Data Storytelling
How Geography, Funding, and Infrastructure Shape Children’s Access to
Public Libraries in Mississippi and Massachusetts
Our Research Questions
#1
In what ways does per capita library funding influence child-centric initiatives in public libraries across locales?
#2
In what ways does per capita library funding influence child-centric initiatives in public libraries across locales?
#3
How do public libraries in Mississippi and Massachusetts differ in the availability of child-centric initiatives?
Introduction
The Importance of Public Libraries
A public library is a space containing a wide collection of books, magazines, DVDs, and more, which can be borrowed and used to refer to by the general public. In the United States, public libraries serve as one of the last truly free educational infrastructures, offering everything from books to internet access and early childhood programming. Yet behind the image of equal access lies a fragmented and unequal system, where geography, income, and infrastructure determine who actually benefits from these resources.
Using the 2022 Public Libraries Survey (PLS), a voluntary census of public libraries conducted annually by the Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS), our project investigates disparities in child-centric library initiatives to ask: do well funded libraries cater to their youngest patrons better than libraries with less funding? We then compared Mississippi and Massachusetts – taking into account not only disparities in library funding but also historical backgrounds in each state – to further our foray into this question. In our data analysis, we focused on metrics like locale codes, children’s program attendance, and library funding per capita. Through mapping and visualization in Tableau, we reveal spatial and economic patterns in how children engage with public libraries, uncovering how structural inequalities shape access to public knowledge infrastructure in both overt and invisible ways.
Why Children?
Public libraries offer numerous benefits for children, including enhanced literacy skills, age-appropriate resources, and opportunities for social and emotional development. As such, public libraries can be a beneficial partner for parents when shaping their children’s early educational foundations and experiences, which lays the foundation for lifelong learning habits.
As shown in Figure 1, most parents consider libraries to be an important or very important resource for their children, highlighting the key role libraries play in early development. Since the late 1980s, public libraries across the US have encouraged families to read and learn together, establishing the instrumental parental role of being children’s first and best teachers (Celano et al.)
Figure 1: Percentage of parents reporting the importance of libraries for their children in 2013 survey by Pew Research Center
Children’s programming
Children’s programming refers to planned library events that support early development and learning. These include storytimes, reading programs, educational workshops, and other interactive activities designed for children. This metric reflects how actively libraries engage young patrons through enrichment services. Strong programming helps foster literacy, social connection, and emotional growth, especially in communities where other early education opportunities may be limited.
Children’s Circulation Materials
Children’s circulation materials include books, audiobooks, and other physical or digital items intended for children aged 0 to 11. This metric tracks how often these resources are borrowed, regardless of whether a parent or the child checks them out. Circulation data helps assess how frequently children access learning materials through the library. However, high circulation does not always indicate equitable use, since barriers like language, internet access, or transportation may still limit who benefits.
Why These Metrics Matter
The access that children have to resources such as books and enrichment programs can significantly influence their literacy development, social inclusion, and more, especially in underserved communities. By focusing on youth programming and materials, we are able to better assess how equitably local libraries are supporting our society’s youngest members.
What We Aim to Find
We hypothesise that libraries with higher funding per capita (funding divided by population of library’s legal service area) will also have higher proportions of children’s circulation materials, programming, and attendance in the form of visit rate and average children’s program attendance. With more available funds, public libraries are able to better implement child-centric initiatives to fit community needs. In addition to this, we also hope to see whether state-specific track records in economy, education, and public service play a role in determining child-centric initiatives in Mississippi and Massachusetts’ public libraries.
As shown in Figure 2, library funding per capita is distributed unevenly across the U.S., with clusters of high funding in some regions and visible gaps in others.
Figure 2: Public libraries shaded by library funding per capita; darker colours indicate higher funding
Library Fund and Child-Centric Library Initiatives
Figure 3: Frequency of libraries grouped by income quartile and locale
As shown in Figure 3, libraries with funding per capita higher than the median were predominantly located in more rural and suburban areas – typically linked with lower population density and limited access to specialized resources. This could explain why higher-income libraries actually focus less on child-centric initiatives. In these libraries, offerings need to be generalised to adequately serve community members of all ages (Real and Rose).
However, visit rates remained positively correlated with income per capita – a 1% increase in income per capita corresponded to a 0.55% increase in visit rate. This meant that higher-income libraries tend to see a higher number of visitors as well.
