The Public Libraries Survey (PLS) is a voluntary survey conducted annually by the Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS). IMLS collects these data under the mandate in the Museum and Library Services Act of 2003 as stated in Section 210. The U.S. Census Bureau is the data collection agent for IMLS. The Fiscal Year (FY) 2008 survey is the 21st in the series. This report provides summary information about public libraries in the 50 states and the District of Columbia for state FY 2008. It covers service measures such as number of uses of electronic resources, number of Internet terminals used by the general public, reference transactions, interlibrary loans, circulation, library visits, children's program attendance, and circulation of children's materials. It also includes information about size of collection, staffing, operating revenue and expenditures, type of legal basis, and number and type of public library service outlets. This report is based on the final data file. The PLS is designed as a universe survey. The survey frame consists of 9,259 public libraries (9,221 public libraries in the 50 states and the District of Columbia and 38 public libraries in the outlying areas of Guam, the Northern Mariana Islands, Puerto Rico, and the Virgin Islands), as identified by state library agencies. (Public libraries in one outlying area, American Samoa, are not included in the survey frame because their state library agencies have never responded to the request for participation in the survey.) A total of 9,073 of the 9,259 public libraries in the survey frame responded to the FY 2008 PLS (including Guam and Puerto Rico), for a unit response rate of 98.0 percent. Item response rates are included in the tables in this report. This report includes the following major sections: (1) Introduction, which includes (a) Survey Purpose and Data Items Included in this Report; (b) Congressional Authorization; (c) Key Library Terminology; (d) Types of Tables Included in this Report; (e) History of the Public Libraries Survey; (2) Findings from the FY 2008 data collection; (3) Tables (including State Ranking Tables in Appendix A); (4) Technical Notes (Appendix B); and (5) Survey Questionnaire (Appendix C). (Contains 77 tables, 21 figures and 10 footnotes.)