Kansas public libraries, measured the way an evaluation reads them
Every number on this page comes from the IMLS Public Libraries Survey public use files for Kansas. Pick a library or a group, pick a measure, and the page recomputes: service per resident, a six year trend, where that library sits among its service population peers, and which of the IMLS Measuring Success focal areas each measure speaks to. Nothing here is a projection and nothing is invented.
Service per resident
Four ratios a state library development officer reads first. Each tile is the reported count divided by the population of the legal service area. Select a tile to drive the trend and the peer comparison below it.
Six year trend
The same measure across six fiscal years, against the Kansas panel and against the median of the selection's service population band.
Peer comparison by service population band
Comparing a 400 resident library against a 400,000 resident one tells you nothing. This panel compares within a band, and shows where the selection sits in the whole band before it shows the nearest peers.
Show every library in this band
Which evaluation question each measure speaks to
An LSTA five year evaluation reports results against the IMLS Measuring Success focal areas and their intents. Survey data does not answer an outcome question by itself. It tells you where to look, which population the question is about, and whether the direction of travel supports the finding you are about to write.
The six focal areas, their definitions and their intents are quoted from IMLS's own State Program Reporting Requirements. The survey measures listed under each focal area are Blue Peak's mapping, not an IMLS mapping. A real evaluation sets that crosswalk with the agency in writing before any evidence is collected, which is what keeps a finding defensible later.
Grants to States, the money behind the plan
Context for scale, not a library revenue line.
How this was built
A build script reads the IMLS Public Libraries Survey public use files for fiscal years 2019 to 2024, keeps the Kansas administrative entity records, and writes one data file. The page carries that data inside itself and computes every ratio in the browser, so there is no server, no database call and no tracking behind it. The same pipeline is what a state library agency would get, pointed at its own state and its own State Program Report extracts instead.
- Public Libraries Survey, public use data files, Public Library System file, FY2019 to FY2024, from imls.gov. Retrieved 2026-09-21.
- Grants to States State Allotment Data table, FY2022 to FY2026, from imls.gov. Read 2026-09-21.
- State Program Reporting Requirements, for the six Measuring Success focal areas and their fourteen intents. Read 2026-09-21.
- Missing is not zero. The survey writes missing and not applicable as negative codes. Every one of those is read as missing and left out of a total, never counted as nothing.
- Group figures are our arithmetic. Where this page says Kansas, a locale or a band, it means the sum of the libraries in this panel, not a published IMLS state total.