In 2001, the average copyright of a book collection in Colorado school libraries was 1986—over 15 years old. Although the average copyright has increased to 1991, the age of Colorado school library collections has not. In schools, access to information is essential, but the information students are retrieving is often older than they are. Consider […]
Home-based education is defined as an education program whose instruction takes place at home, is implemented by “the child’s parent or by an adult relative of the child designated by the parent” and is not managed by a school district. The homeschool population is small within Colorado and across the nation, however, as Colorado’s home-based […]
In fall 2005, students taking college-level classes in 10 Colorado Department of Corrections (DOC) facilities participated in a study to examine the impact of correctional libraries on students’ academic pursuits, with emphasis on the impact of skills taught by librarians. Earlier the same year, about 3,000 undergraduate students from nine Colorado colleges and universities answered […]
The mission of a public library is to provide the best service possible to its community. Output measures—which are often per capita statistics—give an individual’s perspective on the services libraries provide. The 6 output measures used here as performance measures are (in no particular order): Registration as Percentage of Population Library Visits per Capita Reference […]
AskColorado, a statewide virtual reference service which recently completed its second year of helping Coloradans, continues to gain momentum and receive positive feedback from its users. The 24/7 reference service, staffed by more than 200 library personnel from all types of libraries throughout the state, significantly increased its number of users between its first and […]
Since 1995, the National Center for Education Statistics has ranked the 50 states and the District of Columbia on selected statistics, usually per capita or another population-based ratio. Since 1998, Colorado has consistently placed in the top 10 states on three per capita measures of public library service output: library visits, circulation, and reference questions. […]
In 2003, Colorado—at five cents per capita—ranked 46th among the 50 states on state revenue to support public libraries. The only states that spent less than Colorado were Wyoming, New Hampshire, Vermont, and South Dakota, with three, two, one, and zero cents per capita, respectively. In 2002, Colorado spent 51 cents per capita, ranking 34th. […]
The results of the elections finalized on November 1, 2005, included good news for several Colorado public libraries. East Routt Library District, serving the Steamboat Springs area, and the Ignacio and Mancos Library Districts all won voter approval for funding to improve and operate public library facilities. Ignacio also won a mill levy increase for […]
As a part of its annual survey of Colorado’s public libraries, the Library Research Service collects data on books, periodicals, non-print materials, events, and exhibits that have received formal challenges during the previous year. A challenge—as defined by the American Library Association—consists of “an attempt to remove or restrict materials, based upon the objections of […]
Most library directors and trustees probably believe the “Field of Dreams” dictum: “build it and they will come.” While there is little formal research on this issue, the impact of new facilities on the resources and services of most public libraries is so overwhelming that this assertion is regarded as a truism. Seven single-outlet libraries […]
