Market-Based Adult Lifelong Learning Performance Measures for Public Libraries

ABSTRACT

NEED AND NATIONAL SIGNIFICANCE OF PROJECT

Potential Contribution of Project

PROJECT DESIGN

Priority

Goal

Objectives

Outcome

Research Design

QUALITY AND POTENTIAL CONTRIBUTIONS OF PERSONNEL

ADEQUACY OF RESOURCES

QUALITY OF MANAGEMENT PLAN

The public library systems are one of the most important resources for adult lifelong learning, especially in areas having a high concentration of low-income individuals, with fewer options for education and less access to information resources. Such areas are often coincident with minority populations. While a few studies have been done on serving these users in public libraries, systematic nationwide studies are lacking.

The project's goal is to research, demonstrate, and validate the use of marketing principles and new information technologies by public librarians in assisting them to inventory, analyze, and evaluate the adult lifelong learning needs for their particular library market area. Although generalizable to all libraries, the focus of this proposal will be with library market areas in majority-minority and low income jurisdictions.

Approximately 100 public library branches will be selected throughout the U.S. Field data will be collected on variables affecting library usage at these locations. Geographic information system (GIS) software and GIS training will be provided to five of the selected libraries, permitting their staff to conduct their own library market analysis using locally-collected field data in evaluating the lifelong educational needs of their users.

This research will develop a national baseline on adult educational needs in low income areas as well as develop a low-cost replicable methodology to assist all public librarians in evaluating those educational needs in their own community.

Recent research indicates that the types of public library services actually offered and potentially needed in majority-minority and low-income areas differ from traditional library markets. A traditional library market is comprised of high education and income individuals and usually majority white. Majority-minority areas are neighborhoods where the majority of the residents are classified as belonging to a minority population. Research conducted of 100 branch library markets across the U.S. indicated that minorities, unlike traditional library users, used reference services and attended library programs more often than they checked out books. While circulation use in majority-minority markets tended to rise in areas when education and income levels rose, the differences between majority-minority markets and traditional markets remained.

The ramifications of this study for public library systems and the goal of providing adult lifelong learning opportunities for these populations are immense because the current lifelong learning models are based on the traditional majority white market. Consequently, with today's increasingly diverse population mix, controlled studies on adult lifelong learning in a wide range of public library environments are urgently needed in order to reflect today's population realities. How are the lifelong learning needs of the rapidly-increasing minority population best met, in general, as well as how are local practicing librarians helping to better identify and meet the specific adult lifelong learning needs within their particular community? There are several reasons why answering this question is now of special urgency.

1) Increased Underprivileged Populations

The 1990 U.S. Bureau of the Census's population figures reveal dramatic changes are occurring in the racial and income composition in many communities across America. During the past ten-year time period, forty-one states had double-digit percentage increases in minority populations. The magazine, American Demographics, reports that while the U.S. population growth is slowing down overall, racial and ethnic minority groups are growing more than seven times as fast as the non-Hispanic white majority. Communities and neighborhoods across America are increasingly changing from majority-white markets, to majority-minority or more multi-cultural diverse markets. Serving all these different minority groups using a single program is not usually effective because different groups have disparate socio-economic profiles. For public libraries located in these changing markets, such findings are of utmost relevance.

Paralleling the growth in minority populations is a growing underclass: white and non-white people living in or near poverty in inner cities and rural areas across the nation. The gap in individual incomes between the wealthiest and the poorest has increased substantially since the late 1970's, reversing a 50 year trend. The present and projected population growth patterns for minority and low income communities will have enormous impact on social and economic conditions, policies, and programs, including those for adult lifelong education.

2) Public Library Role as Adult Lifelong Learning Centers

For over 100 years, public libraries across the country have been professionally self-mandated to provide equal access to humankind's range of educational and informational materials, based upon an analysis of the immediate population's unique needs. While 10 per cent of American's 16,000 public libraries serve populations of 50,000 or more, nearly half serve fewer than 5,000. The public library facilities in the rural and small densely-populated urban neighborhoods may be the only facility truly open to the public, in place and located within the travel distance of the most vulnerable elements of society such as the poor, children, the elderly and other disadvantaged. The value of these library facilities with trained personnel as the most effective conduit for adult lifelong learning can not be underestimated.

