Family engagement is a shared responsibility among families, educators, and communities to support children's learning and development. For families, it is about the knowledge, attitudes, values, and behaviors that enable children to be motivated, enthusiastic, and successful learners. For libraries, this means having respectful partnerships with…

This article features Naturita Community Library (NCL), winner of "LJ"'s 2011 Best Small Library in America Award, sponsored by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. The library is the largest straw bale library in America. It sits on the western slope of the Rockies, across the Uncompahgre Plateau from the county seat in Montrose,…

This report is based on a series of presentations at the second CLIR Seminar on "Participatory Design of Academic Libraries," held at the University of Rochester's River Campus June 5-7, 2013. Participatory design is a relatively recent approach to understanding library user behavior. It is based on techniques used in anthropological and…

Beyond the sprawling Denver International Airport, there's little to put Adams County, Colorado, on the map. The region's light rail only stretches south, so Adams County, a mostly working-class zone to the northeast, has come late to growth. There's no central city; the community is dominated by strip malls, big-box stores, and new developments.…

Introduction: This paper discusses an "information in context" design project at Auraria Library in Denver, Colorado which aims to collaboratively create organizational structures and communication systems with and for library employees. Method: This action research project is founded within shared leadership, informed learning and…

Sixteen scholarly papers and twenty abstracts comprise the content of the eighteenth annual Brick & Click Libraries Conference, held annually at Northwest Missouri State University in Maryville, Missouri. The proceedings, authored by academic librarians and presented at the conference, portray the contemporary and future face of librarianship.…

At least since the early 1990s, academic libraries have been merging Circulation and various other related functions into a single department typically labeled "Access Services." In many cases, however, that merger has proven to be administrative rather than functional, with minimal integration of common workflows. This article describes…

The University of Denver's Penrose Library's Stacks Maintenance unit is a separately managed unit that works in collaboration with all library departments to ensure complete access to the library's print collections. This unit takes advantage of a variety of techniques and tools to fulfill its mission, including a fine-tuned tracer system for…

Issues 266 through 282 of "Fast Facts" from the Library Research Service present data collected from libraries in Colorado and throughout the nation. Topics addressed in these "Fast Facts" from 2009 include interlibrary loan in academic libraries, public librarian salaries, book, newspaper, and periodical prices from 2004 to…

On June 4, 2004, a crazed man rammed an unstoppable, armor-plated bulldozer into eight buildings in Granby, Colorado. The library was one of them. Three days later, Cindy Eubank and other volunteers salvaged what they could from the wrecked building. The collection had also suffered rain damage, so this was a grubby labor of love for the…

Blogging offers an alternative and sometimes superior way to communicate with library patrons. It provides an opportunity to speak more directly to them, and it does so in a manner that is more comfortable and convenient for all involved. A library's Web site may be the only interaction that patrons have with the organization, so it makes sense to…

Describes results of a telephone survey of public libraries in Colorado that was conducted to assess both the attitudes and the needs of microcomputer users. Topics discussed include staff use of microcomputers; public access microcomputers; user fees; and types of hardware and software used, and types desired. (LRW)

This document contains statistics and input-output measures for Colorado school libraries and media centers. High schools, middle/junior high schools, and elementary schools are each subdivided into sections by population. Each section includes the school identification (address, RLSS code), respondent identification, hours of the library media…

This master plan for Colorado academic libraries assesses current strengths and weaknesses of public and private academic libraries in the state and forecasts the role of academic libraries in support of higher education. The plan consists of a series of recommendations divided into six related and overlapping sections: access, collection…

A survey of the current practices in school library-media centers in the Southwest, Three Rivers, Pathfinder, and Arkansas Valley Regional Library Service Systems in Colorado was conducted in the fall of 1986. The survey covered reference materials; media selection; computer usage, including cataloging, online searching, and use of library…