Tuesday, September 16, 2008

Santa Ana Library doesn't stack up!

As cities throughout California have beefed up their library services in recent years, as California voters approved a $350 million state library construction bond, as the neighboring City of Orange more than doubled the floor area of their main library to 45,000 square feet, the City of Santa Ana has done nothing. Unless you count slashing the bookmobile service.

Santa Ana is the 9th most populous city in California. I compared Santa Ana's library system (focusing on number of libraries in relation to population) with the 8 California cities with more residents than Santa Ana and the 8 cities just below Santa Ana in population.

The result...

The only large city in California with as pathetic a library record as Santa Ana is Modesto. Holy cows, what an embarrassment!

City Population Libraries Residents per Library
Los Angeles 3,834,340 72 53,255
San Diego 1,266,731 36 35,187
San Jose 939,899 19 49,468
San Francisco 764,976 25 30,599
Fresno 470,508 12 39,209
Long Beach 466,520 12 38,877
Sacramento 460,242 15 30,683
Oakland 401,489 18 22,305
Santa Ana 339,555 2 169,778
Anaheim 333,249 6 55,542
Bakersfield 315,837 8 39,480
Riverside 294,437 6 49,073
Stockton 287,245 5 57,449
Chula Vista 217,478 4 54,370
Modesto 203,955 1 203,955
Fremont 201,334 4 50,334
Irvine 201,160 3 67,053

2 comments:

Marilissa said...

not to mention that sausd schools started this year with no library services AT ALL in their elementary schools! all the library staff was laid off and never re-hired.

BaddicusFinch said...

Wow that is criminal! Will they be re-hired later in the year to (wrongfully) save a couple bucks, or are they out for the entire school year?

I personally would be a few notches dumber without if my school library hadn't been staffed when I was a kid. (I was big on the Dr Doolittle series...pre-Eddie Murphy..., Shel Silverstein, and this book on ESP.)