For two days and through hours of corn fields, feed lots, cattle, and wind farms, I ventured through the Eastern Plains to visit some of Colorado’s treasured community libraries. Between summer learning programs, adult conversation meetups, clean up after town summer festivals, and new library staff interviews, the directors, librarians, and staff at the libraries I visited made time to share the amazing ways their libraries hold down the fort of love of learning, community gathering, and resource sharing in their towns.
I’d like to include a special note here about every single library I visited this go-round: Every. One. Bar. None. Had outward facing picture book bins for early readers in their kids’ section. Every. Single. One. Thank you for that. Thank you for thinking of how a young reader might discover a book. I love books with pictures in them. I pick up books to read based on the cover art. I admit it! Kids love books with pictures on them too. Nothing says you’ll find bugs in this book like the cover a book with bugs on it. Tiny people need books where they can reach them and can fumble and flip for them. I’m not the youth services person and even I know that!
Rural libraries – all rural libraries – are beacons of what could be. They fill our communities with stories, dreams, and possibilities. Where there are fewer civic institutions, the library becomes the Swiss army knife the meets a multitude of needs in a multitude of ways. For our kids, a community library is a bridge from one classroom to the next, from school days to the future. Angela Johson et al. write, “Rural students grow slightly more than nonrural students during school years but show significantly more summer learning loss than non-rural students.” In Colorado, over 47% of our library jurisdictions are rural. Far more are “rural or small.” During this trip I visited just a few of those libraries. There are only so many hours in a day and only so many road trip egg salad sandwiches a girl can pack.
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Yuma Public Library
My two-day tour of the Eastern Plains libraries along 76 and 70 began with a stop in Yuma. I highly recommend making your first stop of any tour at a place that welcomes you with smiles and laughter and “I’m so glad you made it!” It may be a little unfair to say this because, I mean, how can I be sure? But starting at Yuma was the best decision I made this entire trip! Jeanne walked me around the library which is a literal fact because the library is, indeed, circuitous. Formerly a health facility, the offices are situated in the center like a theatre in the round, except what’s going on in the library happens on the perimeter in the stacks, the study rooms, the living room space (you read that correctly: the living room space), the teen hangout area, the kids’ section, and the open staging area (yes, again, you read that correctly: the open staging area where, not coincidentally, the library invites guitar concerts from local music classes to perform several times a year). I told at least half the libraries I visited during this trip about Yuma’s Stephen King wall and their James Patterson wall. I think that’s clever and, honestly, super helpful in a uniquely librarian sense. (How many times have you been asked where the Pattersons are? I need you to know I cannot answer that question honestly because the answer is somewhere over 100 and who keeps count at that point? Honestly.)
There are things I simply have to mention because they appear in the video compilation of my visit that I can’t otherwise note:
- Yuma’s children’s picture book bins were built by residents at Sterling Correctional Facility. Thank you to those builders!
- A lot of Yuma’s seating furniture are community donations. I cannot think of a better place for my old furniture to go (provided it’s in good to great condition) than a community library where it can become a community living room. Thank you to the library’s neighbors for the donations!
- Study rooms are regularly scheduled for use in community justice services and mediation sessions, extending access to neutral spaces and safe spaces for our essential community services.
- Growing Spanish speaker communities are being met with resources at the library including a growing Spanish language collection. Hearts and rainbows and glitter burst out of me (figuratively, obviously) to learn that. Yuma meets its community – whoever they are and however they can – where they are.
Special thank you for refusing to sell that Nicolas Cage “Read” poster, Jeanne, because I desperately needed to take my library card photo with it.
Wray Public Library
I wasn’t two feet through the front door when Rachel marched up to me with a pre-filled library card application. What a welcome! The next moment, Library Director Shara, was taking me straight to the library’s programming room to show off a donation of a new huge screen TV (I don’t think “big screen TV” is adequate) and Nintendo Switches from Plains Telephone. The goal? Demonstrate the speed and reliability of Plains Telephone’s internet connectivity. The outcome? Wray Library is going to be holding community gaming nights and competitions and not just for children, making my adult services heart happy. A Friends of the Library match will extend the gift and create more access and opportunities for the growing community. My favorite thing in the world is something Wray built as a result of a library patron’s need – which is the best way to build a library as far as I’m concerned: a family road trip resource kit with a car DVD player, games and puzzles, and other things to keep the kids occupied and the family connected in play and wonder while on a long car trip. (Note: As a former child who traveled exclusively by car for every single family vacation we ever took including the Disney trips because that’s what Florida kids do, this rang to me like a stroke of genius. Every. Library. Needs. A. Family. Road. Trip. Kit.)
