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ARL LIBRARY DATA TABLES, 2004-05

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ARL STATISTICS INTERACTIVE EDITION
ON THE WORLD WIDE WEB
The ARL Statistics are available through an interactive edition on the Web,
supplementing previously available data from 1992‐93. Maintained and supported by the
Geospatial and Statistical Data Center at the University of Virginia, this site offers researchers
access to ARL Statistics with documentation.1
The site offers maps and graphics depicting current library trends. For the particularly
adventurous, the site links to an interactive graphics and statistics page, allowing users to
manipulate their data queries. One may chose univariate, bivariate, or multivariate statistics in
addition to a vast array of selections with which to customize a query. The interactive pages
also include options for regional aggregates, customized samples of observations, simple rank
order tabulations of data, and the ability to create ratios of any two variables.
The site also includes membership index data (volumes held, volumes added gross,
current serials, total library expenditures, and total staff), as published in the Chronicle of Higher
Education each spring, which can be displayed as numbers or graphs. A link provides an
explanation of how the ARL membership index is used in assessing new numbers and the table
of formulas for calculating the index since 1986 is also included. These and other capabilities
are located at:
http://fisher.lib.virginia.edu/arl/
The ARL Statistics datafiles since 1908 can be retrieved in spreadsheet format from the
ARL FTP site:
ftp://www.arl.org/stat/machine/
The latest ARL membership index data can be found at:
http://www.arl.org/stats/factor.html
The ARL Statistics and Measurement Program Web site is located at:
http://www.arl.org/stats/
1 For more information on the ARL Statistics Interactive Edition, see Martha Kyrillidou, “To Describe and Measure the Performance
of North American Research Libraries,” IFLA Journal 27 (2001): 257‐63.