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Early Literacy Initiative Impacts Public Library Services for Young Children

Since early 2004, the Colorado State Library (CSL) has been encouraging and supporting public library efforts to teach pre-reading activities and skills to young children, their parents, and childcare providers. Through its multifaceted early literacy initiative, CSL:

  • Provides resource materials about reading readiness for parents and caregivers
  • Encourages outreach and visibility through partnerships with community, education, and business organizations
  • Assists libraries that wish to train staff, volunteers, and parents and further develop their early literacy services
  • Trains librarians to teach and model skill-building techniques.

Integral to this mission, in November 2004 and February 2005, CSL conducted a series of seven training workshops around the state. Based on the Public Library Association’s program, Every Child Ready to Read @ your library (http://www.ala.org/ala/pla/plaissues/earlylit/earlyliteracy.htm), each workshop provided attendees with early literacy research materials and hands-on skill building techniques. Approximately 125 individuals—librarians, child care providers, and others—participated in these workshops.

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Home-Based Education and Colorado Public Libraries

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 education numbers decrease, the nation’s numbers are rising.

According to the Colorado Department of Education, in Fall 2003, 8,591 children were educated at home in Colorado and those numbers dropped by 18% to 7,081 in 2004. Between 2000 and 2004 there has been a steady decrease in reported homeschooled students—the only exception being 2001, in which there was a 3.2% increase. Conversely, the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) reports in Homeschooling in the United States: 2003 that “the percentage of the entire student population who were being homeschooled increased from 1.7 percent in 1999 to 2.2 percent in 2003.”

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Colorado Public Library Performance Rankings

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 Questions per Capita
  • Program Attendance per 1,000 Served
  • Circulation per Capita
  • Circulation Turnover Rate

Looking at 2004 data on these 6 measures for 5 population categories statewide, many public libraries stand out. Twelve of 114 public libraries came to the forefront, one by ranking in the top 3 in its population group on every measure and the other by ranking in the top 3 on 3 or more measures.

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AskColorado Use Continues to Grow in Second Year

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 second years. During the first 10 months of its existence (September 2003 through June 2004), the librarians were involved in an average of 2,000 reference transactions per month. In its second year (July 2004 through June 2005), that number rose to an average of more than 3,500 transactions in each month. In February 2005 alone AskColorado librarians were involved with 6,483 reference transactions. Note: A reference transaction is defined as a discrete online reference session with one or more users which may include one or more questions and answers.

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State’s Public Libraries Still Place Colorado in Top 10 But Rankings Slipping After 2002-03 Cuts

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.

Notably, however, after “peaking” in 2001 (before the state budget cuts of 2002 and 2003), the state’s rankings on all three indicators for 2003 dropped.

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Colorado’s Low Ranking on State Funding for Public Libraries Plummets Further

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. That low ranking was no reason for pride, except that it put Colorado ahead of an additional dozen states.

The top ten states for state revenue per capita for public libraries are: Ohio ($39.87), Hawaii ($18.92), Pennsylvania ($6.60), Rhode Island (6.35), Maryland ($5.06), West Virginia ($4.77), Georgia ($3.80), Delaware ($3.21), Indiana ($2.94), and Illinois ($2.76).

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Eight Out of Eleven Colorado Library Ballot Measures Win Voter Approval

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 operation.
  • Nederland Community Library District won exemption from revenue-and-spending limitations imposed by the so-called Taxpayers’ Bill of Rights, or TABOR.
  • Fort Collins Public Library benefited from passage of a multi-purpose city measure, “Building on Basics” (or BOB), which is expected to generate an additional $6 million of support for library technology.
  • Residents of the Boulder County portion of Erie voted to join the city’s Weld County residents in being provided public library service by Weld Library District.

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Challenged Materials in Colorado Public Libraries, 2004

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 a person or group…Challenges do not simply involve a person expressing a point of view, rather they are an attempt to remove material from the curriculum or library, thereby restricting the access of others.”

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Public Use and Support Skyrocket When New Libraries Are Built

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 built new facilities between 2000 and 2003. They include the Broomfield, Cortez (pictured above), Englewood, and Wellington public libraries and the Estes Valley, San Miguel #1 (Telluride), and West Routt (Hayden) library districts. To measure the change in resources and services associated with the opening of those new buildings, data for selected input and output measures were compiled for each library for the year before and the year after the reported year of completion for their new buildings. (In other words, if a library reported building a new facility in 2001, data for 2000 and 2002 were utilized.) For each library, the percentage change in each measure between the pre-building year and the post-building year was calculated. The resulting figures were compared with the average annual percent change in the same measures for all Colorado public libraries.

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Librarian Jobs in Colorado Public Libraries, 1990-2004

Is there a librarian shortage or surplus? This is a debatable question. Studies such as the LRS’s Retirement, Retention, and Recruitment: The Future of Librarianship in Colorado describe the high number of librarians who are expected to retire in the next five years. In regard to the profession of librarianship, the Bureau of Labor Statistics states that “Employment of librarians is expected to grow about as fast as the average for all occupations over the 2002-12 period. However, job opportunities are expected to be very good because a large number of librarians are expected to retire in the coming decade, creating many job openings. Also, the number of people going into this profession has fallen in recent years, resulting in more jobs than applicants in some cases.”

Ask a graduating LIS student and you might hear a different story. An article written by Rachel Holt and Adrienne Stock for Library Journal examines what they call the “Entry Level Gap.” They mention the relative scarcity of entry level jobs for new graduates. Additionally, they point to a more disturbing trend in the field—the “growing tendency of libraries to hire individuals for staff positions who are not MLS librarians at all.”

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ABOUT

LRS is part of the Colorado State Library, a unit of the Colorado Department of Education. We design and conduct library research for library and education professionals, public officials, and the media to inform practices and assessment needs. We partner with the Library and Information Science program at University of Denver's Morgridge College of Education to provide research fellowships to current MLIS students.

This project is made possible by a grant from the U.S. Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS).

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