CHICAGO – June 25, 2005 – At the 2005 Annual Conference of the American Library Association today, the Normative Data Project (NDP) for Libraries announced that newly released public library data from the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) are now available on the Normative Data Project (NDP) Web site. The State Summary Data are NCES's best estimate of state public library totals, which can be used to provide an overview of the condition of public libraries in the United States. Preliminary analysis of major trends shown in the new data appears on the NDP Web site and on the NDP blog at http://www.libraryndp.info. The popular State Rank Order tables were also calculated using the NDP and made available to the field as a service of the NDP initiative. Within a week of the data file release by NCES, analysis and reports were freely available to the library community in summary form on the NDP Web site. Subscribers to NDP have access to the full database via their personal "dashboard," the intuitive drag-and-drop discovery interface to NDP. NDP is sponsored by Sirsi® Corporation in cooperation with the GeoLib Program at Florida State University.

"The State Rank Order tables are the most popular report to come out of the NCES's data each year, but the data themselves constitute the most systematic, continuing collection of public library data in the world," averred Bob Molyneux, PhD., chief statistician for NDP. "However, it is safe to say that using the data in the form they are published is not an easy task. We have eased this task."

About NDP
The Normative Data Project (NDP) for Libraries is a cooperative effort among hundreds of libraries in North America, the GeoLib Program at Florida State University, and Sirsi Corporation to compile transaction-level data from libraries throughout North America; to link library data with geographic and demographic data on communities served by libraries; and, thereby, to empower library decision-makers to compare and contrast their institutions with real-world industry norms on circulation, collections, finances, and other parameters. Information on NDP and related resources are now available at www.libraryndp.info. In 2006, NDP will include transaction, geographic, and demographic data from 2,500 North American libraries, serving over 50 million users involved in more than 500 million transactions annually.

About GeoLib
GeoLib is a research program of the Florida Resources and Environmental Analysis Center (FREAC), which is within the Institute of Science and Public Affairs (ISPA) at The Florida State University (FSU). GeoLib's mission is twofold: first, to improve access to digital geographic information for library planning; and, second, to apply marketing research theories in solving real-world library problems. The program's Web site (www.geolib.org) displays easy-to-use geographic information of relevance, as well as library planning information for wide audiences such as library researchers, librarians, and policymakers.

About Sirsi
Founded in 1979, Sirsi Corporation develops, sells, and supports a comprehensive integrated suite of software solutions for meeting the information management and sharing needs of libraries and library users around the world. From the open, evolutionary integrated library system technology in the Sirsi Unicorn Library Management System... to leading-edge data analysis and intelligence tools in Sirsi Director's Station... to leading-edge solutions such as Sirsi Rooms 2.0 for library users seeking unparalleled access to the world of knowledge... Sirsi and its partners provide the broadest array of information management products and services for the library community. Sirsi solutions serve more than 10,000 libraries in the Americas, Europe, Africa, the Middle East, and Asia-Pacific. For more information about Sirsi, please see www.sirsi.com.

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