Because public library services are based upon the immediate population's unique needs, the library's educational services and materials to minority and low-income groups is actually a part of its everyday "traditional" library services. For example, newly arrived immigrants often find themselves less educated than the resident population. They may then seek assistance from the library services and materials available in the public library to adapt to the dominant culture. Second generation immigrants (the sons and daughters of the foreign-born) may wish to continue the culture, mores, and language of their original country. Library managers may best serve these groups with bilingual library materials and services. There is no one right approach for these library users.

The growth of poverty and joblessness in the U.S. also increases the significance of the public library's role in adult lifelong learning in majority-minority and low-income communities. The public library facility is a vital conduit and resource for providing modern-day technologies such as computers, CD-ROMs, and the Internet to the disadvantaged, diminishing the information gap between the technical elite and the technical poor.

3) Public Library Closures and Relocations

Due to budgetary constraints, many public library systems today are merging, re-siting, or closing public library branches. Such actions are being performed with little or no study on their possible effects on majority-minority and low-income groups. Indeed, there is evidence that these actions may be disproportionately reducing access to public libraries for these groups. In order to ensure that public libraries will continue to serve as lifelong learning centers for majority-minority and low income groups, a nationwide study is needed to answer questions such as which groups walk, drive, or use public transportation; how far these users will travel to a library; or what cultural and physical barriers may limit their library usage. Unless such a nationwide assessment is performed, access to lifelong education and training for many disadvantaged individuals may disappear.

4) Better Understanding of Lifelong Educational Needs

Providing for adult lifelong educational needs was much simpler when America was a reasonably homogeneous society. In today's increasingly heterogeneous and complex society, it is difficult to integrate and apply the many studies from past years into servicing the educational needs of a multi-culturally diverse neighborhood. The available limited research to date indicates that race in combination with other socio-economic characteristics such as income or education effects type and level of library use. But, there have been no studies to date that fully address the issue of differing lifelong educational needs among the range of library users of different races, ethnic origin, or lower income.

Providing desired library materials and services based upon identified, unique educational needs within each such market will most certainly enhance the opportunities for those markets. Through use of a nationwide sample of a wide range of majority-minority and lower income library markets, this project will be the first to focus on developing a national baseline to assist public libraries in meeting the lifelong educational needs of one of the rapidly-growing segments of the U.S. populati

The potential long-term contribution of this project is for providing better understanding of adult lifelong learning issues. The research arising from this project will also benefit public library theory as well. Specifically, the long-term contributions from this project would include:

1) Educational Needs Baseline for Underprivileged Markets

This project will develop both a general national baseline of the adult lifelong learning needs and wants of underprivileged populations, as well as a baseline that can be broken down by the major racial and cultural groups across America. The baseline will include data on what educational techniques work within public libraries, what does not, and what could be done to improve the adult educational programs in public libraries.

2) Refinement of Public Library Siting Theory

Public library siting has been haphazard at best. Recent budgetary cutbacks has led to re-siting, consolidation, and closure of public library branches. Although some preliminary studies and recommendations on public library siting have been published, hard data have been lacking, especially for majority-minority market areas. The collection of such users' residence and travel distance data during this study will provide valuable data in verifying, refuting, or improving current library siting theories. In the long run, these data will be critical in better siting of public library facilities, which will ensure better accessibility to these facilities for disparate targeted populations of adult lifelong learners.

3) Refinement of Library Service Output Measures

Public librarians are being challenged to achieve excellence with dwindling resources. Inter-library comparisons should measure variables that are sensitive to the information habits and needs of the users. For example, in-library use and library visits characterized by both type and purpose are often not counted by libraries because of their complexity. But tracking the number of library visits and in-library uses is important because lower income library markets have high non-traditional in-library use such as program attendance, employment referral, outreach services, literacy training, and simply as a public meeting place for individuals and groups. Such activities generally do not flourish in more traditional libraries serving the middle class, where book circulation represents the primary use.

