ColumbusUnderground.com recently ran an article about a LibraryJournal.com study which ranked The Columbus Public Library #2 in the nation for overall quality in terms of large library systems.  I have written before about how much I love the Columbus Public Library system, but is my love misplaced?  Curiously, Ohio has a lot of highly ranked library systems, but we fail when it comes to many other literacy and education related metrics: education level, reading proficiency, crime levels, and unemployment percentage.  Why is this?

Here are the interesting findings from the LibraryJournal.com study:

• Ohio had at least one, and sometimes 2 or 3, library systems in the top 5 for every category of library system (categorization was performed according to expenditures per year) except the two smallest categories which appeared to be very small systems that were either only partially funded, or extremely underfunded.
• Of the largest category, where system expenditures were $30M+, Ohio had the top two spots - Cuyahoga County Public Library in Parma, Ohio was #1 (a suburb of Cleveland), and The Columbus Public Library was #2.
• Ohio was the state with the second largest number of libraries in the study after New York in terms of library systems that made it into the ranking.  In all, 258 library systems were in the ranking, and 9 of the top 20 library systems were Ohio library systems.

So, if Ohio is such a powerhouse when it comes to library systems, one would think that Ohio is one of the more highly educated, more education-focused states in the country with strong student test scores and literacy levels. One would be wrong. Let's look now at some other metrics from StateMaster.com:

• Ohio is tied for 14th in the % of students above basic 8th grade reading levels at 78%. Not terrible, but not great.
• Ohio is tied for 2nd in the % fo students above advanced 8th grade reading levels at 4%. OK, that's very good - perhaps the libraries are making a difference.
• Ohio is 17th in the nation in the % of people with a High School diploma. Not great.
• Ohio is 34th in the nation in the % of people with a Bachelor's degree or higher, at 24.6%, in comparison with Massachusetts which has a rate of 35.7%. Ouch.
• Of course, Ohio is ranked 1st in the nation in the number of library visits per capita and total circulation per capita, and 4th in the nation in library expenditures per $ GDP.
• Curiously, we are about 35th in the nation in the % of Christians in the state, % of evangelicals in the state, and % of married couple homes with own children in the state, which may correlate somewhat to the lower rankings in education levels completed - Massachusetts, for instance, which ranked higher than Ohio in several of the other measures that I have already reported, also reported higher percentages of Christians and married couples with own children. Not necessarily cause for correlation, but an interesting issue to explore further.
• Ohio is 17th in the nation in aggravated assaults, 5th in the nation in burglary, 5th in the nation in forcible rape, and 11th in the nation in murders.
• Ohio was 48th in the nation for economic growth as of 2004 to 2005.
• and finally, Ohio was 12th in the nation for unemployment as of March 2006.

Now, I know that simply throwing a bunch of statistics like state rankings in a list does not a correlation make. However, I do find it curious that living in this state, it tends to feel dull, disconnected from the excitement and cultural activity going on in New York City, Washington D.C., Silicon Valley, Seattle, Hollywood, and other more exciting areas around the country, and it seems that despite our incredible spending and quality libraries that bring us culture through the media of written, auditory, and visual material we aren't really progressing as a state on the whole.  Why is this?

Is "free" really all that great? I mean, is it any true benefit to society as a whole to give things away for free (lending out library books for free) instead of charging someone for the right to read a book, listen to a CD, or watch a movie? What if attaching a cost to a particular thing not only makes it more valuable to the person selling it, but also more valuable, and thereby more an object of desire to acquire, to the person purchasing it? And I'm talking here specifically about the role of the written word in our society. Many have made great hoopla over the past decade about how "information wants to be free", but does it really?  Yes, newspapers are a dying breed in many respects, but that's only because for the time being, it is so easy to get the exact same material online, for free.

But my primary question is this: is free content - be it in the form of freely available materials at a library or online - really better for us as a society, or does it hinder us in some way because it cheapens the importance of it as evidenced by Ohio's less than stellar performance in other areas of society? Is there a correlation between the success of Ohio's library systems and the decline in so many other areas of Ohio's measurements of progress, or is it merely random coincidence?