Comparing States: Mississippi & Massachusetts
After a general analysis on library income and child-centric initiatives, we decided to zoom into Mississippi and Massachusetts to scrutinise the differences under a more specific lens. These states were chosen due to their significant differences in socioeconomic indicators, public investment levels, and historical education outcomes – factors we believe are significant in shaping library funding and access. By comparing the differences in implementation of child-centric metrics between the two states, we hope to observe how structural differences and imbalances manifest in public library systems.
Key Policies Shaping Children’s Access to Public Libraries in Mississippi and Massachusetts
To understand why children’s access to public libraries looks so different across Mississippi and Massachusetts, we also need to look back at how each state’s library system developed.
Figure 4 shows major historical events and policies from 1890 to 2022 that helped shape these systems—such as the formation of library commissions and shifts in public funding. These moments created the foundation (or lack thereof) for today’s child-focused programs. The timeline helps us see how long-term decisions still affect who has access now.
Figure 4. Timeline of historical developments shaping children’s access to library services, particularly in
Mississippi and Massachusetts. Key events and data years—from 1890 to 2022—are used to trace how funding
policies, geographic inequalities, and national shifts impacted children’s programming across time.
Our initial hypothesis was that Massachusetts would implement more child-centric initiatives in public libraries due to its excellent historical track record in education and public service. As shown in Figure 5, Massachusetts is also one of the wealthiest states in the US, sharply contrasting with Mississippi as one of the poorest states in the US. We hoped that this substantial difference in state financial means would contribute to the difference in child-centric library initiatives across the two states. To test this hypothesis, we conducted analysis of variance (ANOVA) to compare between the two states, as well as Tukey’s Honestly Significant Difference (HSD) test to determine the difference between them.
Figure 5: 2022 median household income in the US; Mississippi and Massachusetts highlighted
Comparing the number of public libraries in each state reveals a stark disparity (see Figure 6) : Mississippi only has 53 while Massachusetts has 357. Extensive areas in Mississippi do not have public libraries adhering to FSCS definition of service, whereas Massachusetts exhibits near-complete coverage across the state. This geographic gap in Mississippi suggests the presence of underserved communities, hinting at limited equitable access to library resources, including the ones targeted at children.
Library Access Isn’t Equal: Mississippi vs. Massachusetts
Figure 6: Library legal service areas in Mississippi and Massachusetts
We then focused on the same factors from earlier analysis on income and child-centric library initiatives: library income per capita, children’s programming rate, children’s circulation material rate, average children’s program attendance and visit rate.
Analysis on library income per capita confirmed findings from external data on median household income – libraries in Mississippi were on average more financially constrained than libraries in Massachusetts by $47.86 per capita per year. Examining visit rate and children’s circulation material rate aligned with our hypothesis: Mississippi’s libraries saw less visitors and had a lower proportion of children’s circulation materials then libraries in Massachusetts.
Interestingly, this was not the case for metrics associated with library programs for children. As shown in Figure 7, Mississippi has a higher proportion of children’s programming than Massachusetts, and records a higher average program attendance as well. This may be affiliated with efforts by Mississippi lawmakers to provide quality education for every child through public libraries, such as but not limited to: Mississippi Alliance for Gaining New Opportunities Through Library Information Access (MAGNOLIA), summer reading programs, and Grow Your Library.
Figure 7: Distribution of metrics on child-centric library initiatives by state
Significance
In conclusion, our analysis suggests that access to child-centric initiatives in public libraries in the United States is shaped by more than just funding levels. While our initial hypothesis stated that wealthier libraries tended to have more programs catered to children, our findings challenge this assumption. Libraries with higher income per capita were not always engaged in higher proportions of children’s programming rates, average children’s program attendance, and children’s circulation material rates. Looking at Mississippi and Massachusetts, we were more convinced that the question of how to best support children across different states is a complex inquiry unanswered by just numbers. For future research, we recommend looking at other measures of support such as but not limited to: local and national policy on public libraries, staff training courses, and children’s librarians associations (International Federation of Library Associations).
We hope that this narrative contributes to a broader conversation about equity in public infrastructure, more specifically public libraries. Decisions about programming, investment, and outreach cannot be made on surface-level metrics alone – stakeholders must engage with community members to understand what the library needs and how it can positively impact its patrons, including children. If public libraries are to remain as an educational resource for all, then future policies must account for contextual resources and strive to meet library-specific needs.
“The public library is more than a repository of books.
It’s a mysterious, wondrous place with the power to change lives.”
— Elizabeth Taylor