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Public libraries are dinosaurs, St. Paul is dying, and most importantly, nobody reads anymore.

Bunk!

That’s the conclusion – at least for the Twin Cities – of a national study released Thursday that called St. Paul a “rising star of literate cities” as it vaulted to third in the country, while Minneapolis took the No. 1 spot.

Despite studies and media reports despairing the struggles of public library systems, the decline of bookworming and the imminent death of newspapers, the Twin Cities are a place where the trends run counter to the rest of the nation and conventional wisdom, according to the annual study, “America’s Most Literate Cities, 2007,” issued by Central Connecticut State University.

Author and university President John W. Miller singled out St. Paul on a number of factors.

“It is the only city in the United States in which Sunday newspaper circulation has increased per capita and one of very few in which weekday circulation has increased,” Miller wrote in closing remarks to the study’s overview. “St. Paul’s library system is good and improving: it is one of the few cities which improved in all three variables of branches, volumes, and circulation. Public access to Internet communications has increased substantially in every year the study has been conducted.

“St. Paul has had a large increase in the publication of professional journals and an even more impressive increase in the publication of magazines. The city has held its own in very declining markets for bookstores. And St. Paul has the fifth highest percentage of the population with a high school diploma and the tenth highest with a college bachelor’s degree. So St. Paul is certainly a bright spot.”

The library kudos aren’t a surprise to St. Paul Public Library officials, who have seen increased foot traffic in recent years.

For example, from January through October of this year, patrons tripped the turnstiles at St. Paul libraries about 2.6 million times, according to library system figures. That’s about 340,000 more people than visited during the same period in 2006.

“We think that people are coming here to do research, to look up things, to participate in programming,” said Joanna Brookes, branch supervisor for the Arlington Hills Branch Library in the Payne-Phalen neighborhood. “They look for jobs, create their rÃ©sumÃ©s. … I think the library is an environment where literacy flourishes. You can find a Consumer Reports article or how to fix their car.”

And, Brookes noted, “We still have books, and people still read them.”

The study says online reading has increased as well, a trend Brookes has observed.

Think a generation of kids texting each other in alphanumeric shorthand can’t possibly bode well for literacy? Think again, Brookes said.

“The kids today really know computers, and they know how to find what they want,” she said. “People are changing. I don’t think they’re getting more or less literate, just changing. And so is our language. As for text-messaging, I think maybe they have their own special language that some of us just don’t relate to. They are able to communicate with each other very well.”

The study ranks the country’s cities with populations of 250,000 and more, focusing on six indicators: newspaper circulation, number of bookstores, library resources, periodical publishing resources, educational attainment and Internet resources.

This year, Minneapolis edged out Seattle to regain the top spot, which it lost to Seattle in 2005 and 2006.

St. Paul has moved up almost every year since 2003, when Miller began the rankings, from 11th (2003) to 16th (2004) to tied for ninth (2005) to fifth (2006) to third.

There are quirks in the data. And in the battle between the Twin Cities, both cities might have benefited from those quirks.

For example, the study analyzed newspaper “circulation per capita” by dividing each city’s home newspaper total circulation with that city’s total population. Suburbs and crossover readers between the Twin Cities were factored. The result: 92 percent of St. Paul residents read the Sunday Pioneer Press, and 154 percent of Minneapolis residents read the Sunday Star Tribune – neither of which is true.

A representative of the Connecticut university noted that even though that methodology can lead to some absurd results, the figures are still an indicator, in general, for a city’s metro area. However, few other metro areas feature two cities in such proximity.

Still, if you’re a St. Paul booster looking for a few intra-metro bragging points:

â€¢ St. Paul libraries get more use than Minneapolis’, and the capital city has a higher library circulation.

â€¢ St. Paul has more public library branches per capita than Minneapolis.

â€¢ St. Paul has more public computer terminals with Internet access, per capita, by a ratio of nearly 8-to-5.

Check out the complete rankings for this year and past years at www.ccsu.edu/ AMLC07.

Dave Orrick can be reached at dorrick@pioneerpress.com or 651-228-2171.

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