This study will develop and evaluate different types of service output measure that may be more useful in markets that vary from the historical majority white socio-economic profile, helping assure equal as well as relevant access to library user populations that may have changed to majority-minority markets. Most importantly, the refinement of such service output measures will help put public libraries serving majority-minority and lower income groups on a more equal footing with those libraries serving more traditional markets. Libraries serving non-traditional users have often been targeted for closure because, using existing service output measures, those libraries were thought to be under-utilized, thus completely eliminating their potential value as adult lifelong learning centers for a particular area.

4) Technology for Better Assessments of Educational Needs

Cutbacks in governmental funding make it unlikely that a public library system can commission outside consultants to study library user and lifelong education issues. However, such studies are often needed today to better serve the local user population as well as to justify the very existence of a facility. The answer to this dilemma is technology: with proper instructions and guidance, it should be possible for public librarians themselves to develop a marketing profile for each library branch and to assess the lifelong educational needs of the users and potential users of each branch.

Historically and successfully, the public library is designated as the place in the community where information needs should be met. The public library's self-mandated mission calls for it to be accessible to all individuals--minority, low income and education or otherwise, and services and materials should be provided with this in mind. In order to assure that this mission is fulfilled, this project will develop a low-cost reproducible methodology that can be replicated nationwide by other libraries to better understand and serve the library service needs of their actual and potential users. Through such analyses as well as well after this project is completed, the lifelong educational services by public libraries will continue to improve and be relevant to the immediate educational needs of the local community being served.

This grant application addresses Invitational Priority 1 under CFDA 84.309F, examining how public library systems can take advantage of information technologies to expand opportunities for adult lifelong learners.

The project's goal is to research, demonstrate, and validate the use of marketing principles and new information technologies (i.e., portable data collecting instruments, geographic information systems) by public librarians in assisting them to inventory, analyze, and evaluate the adult lifelong learning needs for their particular library market area. Although generalizable to all libraries, the focus of this proposal will be with library market areas in majority-minority and low income jurisdictions.

The major objectives that will be accomplished during the thirty-month duration of this project are:

1) The U.S.'s majority-minority and low income public library jurisdictions will be identified by month three.

2) Public library services that are most effective in such markets will be identified by month six.

3) Performance measures for evaluating the use of these services in these types of jurisdictions will be designed and pretested at five demonstration library sites by month nine.

4) Baseline data using the developed performance measures will be collected at the five demonstration sites by month twelve.

5) Collection of these performance measures will commence at 100 other majority-minority or low income library jurisdictions by month thirteen.

6) An instructional manual will be developed for librarians on how to use geographic information systems for analyzing and evaluating the effectiveness of their public library services to adult learners. This manual and methodology will be fully tested at the five demonstration sites by month twenty-four.

7) The instructional manual will be distributed to state library agencies and public libraries serving the top 100 majority-minority or low income jurisdictions by month twenty-seven.

8) A survey to identify state library agencies and public libraries that plan to utilize the manual and how they plan to utilize it will be completed by month thirty.

9) The performance measures collected by all the participating libraries will be statistically analyzed to produce baseline performance measures that will be usable for comparison by other libraries serving similar markets by month thirty.

 

By the conclusion of this project, at least ten public libraries serving majority-minority or low income markets will have begun using this project's research methodologies to identify ways, and developed specific plans, to improve their services to adult learners.

The research design will incorporate several methodologies. One of the first tasks will be to identify neighborhoods in the United States with majority-minority populations. Using 1990 U.S. Census data and school enrollment figures available through the National Center for Educational Statistics, "neighborhoods" will be operationalized as a census tract or groups of census tracts. "Minority"--as used throughout this report-- will include, among other groups, low income Whites living below poverty level as well as Blacks, Hispanics (including Cubans and Mexicans), Asians and Pacific Islanders (including Chinese and Vietnamese), and American Indians and Alaskan Natives.

