown. But strong local branches? Yes–given their importance as neighborhood meeting places, and for face-to-face mentoring, story-telling and other activities! Even in the era of paper books, Cuyahoga County hasn’t done too badly with its branch orientation.