Interested in participating in Library Research Service’s Colorful Colorado Libraries blog series? You’re in the right place! Below, we’ve outlined the process for being featured in our blog series so you know what to expect.
- We will first schedule a short, informal conversation with you in which our goal is to learn:
- about your library and the community it serves.
- if there are any recent interactions, services, or programs that initially stand out for a story.
- who we may follow up with, whether that be certain library staff or community members.
- your preferred level of involvement moving forward.
- What, from your perspective, is the role/responsibility of the library to those that it serves?
From the series
- Library Research Service (LRS) staff will come to you, completing one or more in-person sight visits at your convenience and during days/times of your choosing.
- Depending on our direction and with your permission, further data collection may include:
- observation of a program or service.
- interviews or focus groups with library staff.
- asking for stories from library patrons through use of a passive, anonymous feedback box.
- interviews with community members should they want to tell us their library story directly.
- After data collection at the library, LRS will draft a story from the data with the goal of sharing an impactful or heartfelt moment that took place at your library. Before publishing, we will ask you to review the draft and provide any input you would like. This is your library and you are the expert on its story, not us!
- Once published, you are free to use the article however you wish. And we encourage you to continue sharing library stories!
Our goal is to publish a library story at least once a quarter, but we may complete more if there is interest from libraries. That being said, we cannot guarantee that we will have the capacity to feature each library who contacts us.
If you would like to be featured, please email LRS’s Research Assistant, Sara Wicen, at wicen_s@cde.state.co.us. You will receive a response letting you know if we can feature your library right away or in the future.
Additional Information: The Five Ws
Who?
It is up to a library’s director to decide if they would like to take part in this blog series. Once we have heard from the director, we are happy to meet with whoever would like to be the library’s liaison for this project. We may also involve additional staff and community members if they volunteer to speak with us.
This opportunity is open to all types and sizes of libraries within Colorado. Please feel free to pass along this information to any Colorado library that may be interested in participating.
What?
This is a new blog series initiated by LRS to tell stories from libraries across Colorado. This will be a space to share and celebrate the “small” things libraries do that have a big impact.
We also recognize and celebrate that libraries across Colorado are hosting exciting new programs and providing innovative new services, and people should hear about these too. However, this specific blog series is focused on the long-standing services or programs or even a single event or interaction that had a significant, positive impact and telling its story. To spread the word about new happenings at your library, we recommend emailing Amy Hitchner at hitchner_a@cde.state.co.us to be included in the Friday Grab Bag.
Lastly, this project aims to collect qualitative data in the form of stories. At each library we will ask staff, “Today, in 2026, what do you see is the role/responsibility of this library to those that it serves?” After collecting stories and answers to this question from a variety of libraries, LRS will analyze the data we have gathered and share what we’ve learned.
Where?
Library Research Service wants to make this convenient for participating libraries and plans to travel to each library we feature for in-person data collection (conversations, observations, etc.) at times that have been coordinated with the library in advance. We are also happy to conduct virtual calls when in-person visits are not necessary.
The final stories will be posted on lrs.org and Colorado Virtual Library. The featured library is also encouraged to share the story far and wide.
When?
Stories will be published as they are completed. We will work to complete as many as possible through 2026 and may decide to continue this work longer. When we begin working with a library to feature, we will create a tentative timeline for completion of the story that both the library and LRS are in agreement on.
Why?
Sharing library stories and exploring the different roles of libraries is inspiring, informative, and fun! Our hope for this series is to:
- tell stories involving programs, services, or everyday interactions in libraries that positively impact patrons.
- create a space for library stories focused on the little things that libraries continually do well.
- model one method of sharing outcomes and impact data (storytelling) for libraries.
- Ultimately, data gathered during the writing of this blog series may be used to make larger observations on how library staff and patrons from different types of libraries view the role of their library.