Dr. Keith Lance will then design and select a stratified random sample of 100 majority-minority neighborhoods. This sample will be stratified to represent the four major regions in the U.S. (Northeast, South, Midwest, and West) and, within each region, central cities of metropolitan areas, suburbs in metropolitan areas, outlying cities and towns ("urban" areas outside metropolitan areas), and rural areas.

Using Federal-State Cooperative System (FSCS) data files and the Public Library Data Service (PLDS) Statistical Reports, Dr. Lance and Dr. Koontz will identify administrative entities and public service outlets of the public library jurisdictions within the 100 sample neighborhoods chosen by the study. The initial sample of 100 public libraries will be contacted by mail, e-mail, or telephone to determine their willingness to participate. Those declining to participate will be replaced randomly from the same sample cell (i.e., region and type of area). For each of the final 100 selected libraries, a socio-economic profile of the surrounding residents will be obtained as well as existing library use statistics and output measures such as holdings, square footage, reference materials, outreach programs, number of visits, circulation, library card holder statistics, staff, current adult learning opportunities, current available technologies, and "language support" other than English within the branch.

Drs. Lance and Koontz will then identify those public library educational services that succeed in meeting the needs and wishes of public library users in underprivileged and minority markets. This identification will be through both the review of recent library literature as well as through one or more focus groups held at a library convention.

They will adapt existing performance measures or design new measures that assess the usefulness of these services to the users at the five demonstration library branches. The development of multiple and new measures of "in-library use" -- including different types of traditional and new print materials, in-library programs, outreach services, and the expanding array of electronic services -- will provide an unprecedented level of detailed information about how disadvantaged populations use libraries. Combined with knowledge about the extent of their participation in a range of educational opportunities (everything from independent study to on-the-job training to advanced academic courses), these measures will better equip library managers to understand how they can best support adult lifelong learning.

As these performance measures are being established, Mr. Dean Jue will develop or obtain software for collecting these measures using either personal digital assistants (PDAs) or portable data readers (PDRs). The PDAs or PDRs will be modified as necessary, but will be chosen based upon their simplicity and ease of use. Library staff at the five chosen demonstration sites will collect the data required for the performance measures using the PDAs/PDRs. From the staff's experiences, the research team will write a PDA/PDR training manual for data collection.

During the project's second year, PDAs/PDRs will be purchased for all public libraries participating in this project. Over the course of this year, library staff at each library branch will use these instruments to survey their library branch users at regular intervals. They will collect data on both the adult education needs and the library performance measures for their particular user market. Basic user satisfaction and residence information will be collected as well. These include zip/address of users, adult classes attended and other classes desired, any actions performed by the user during this visit (e.g., book checked out, reference used), reasons for visit, like/don't like about library, ways to increase visits/uses, patron statistics. The collected results will be utilized by the research team for further analysis in developing baseline performance measures for majority-minority and low income markets on a nationwide scale.

To support the analysis for each of library market, Mr. Jue will utilize geographic information system (GIS) software to develop a market profile for each of the 100 library branches. GIS software can be broadly defined as computer software designed for collecting, storing, and analyzing spatial objects (e.g., location of Census tracts relative to public transportation routes) as well as spatial phenomena (e.g., the average distance a library user has travelled to reach a public library branch). This GIS-generated information will provide the researchers with additional insights into factors that may affect adult usage of public library services in majority-minority and low income areas.

The five demonstration library branches will be provided with their own GIS software during year two. Mr. Jue will work with the local librarians and officials in identifying and developing additional local geographic data sets that should be made included in any GIS analysis because that information may affect library market size area or user accessibility to a particular library location. Examples of such data might be areas with high crime rates or locations of major cultural or shopping centers.

