Welcome to the Tourism Community Library Designation

If you’ve traveled into the mountains from the Front Range during a summer weekend, it’s hard not to notice just how many people are also making the trip. From both in and out-of-state, crowds of people are making the most of the summer by visiting our beautiful mountain communities and enjoying Colorado’s spectacular landscapes. Tourism helps drive Colorado’s economy, and libraries in tourist hotspots see the effects as well. Historically, at Library Research Service (LRS), we’ve categorized these libraries located in areas impacted by tourism as Resort Libraries. This year, however, we collaborated with these libraries to redefine this designation and update the list of libraries included, renaming them Tourism Community Libraries (TCLs). In this post we’ll outline how these changes came to be. But first, let’s share why this designation exists to begin with and why you may (or may not) want to use it when working with the Public Library Annual Report (PLAR) data…

Continue reading this post on LRS.org and check out more posts on research in a library context from Library Research Service.

LRS’s Colorado Public Library Data Users Group (DUG) mailing list provides instructions on data analysis and visualization, LRS news, and PLAR updates. To receive posts via email, please complete this form.