A recent PublishersWeekly.com feature states that one American turns 50 years old every 7 minutes. Although it is not news that a large segment of the population is “graying,” it may be surprising to learn how large the mature adult population in Colorado grew recently and is projected to grow in the next 5 years. […]
Every year the Library Research Service surveys public libraries and school media centers in Colorado. These surveys include items concerning the number of challenges received and policies and practices related to Internet filtering. Such data have been collected from school library media centers for the last two years and from public libraries since 1994. Chart […]
In 1997, Colorado ranked in the top half of the states on most public library statistics. Five of the top-ranked statistics clearly demonstrate how popular public libraries are with Coloradoans. Colorado ranks in the top tier of statistics that demonstrate how much and how often residents use their libraries: 7th in the number of visits […]
“Our circ. stats. are falling! Our circ. stats. are falling! And it’s because of electronic services.” For the last few years, many in the public library community have been exclaiming, like Chicken Little, that annual circulation statistics are in decline and have blamed this trend on the availability of Internet and other electronic services to […]
Colorado librarians, like their colleagues in the rest of the country, are concerned about competing with super bookstores, the Internet and video stores for patrons. Are people staying at home looking for information on the Internet? Do they prefer to buy books online? Are they staying away from their local library more than ever before? […]
One could say that comparing the salaries of public, academic, school and special librarians is like comparing football with hockey. A full-time school librarian works ten months out of a year. A special librarian can be anyone from a Ph.D. in a Fortune 500 company to a law librarian in a small town firm. In […]
According to 1997 data from the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES), 7.4 million Americans in 30 states live beyond the legal service area of any public library—a population roughly equivalent to that of the Chicago metropolitan area. (By comparison, in 1996, 24 states reported a total of less than 7 million “unserved” residents.) These […]
The Public Library Association (PLA) introduced a new publication recently called Planning for Results. With this how-to manual, library directors and staff encounter a new set of forms and questions to answer. Many library decision makers have little time or resources to address planning and would be discouraged by having to search for answers to […]
Few, if any, public agencies can claim to cooperate to the extent that public libraries do. The perceived benefits of such cooperation can vary dramatically from state to state and from one type of system, federation, or cooperative to another, but some types of benefits are fairly common. Such benefits include: continuing education, cooperative projects […]
In 1996, there were 8,950 public library jurisdictions in the United States. The five most common types are city, county, non-profit, multi-jurisdictional, and special district (see Table 1 in full report). As library managers and decision-makers struggle to make ends meet as well as fulfill the needs of their customers, many wonder: On the average, […]
