The third index, on economic well-being, captures a “a critical context for the role and function of a community’s libraries and museums,” the report suggests. COVID-19 also has heightened the relevance of this index, which is populated by a host of metrics-e.g., premature mortality rates and number of uninsured adults and preventable hospital stays.
The second index topic, community health, was identified because a prior IMLS study found that museums and libraries are pursuing a variety of “innovative ways” to support the health of their patrons and communities.
Measures composing this index are: average math and reading scores on standardized tests and graduation and dropout rates. School effectiveness was chosen as an index topic because “all libraries and museums have a commitment to education and learning embedded in their mission statements,” the report states.
COMMUNITY PARTICIPATION IN NON FORMAL EDUCATION QUIZ ARCHIVE
(Both data sources are available at the NEA’s National Archive of Data on Arts & Culture.) In addition, based on other data from federal, academic, and foundation sources, the team built three indexes that correspond with plausible dimensions of social well-being that one might associate with museums and libraries at the county level.Īlthough the report names a total of 10 dimensions of social well-being that are hypothetically linked with museums and libraries, the researchers chose to index the three dimensions for “more targeted analysis”: school effectiveness community health and economic well-being. Roughly three years in the making, the study uses data from IMLS’ Public Libraries Survey and Museum University Data File to examine the presence and usage of these cultural institutions.
But by supporting community health and school effectiveness, the report suggests, museums and libraries can either “reinforce (in the case of better-off counties) or mitigate (in the case of poorer counties) the relationship between economic status and social wellbeing.” This potentially mediating effect of museums and libraries on economic disparities is a novel conclusion from the report.Įlsewhere, drawing largely from the report’s case study findings, the authors write: “Libraries and museums can be catalysts in their communities to promote racial equity and inclusion.” This is so because such institutions are “highly networked in their communities,” perceived as trustworthy, and play host to “diverse populations who circulate through their spaces.” Indeed, the impact of economic well-being on those two outcome areas is well-documented, the researchers observe. The report cautions, however, about “profound limitations” with the museum data, as well as the “limited availability of consistent measures of the presence and usage of museums across the country.” In the analysis, economic well-being was positively associated with museums but not libraries, and-to a greater extent-with both community health and school effectiveness. In rural counties, the relationship with community health was especially pronounced.īy contrast, the researchers could detect no significant relationship between museums and either one of the two outcome areas of study: community health and school effectiveness. The researchers’ statistical modeling shows that the presence and usage of libraries was positively linked to community health and local school effectiveness, even after the researchers controlled for a county’s economic well-being and the size of the non-Hispanic white population inhabiting the county. As the reader of Understanding the Social Wellbeing Impacts of the Nation’s Libraries and Museums will discover, the IMLS report provides ample testimony, in the form of statistics and case studies, to support the authors’ claim.
The sentence resumes: “… but they are indispensable connective tissue that keep healthy communities together.” This clause is no afterthought. In an era when questions of economic impact threaten to monopolize public discourse about the value of arts and culture, it is refreshing to see a new report from the Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS), in which the authors state, without apology: “The vast majority of libraries and museums are not large employers and will never provide the muscle to significantly drive local economies….”
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