Data File, Public Use: Public Libraries Survey. Fiscal Year 2003

摘要

The Public Libraries Survey (PLS) is a voluntary survey conducted annually by the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) through the Federal-State Cooperative System (FSCS) for Public Library Data. The Fiscal Year (FY) 2003 survey is the 16th in the series. NCES is authorized to collect these data under the Education Sciences Reform Act of 2002. The PLS data were submitted to NCES by state data coordinators appointed by the chief officers of state library agencies. The data file includes all public libraries identified by state library agencies in the 50 States, the District of Columbia, and the outlying areas of Guam, the Northern Mariana Islands, and the U.S. Virgin Islands. The reporting unit for the survey is the administrative entity, defined as the agency that is legally established under local or state law to provide public library service to the population of a local jurisdiction. In this survey, the term public library means an administrative entity.