I lied about my favorite thing of all time. Apologies. My actual favorite thing of all time is Nikki’s Nook. Nikki was the founder of the Picky Hookers. ::blush and giggles:: That was the crochet and knitting group that met at the Wray Library. Sadly, they are now the Social Stitchers. Mostly “sadly” because, well, read that name again. (Knitters are the punniest people in existence besides cozy murder mystery writers. May we all be as witty and silly as knitters and cozy mystery writers!) Wray is one of the only communities in Colorado with a growing family demographic. (See stats aging in Colorado for more details.) The Social Stitchers meet the needs of these growing families by making newborn kits of homemade hats and onesies, along with other gifts for the newest family members. I absolutely adore them even though I’ve never met them.
Fort Morgan Public Library
At the corner of the street just outside the library, a stage was being struck from the weekend’s city festival, Bobstock. I missed the Spin Doctors by a few days. Can’t win ‘em all. But what the visit lacked in 90s Top 40 hits during my visit, it made up for with a fashion throughout history exhibit and a makerspace chock full of any supply imaginable for the library’s regular Creative Club meetups. (Fort Morgan is one of the telehealth hub pilot libraries too!) I’m pretty sure I heard tell of a film screening while I was there, though I couldn’t very well just walk into a movie halfway into its runtime.
Library director, Chandra, invited me on a tour of the library spaces – including the huge below ground children’s library – of the shared library and town museum building. Let’s talk about that kids’ space. A few years ago, a flood took out the below ground level, ruining the walls and floors but only one book because that single book was on the floor meanwhile the rest were on the stacks. Amazing turn of events. The flood came with a pretty shiny silver lining: It afforded the library the opportunity – a much-needed opportunity – to spruce up the space with new paint and new furniture.
Burlington Public Library
To say that Burlington’s is a library that is responsive to their community’s needs is to understate the real value of both the library and its director. This was my first stop on my second day of visits to Eastern Plains libraries and I cannot be more grateful to have started my day there! I’ve wanted to visit Burlington since Library Director Nick applied for and won our REFORMA Colorado 2023 conference travel reimbursement award and submitted his guest blog post for Colorado Virtual Library about his experience. Not a year later, he was also among the first (if not the actual first… who can be sure?!) librarian to complete certification to hold Ageless Grace seated exercise for brain fitness programs in Colorado libraries to meet the needs of a growing older adult and aging population. Bonus: It’s also a perfect family, multigenerational, and intergenerational program. Just ask Nick’s own kids.
Nick jumped up – and graciously allowed me to interrupt interviews though he didn’t have to! I promise I’m not eager to interrupt your day when I visit! – to give me a tour of the library, a library that is always looking for ways to expand and change according to what the visitors need and want. The kids’ section has an open play space. There’s a toddler play corner! There’s a semi-private teen space! Though, in an excellent example of the success of pivoting to meet the actual use of space, is allowed to be a hangout and reading space for anyone if it’s not currently in use by teens. (Changing course based on impact versus intention will always win in my book!) After a session at a CLiC Virtual Winter Workshop one year, Nick took a chance at shifting the library’s space to invite movement into the stacks and creative active spaces. Know what? It worked! Visitors are encouraged to engage with the collection and circulation went up. When it hasn’t, the library has reevaluated its collection. Burlington doesn’t settle for what is at the cost of what could be. They are so lucky to have the library they have. And their community knows. Nick and Chantal, Youth Services Librarian, will tell you about how their program attendance has grown year-round.
Stratton Public Library
“We’re about to have our Golden Gathering and I was just setting up the coffee and donuts!” Those are the first words Charlotte says to me after greeting me with a huge smile. You better believe I knew that already and I was psyched to show up just on time. Stratton Public Library is a one room building with a Christmas tree decorated for summer in the children’s section. I am fully and completely in love. Thanks to some grant funding additional modular seating for very small bodies, Stratton’s children’s programming was able to grow four times because they finally had the seating and space to accommodate. Of course, that gave the kids plenty more opportunities to create decorations for their year-round Christmas tree. (Real talk: Everyone should have a year-round holiday tree decorating party. Be seasonal! Be fun! Why not?!) Some early sprouts from the GOCO wildflower and saving the bees campaign sit on the windowsill, potted by Stratton’s own youngest library users. I know how many seed packets came to our libraries so I can state will full certainty that it is quite the accomplishment to have nearly liquidated its stock. (Charlotte assured me that no one’s hoarding wildflower seed packets in Stratton.)
Stratton is where I learned that such a thing as the First Mountain Man series exists. Collections including the Mountain Man series books, donated vintage National Geographic magazines, high interest (and high circulation) collections, and Colorado and regional interest books are featured around the gathering space where people meet regularly to do everything from just talk to learning about Colorado history (a hot topic in a lot of our small and rural libraires, by the way). I observed – and you absolutely know I geeked out about and took pictures of – every single thing our Colorado State Library and partners at CLiC have sent to our libraries for public awareness, public health information and resources, workforce development tools, state parks… literally everything shared on bulletin boards, on the desk, and along the stacks for library visitors.