To further support the libraries participating in this project, Dr. Lance will contact the FSCS State Data Coordinator (SDC) in each state with a participating library to advise them of the study, the participating libraries in their state, and the local contact person. Throughout the balance of the project, Dr. Lance will contact each SDC at least monthly to update them on the progress of the study and how they can further facilitate the participation of libraries in their state. Dr. Lance will provide backup or substitute support if a SDC is unable or unwilling to fill this role.

The last six months of this project will focus on analyzing the user data collected by each library. This analysis will identify the strategies, characteristics, services, and policies of those libraries that are most effective in meeting the adult educational needs as well as overall needs of the library users in majority-minority markets. In addition to analyzing the data on a nationwide basis, the data analysis will also be aggregated in different ways (e.g., by geographic region, by ethnic group) to better identify the most important factors for improving adult lifelong learning for each particular aggregation type.

The data analyses will be both more detailed and specific for the five demonstration library branches with GIS software. As the library staff collects local user data (e.g., zip code residency of adult education class attendees), Mr. Jue will assist the staff with integrating any spatial data into their GIS.

Based on the specific locally-collected library usage data at each branch, the research team will work jointly with the library staff at the five branches to better define the actual market area boundaries for each library as well as to develop a more accurate socio-economic profile of the potential library users within that market area. The adult educational needs and findings from these five libraries will be compared with results from the much larger national sample. This will identify specific actions or policies that these five library markets may take to improve the adult lifelong educational services to each of their potential user population given each market's specific and unique library constraints and environment.

Based on the case studies at the five demonstration public libraries, the research team will then develop training manuals and documentation on the methodologies (i.e., GIS, marketing theory, new library output measures, library users' educational needs assessment) used by the five library branches to assess and evaluate their overall library services, including their adult lifelong education services. This material will be disseminated to state library agencies and the public libraries serving the top 100 "majority-minority" jurisdictions. These materials will also be available over the Internet as well as at cost of duplication to all others who may desire a hardcopy. At the end of this project, as an evaluation criteria for this project, a survey will be taken to identify state library agencies and public libraries that plan to utilize the training materials and identify how they will utilize it.

There will be three significant deliverables arising from this project. One will be a national baseline of information on ways to improve adult educational outreach services, but of special applicability to public libraries serving majority-minority and low income areas. The baseline data will be collected using the 100 PDAs/PDRs over an eighteen month period. Because the stratified baseline sample included all regions of the country and most major minority groups, this information baseline will be value and interest to both researchers and local communities.

The second product will be new output measures for evaluating the quality of public library services. The development and availability of multiple measures of "in-library use" will provide an unprecedented level of information about how disadvantaged populations use libraries, provide better comparative measures of library use among different types of libraries, and equip library managers with a better understanding of how they can best meet the adult lifelong learning needs in their local community.

The third deliverable will be the training materials and documentation on an integrated, validated, and reproducible low-cost methodology for evaluating and improving public library services based on a market analysis approach. This methodology will be easily usable by other librarians throughout this country.

Dr. Christie Koontz, has been an Assistant in Research at the Florida Resources Environmental Analysis Center (FREAC), Spatial Analysis Research and Training (SART) Program at Florida State University for the past five years. Dr. Koontz's areas of expertise include public library facility location and library market analysis with a specific emphasis on use of public libraries in majority minority and low income market areas.

Dr. Koontz was the recipient of the prestigious Carroll Preston Baber Research Award in 1992, the top research award of the American Library Association. The research project assessed library service to majority-minority markets in diverse geographic locations while ascertaining their differences in performance outputs and measures from more traditional library markets. Dr. Koontz also has a forthcoming book from Greenwood Publishing, LIBRARY SITING AND LOCATION HANDBOOK. Dr. Koontz has served as an adjunct faculty member, guest lecturer, library consultant and a presenter at library conferences across the country.

