Saturday, March 10, 2007

Most Literate Cities Rankings Based on Connecticut Study

Central Connecticut State University did a study on the Most Literate Cities in the United States. Here was the criterion:

1. Booksellers
2. Educational Attainment
3. Internet Resources
4. Library Resources
5. Newspaper Circulation
6. Periodical Publications

These categories were weighed against total populations of cities. First, here is where major Ohio cities ranked:

Cincinnati was ranked 7th
Cleveland was ranked 14th
Columbus was ranked 15th
Toledo was ranked 32nd

Number One was Seattle; Number two was Minneapolis. Boston (with all those fine Universities) was ranked 11th; that surprised me, I expected it to be higher. The same with New York City (ranked 42). Did population affect this?

When you read the details of rankings based solely on 'Internet related issues' - these things were considered:
1. number of library Internet connections
2. Number of commercial and public wireless Internet access points per capita (hmm, maybe this plays into the percieved need The City of Cleveland is trying to fill by providing the wireless access free to the entire City)
3. Number of Internet book orders per capita (does this mean books ordered from Amazon.com or people who READ the books on line?)
4. Percentage of adult population that has read a newspaper on line (only once? or subscribes?)
Here are top ten rankings for the Internet Categories:

  1. San Jose, CA

  2. Boston, MA

  3. Seattle, WA

  4. Raleigh, NC

  5. Atlanta, GA

  6. Oakland, CA

  7. Denver, CO

  8. Austin, TX

  9. San Fransisco, CA

  10. Miami, FL

Here are the sources used for the study data:

American Booksellers Assn

Audit Bureau of Circulations

Bay Area Center for Voting Research

Intel Corporation

MediaFinder.com (they search magazine and periodical directories)

Nat'l Ctr For Educational Stats (Public Library statistics)

Scarborough Research USA

US Census Bureau

The Yellow Pages (the Yellow Pages???)

I was almost more interested in where the data came from than the results. And Cleveland, Columbus and Toledo were not rated last :-) Peace Out 3C