"Community Indicators, Genuine Progress, and the Golden Billion.”

Many communities throughout the United States use indicators to determine  quality of life . These might include surface water quality, births to single mothers, educational attainment, home ownership rates, conversion of crop land, income distribution,  poverty  rates, or energy consumption per capita.(1) Often the decision about which indicators to use to measure quality of life by a given community is the result of neighborhood meetings or visioning processes that provide a consensus about important variables that contribute to that community's definition of well-being. While there are a number of sources that provide background on the use of community indicators, only a few recent projects are presented here to provide a starting point. The aim, of course, is to assess inclusion of library-related variables as key community indicators and to suggest strategies about the inclusion of libraries in community indicator projects.

McCook, Kathleen, and Kristin Brand. “Community Indicators, Genuine Progress, and the Golden Billion.”  Reference and user services quarterly  40.4 (2001): 337–340.