Dr. Keith Curry Lance has been the Director of the Library Research Service (LRS), a unit of the State Library and Adult Education Office of the Colorado Department of Education, since it was founded in 1987. Under his leadership, the LRS has provided comprehensive research and statistics support to public and academic libraries and school library media centers in Colorado. In addition, the LRS has performed contract research projects for a variety of clients beyond the state's borders, including the U.S. Department of Education, the National Center for Education Statistics, the American Library Association, the Public Library Association, and other state library agencies and associations.

Dr. Lance has been an adjunct faculty member, guest lecturer, or symposium keynoter for library schools in four states; a consultant to city and county libraries and state library agencies in 12 states; and a speaker at library conferences and workshops in 25 states.

He has co-authored two books-- THE IMPACT OF SCHOOL LIBRARY MEDIA CENTERS ON ACADEMIC ACHIEVEMENT and COMMUNITY ANALYSIS METHODS AND EVALUATIVE OPTIONS: THE CAMEO HANDBOOK, both in 1993--five book chapters, and seven journal articles. He is the editor of the issue papers, FAST FACTS: RECENT STATISTICS FROM THE LIBRARY RESEARCH SERVICE, over 100 of which he authored.

As the director of the LRS, Dr. Lance has the skills required to assist in the development of this study's research design and sample. As a co-founder of the Steering Committee of the Federal-State Cooperative System (FSCS) for Public Library Data, a former chair of the Library Administration and Management Association's Statistics Section, and a former member of the Public Library Association's Public Library Data Service (PLDS) Advisory Committee, he is well aware of the types of data already being collected by public libraries as well as the issues that may arise in collecting new or existing data elements at the outlet level. He has developed an extensive national network of colleagues who can readily answer any questions that may emerge from the initial efforts of local library staff to collect new data.

Dr. Lance has also been involved with the FSCS and the PLDS data collection efforts from their beginnings. He is therefore uniquely qualified: he has been a party to most major discussions on these projects, and has a breadth and depth of experience that will serve this proposed project well. He knows what has been tried; if it failed, why; and what hurdles local data collectors can expect to encounter with new performance measures.

Mr. Dean Jue has advanced degrees in public policy and computer science and directs the SART Program within FREAC at Florida State University. Under his directorship, SART provides research and technical support on geographic information systems (GIS) for governmental agencies at all levels. Clients include many Florida city and county governments, Florida state agencies, federal agencies, and the private sector. He has been a project leader in several studies to develop GIS policies and programs that improve the state's operating efficiency in those areas.

Mr. Jue's most recent research has centered on developing a generalizable framework in which to introduce digital spatial data sets and GIS for use by casual users in the public library environment. He has received support for this research from two GIS software vendors (ESRI, Inc. and Caliper Corporation) as well as federal funding from the Federal Geographic Data Committee of the U.S. Geological Survey to partially support his public library research effort. He has presented his work at both American Library Association and GIS conferences (e.g., URISA). He is the author of the paper IMPLEMENTING GIS IN THE PUBLIC LIBRARY ARENA which will be published in the University of Illinois' 1995 Proceedings of the Data Processing Clinic on GIS and Libraries,

Mr. Jue's background in computer science and GIS combined with his recent work with public librarians make him uniquely qualified to be a key member of this research team. He knows the factors that will need to be considered in placing the GIS into the public libraries that is part of this project and, most importantly, knows what will be required to get it to work.

Both the LRS in Colorado and the SART Program at Florida State University are parts of much larger umbrella organizations with vast resources which the LRS and the SART Program can utilize when necessary.

The LRS's offices in downtown Denver are equipped with state-of-the-art technology, including 486sx and Pentium microcomputers, black-and-white laser and color inkjet printers, links to a Local Area Network (LAN), Internet and World Wide Web (WWW) access, fax capabilities, and three speakerphones. The LRS also maintains a five-year archive of data on approximately 9,000 public libraries nationwide and is served by the Colorado Department of Education Resource Center, which maintains a complete series of Public Library Data Service reports and serves as a gateway to online sources of library and education-related data, as well as the Colorado State Data Center.

The regular LRS staff includes a Director, an Associate Director, and an Administrative Assistant. On a project basis, additional personnel are drawn from the State Library staff and a national network of library educators, association executives, consultants, and local practitioners.

