Statistical Abstract Faces an Untimely Death
By Michael Kelley Mar 28, 2011Librarians are organizing to save from budget cuts the United States Statistical Abstract, a stalwart reference work that has been around since 1878 and is listed on the Federal Depository Library Program's essential titles list.
The U.S. Census Bureau's Budget Estimates for FY12 would eliminate all funding ($2.9 million and 24 FTEs) for the bureau's Statistical Compendia branch, which gathers data from about 300 government, private, and international agencies and compiles the Abstract. It also produces periodic supplements, such as the State and Metropolitan Area Data Book, County and City Data Book, and USA Counties web database. The budget would also eliminate Current Industrial Reports and Federal Financial Statistics.
A "go-to" reference source
Many librarians feel that the Abstract is a unique and handy reference work that cannot be easily replaced, and it is a standard national publication that many countries produce as a matter of course. For example, Canada offers E-Stat.
Alesia McManus, the library director at Howard Community College in Columbia, MD, created a Facebook group on March 21, Save the US Statistical Abstract, which had 729 members one week later.
"I've been a reference librarian for 20 years, and this is my go-to reference tool for statistics," McManus told LJ. "I've told colleagues that this would be the last ready-reference book standing. So I had to do something."
McManus decided to start the page after seeing a message from a discussion on GOVDOC-L forwarded by Liane Taylor, serials acquisitions librarian at Texas State University at San Marcos, to the RSS-L electronic discussion list (the Reference Services Section of the American Library Association's (ALA) Reference and User Services Association, on whose board McManus sits).
"I thought it would be a good way to try to get a grassroots effort going," McManus told LJ. "I've never done something like this before, but I was inspired by events in the Middle East and Wisconsin."
McManus also started a petition at change.org, which had gathered 152 signatures as of today. She said her goal is 1000 signatures by April 30.
No viable replacement in sight
The website Free Government Information has posted an advocacy letter in favor of preserving the Abstract, which was initiated by Hailey Mooney, a data services and reference librarian at Michigan State University Libraries, and others.
"I feel this is an affront to the role of our government in supporting an informed citizenry," Mooney told LJ. "It also directly affects my ability to do my job. The Statistical Abstract is on every library's ready-reference shelf or digital equivalent," she said.
"The key reasons the Statistical Abstract is so valuable is because it is easy to use, provides direct answers to questions and points to more in-depth sources, and provides access to both government and private-sector information that is not freely available elsewhere," she said.
In a blog post, Ellen Simmons, of ALA's Government Documents Round Table, also emphasized the uniqueness of the Abstract.
"There is no other existing location where this data can be found in a similar usable format," she wrote.
Daniel Cornwall, the head of technical and imaging services at the Alaska State Library in Juneau, noted on the Facebook page that many of the other online or in-print statistical sources circle back to the Abstract as their primary source.
For example, a search for "Expenditures Per Consumer Unit for Entertainment and Reading" results in a hit for Infoplease.com that credits the Abstract.
In 2009, the Obama administration launched e-government initiatives such as USASpending.gov and Data.gov, which some commentators have suggested could replace the Abstract. Data.gov, for example, now compiles information from 172 federal agencies and subagencies and makes the data accessible in XML, Text/CSV, and other formats. But the Electronic Government Fund, which pays for these initiatives, is also facing budget troubles, according to the Sunlight Foundation, a nonprofit group that advocates using the Internet to create greater transparency in government. The group has also been critical of the quality of data available on Data.gov.
Michigan State's Mooney said there is a clear difference in purpose and substance between Data.gov and the Abstract.
"In a technical sense, data are not the same as statistics. Is a researcher looking to crunch numbers or does a person want a simple answer to a question?" she said via email. "Take for example someone looking for information on educational attainment and its relation to income. The '2011 Statistical Abstract Table 228. Mean Earnings by Highest Degree Earned: 2008' answers this question using unpublished data from the Current Population Survey. A search on the topic in Data.gov does return the same source, Labor Force Statistics from the Current Population Survey, but it leads you to an online database or .csv file where you would then have to find some way to extract the statistic yourself, which you might never find since the information in the Statistical Abstract is a custom tabulation."
She said the closest substitute would be FedStats.gov, but she said this resource was "sorely outdated" and also circled backed to the Abstract.
ALA's Office of Government Relations (OGR) has contacted the Census Bureau and is assembling stories from its membership relating to the value of the Statistical Compendia's service. ALA will pass the information on to the House and Senate appropriations committees and ask that the funding be restored.
"We've received about 50 emails from librarians providing examples of how this information is used in their libraries and many more emails expressing their fear and upset that this material might not continue to be available," Jessica McGilvray, OGR assistant director, told LJ.
