EveryLibrary Founder John Chrastka has put together a comprehensive roundup of results from Election 2014 with results from library related votes from around the United States.
The group tracked 77 votes and today’s “first look” report includes unofficial data on 69 of them.
EveryLibrary says 55 of the votes were wins for libraries while 14 were loses.
Chrastka writes:
As you’ll see in the preliminary results, when there were wins they tended to be big. Where there are losses, they tend to be close. As far as national trends go, the win/loss rate for libraries looks to be about the same as it was in 2013.
He adds:
After working on 19 campaigns this year and watching, interviewing, and studying dozens more, it’s our opinion that the big story for libraries is their local political climate. We’re seeing opposition come from three significant places this year: the local political establishment who run either a ‘no’ campaign in town or runs against the library itself; anti-tax groups who are philosophically opposed to any new taxes; and anti-access groups who do not want to see the library have the funding it needs to serve ‘those people’.
The complete blog post can be found here. The spreadsheet with results and other data can be accessed here.
Thanks to EveryLibrary for making this resource available.
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