The SART Program is part of the Florida Resources and Environmental Analysis Center (FREAC) at Florida State University. FREAC is one of 21 research centers designed to respond to public and private sector needs. There is also a School of Library and Information Studies at Florida State University and a College of Education whose resources and expertise can also be utilized.

The SART Program is equipped with a variety of state of the art computer systems for intelligent mapping, spatial analysis, and other tasks associated with GIS work. Computer systems range from RISC workstations to PC and Macintosh microcomputers. Almost a dozen GIS products are utilized by SART personnel, ranging from full-functional GIS products to many of the latest low-end GIS products. These hardware and software environments are all networked locally using TCP/IP, NFS, and Appletalk, with easy access to the Internet and the World Wide Web.

This project's budget allows for an average 20% effort from two of the three key project personnel and a 15% effort from the remaining researcher during this project. These three researchers will be assisted by a research assistant that will report directly to Dr. Koontz and be responsible for overseeing the timely progression and completion of this project on a daily basis. One person should be adequate for this task since most data collection will be done at the local library branch level.

About 40% of the total budget for this project is for salaries and fringe benefits of the three key personnel and the research assistant. This percentage is possible for this nation-wide project because labor at the local library branches participating in this project will essentially be free.

The $60,000 expenditure for the personal digital assistants (PDA) or portable data readers (PDR) need elaboration. The project will require purchase of one PDA/PDR per participating public library. Depending on the parameters that will be collected for the new output measures, either a PDA or a PDR may be more appropriate. A PDR would be a bar code reader. The cost for a PDR with a wand is approximately $715 in quantities of 10 or more from American Microsystems, Euless, Texas. An additional 15% discount could be realized if 100 units were purchased. This is the source for the $60,000 estimate.

The PDA market is evolving rapidly and it is difficult to predict their functionality and suitability a year from now. Today, some PDAs (e.g., the Hewlett Packard HP200LX) have rudimentary data base capabilities as well as communication options. Such PDAs are in the range of $450 to $750, depending on the configurations. Regardless of whether PDAs or PDRs are used, the project team is confident that the $60,000 estimate will suffice for this study.

The third major expenditure for this project is $45,000 in travel expenses. These travel expenses are associated almost exclusively with travel to the five demonstration public library branches that will be part of this project. Three trips by two of the three key project personnel will be made to each branch. At an estimated cost of $1500 per person per trip, the travel expenses to each branch over the duration of this project will be $9000. The first trip to each branch will be to develop the relationship between the project team and the branch library and to coordinate the research efforts. The second trip will be to ensure the proper working relationship of the GIS software with the library's computer and the PDA/PDR as well as to provide GIS training to library staff. The final trip will be to evaluate and, if necessary, help perform the GIS analyses on the collected data and to utilize the branch library's help in finalizing the findings and conclusions from that particular case study.

A Gantt timeline chart depicting the durations of the major tasks of this research project is provided as Appendix 1. A Pert chart that is part of the same appendix shows the dependencies of each task to the other major tasks as well as the key staff person(s) that will bear primary responsibility for the task in the lower left-hand corner of each box.

Dr. Christine Koontz will be devoting 20% of her time to this project throughout its duration. She will have one full-time staff person whose sole responsibility will be to attend to the many details of a project such as this one.

Dr. Keith Lance will be providing key support in the areas of data analysis, developing new library performance measures, and in contacting key personnel in participating states. During this project, he will be providing over 12 weeks of full-time work.

Mr. Dean Jue will be spending 20% of his time on this project throughout its duration. His primary responsibility will be in support of the technological aspects of this project (i.e., the data collection instruments and setting up the GIS environment in each of the five demonstration libraries) but he will assist in most other aspects of this project as well.

The very nature of this project, with its focus on majority-minority library markets, ensures that participants in this project will be selected without regard to race, color, national origin, gender, age, or disability.

Document last modified 25 May 1997