Understanding Public Library Services and Use: A Structural Equation Modeling Framework

This dissertation describes the process of fitting publicly available data from the 2015 Public Libraries Survey and 2015 American Community Survey to a structural equation model based on a theory of action for public libraries relating operating revenue to latent factors measuring service availability and library use within the context of matched community demographic data. The process of using theory-based data analysis to investigate publicly-available data is examined. Key findings include acceptable estimates of goodness-of-fit for hypothesized factors representing public library service availability and public library use, an inconsistent mediation effect of service availability on the relationship between public library operating revenue and public library use, and identification of disparities between local community descriptors associated with library revenue and local community descriptors associated with library use. Suggestions for further investigation of these disparities are presented