Shout out to Judy! Charlotte, if you’re reading this let her know I’m still sorry for interrupting her morning at the library and also I’m so grateful to her for letting me monopolize your time. And my egg salad sandwich was perfectly fine and cool and safe to eat. And thank you for worrying about that. Whenever you decide to give those vintage card catalogs a new home, shoot me a text. I’ll take them off your hands!
Flagler Community Library
A note to anyone I ever visit at any point in time: I will never audit you. Seriously. Why mention this at all? Because Amanda was the busiest person in the world when I stopped by Flagler Community Library. Thank you to Amanda and to everyone – because, seriously, I could have stayed for twelve hours just chatting it up with the library’s visitors – for entertaining my stop to visit your library all the while you had actual work to do for town clerk business. Flagler had a recent remodel that totally brightened up and cleaned up the stacks. A small library built to look and feel like a small-town bookstore is precisely why it felt so comfortable and familiar to walk through the space.
Flagler’s library is co-located with the town’s historical museum and town clerk’s office – a job that the library director also holds. Upstairs, you can visit the historic hospital and maternity ward exhibits on the walk down the hall to the kids’ library. The teen volunteers have done a bang-up job of creating a small welcoming space for the earliest readers and youngest library visitors on one side, across from some space for the readers just a little further along the lifelong literacy road. For the first time in a long while, Flagler’s summer library program was a month long !!!! (…versus a weeklong in previous years) New life has been injected into the community’s library and a little bird may have told me that the town is going for a grant to get some water features at their community park which is also being remodeled by the town’s parks and rec department. Welcome to Amanda, a kind of new-ish library director to our community of libraries in Colorado. We’re so happy you’re here!
Kelver Library (Arapahoe Library District)
I walked out of Kelver with a large print word search book and half a dozen bookmarks – along with my new library card, obviously. I also now know that I am taller than an ostrich which, truly, I believe I knew all along, but now I have proof. Kelver was my last stop on this latest two-day trip so it’s only fitting that I am rewarded with these invaluable gifts as a new library card holder of Arapahoe Library District.
Kelver is one of Arapahoe Library District’s rural libraries along the furthest east reaches of the district’s boundaries. It is a small library with a huge patio and vegetable garden that features some growing and already huge squashes and watermelons. I drove up wondering what I sometimes end up wondering as I follow my Apple map directions to libraries which is: How am I ever going to find this place? And, turns out, not a thing I had to worry about on this day because I was pretty sure it was the building with the pulsating inflated red walls of the big bounce house along the road. One of the benefits of visiting libraries during the summer is that I’m bound to end up in a bustling library filled with kids, families, friends, and neighbors doing silly things like, you know, bouncing or building paper airplanes with Wings of the Rockies educators.
Kathleen, Iliana, and Kristi were the most gracious hosts – and that’s just three of them I’m naming because I forget to write stuff down sometimes so, truly, apologies for anyone I missed – during my short visit. I visited the garden. Toured the media conversion and technology corner. I took photos and videos of the Nature and Science themed decorations for the library’s summer “adventure.” I popped by “the science guy” room. I ventured underwater in the teen space. Ending a library tour is a matter of happenstance. It’s a map thing. I don’t really choose. I’m really glad I ended it with a bounce house.
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Visiting our libraries is some of the most important work we do as consultants at the state library. To walk through the doors and be a part of the movement and life of a library – even for just a moment – is to really see and to really be in community with the people who serve as stewards of everything from rom coms to overdose reversal meds to wildflower seeds to juvenile mysteries to hygiene kits to state parks exploration kits. The librarians for our librarians in the state (yep, that’s the state library) love to be in your libraries, so thank you for welcoming us. Being with you, talking with you, and seeing your library fit the vast network of civic infrastructure in your community is how we can identify opportunities to meet your needs. It’s also how we can celebrate you and shine a light on what you do… and you do so much that, frankly, we don’t have enough spotlights to shine. We do our best.
It is very hard to keep these blog posts short. My visits reward me with more stories than I can possibly share. It is all credit of the hard work and masterful class of the people who run and work at our libraries. For all the things I’ve missed in the short – far too short yet far too long – sections above, I sincerely apologize. I guess you’ll just have to invite me back ::shrug::
- I <3 Colorado Libraries! - December 19, 2024
- Summer 2025 Resources for Libraires: Fireworks Safety with the Bucket Brigade Program - December 17, 2024
- Program Spotlight: Dolores Public Library’s Books & Bikes Book Club - November 20, 2024