Sociodemographic correlates of intercounty variations in the public library output

Modern systems theory is applied in constructing a recursive, multivariate causal model for an analysis of intercounty variations of the public library output. In the model, drawing the data on population and libraries from the counties in Florida, selected sociodemographic variables of the community are considered as exogenous variables, while the resource characteristics of the library are designated as intermediate variables which link the exogenous variables to the endogenous variable, per capita circulation. The results of our analysis indicate that four independent variables (educational level, proportion of registered library users, per capita operating cost, and per capita library collection) account for about 74% of the variance in per capita library circulation. Of the four independent variables, educational level exerts the largest effect followed by per capita library collection. Findings suggest several important policy implications to those who allocate library resources to competing libraries.