Ep. 201 CSL Kits: A Librarian's Library

Sunshine and Stories Episode 201: CSL Kits: A Librarian's Library

Episode Summary:
Kate Compton learns all about Colorado State Library book club and circulating program kits from Mike Peever the CSL Kits Program Coordinator. Hear all about how the program works, popular items in the collection, and how to get in on the borrowing action. [CSL Kits are available for circulation to Colorado libraries only. Give your own State Library a call to find out more about any circulating program kits they might have in their collection!]

00:00 - Introduction
01:18- History of the CSL Book Club and CSL Kit program
04:34 - How to get started with the program
08:24 - What's hot these days? Popular titles and kits
10:57 - Where new ideas for new kits come from
13:44 - Who uses these kits and why
18:46 - Closing

Resources:
CSL Book Club Information
CSL Book Club Catalog
Book Club enrollment form
20 Popular Book Club Sets 

Does your library have unwanted book club sets? The Colorado Book Club Resource could be their new forever home! Find out more today. 

CLS Kits
Early literacy kits
Curio kit 

Fast (fun) facts about both collections

Key Information for Account Holders

Contact Mike at Peever_m@cde.state.co.us or (303) 866-6900

Tell us what you think!
If you give us a listen, please let us know what you think by completing a short feedback survey for this episode.

CSL projects like this one are funded in part by the Grants to States program administered by the federal Institute of Museum and Library Services. The views, findings, conclusions, or recommendations expressed in this podcast do not necessarily represent those of the Colorado State Library, Institute of Museum and Library Services, or the U.S. Government.

Transcript

Sunshine and Stories podcast transcript for Episode 201   

[music] [00:06]  

Kate B: Welcome to Sunshine and Stories. 

Kate C: The podcast that shines a light on big ideas and bright moments in Colorado's public and school libraries. 

Kate B: Brought to you by the Library Development team at the Colorado State Library. 

Kate C: Hey, it's Kate C, and on today's episode, we're going to dive into a service from the Colorado State Library. I'm joined by Mike Peever, the Colorado State Library's program coordinator. He's been with the Colorado State Library for over 5 1/2 years running our kits and book clubs specifically? Or is there anything else like that you run? 

[00:40]  

Mike: Thanks for having me. First of all, it's really good to be with you. And yeah, those are my main job duties. But I, I'm a little bit of a Jack of all trades as well handy person to have around in a few different ways. So, I do help my team which is Networking and Resource Sharing headed by my director Reagan Harper with a bunch of different things really. But yeah, kits and book club sets is very much my focus. I also help out with the Colorado Historic newspapers collection; not a lot, but quite regularly, so that's a, you know, a really interesting part of my job as well. But I love the kits and the book club sets. 

[01:18]  

Kate C: So tell me a little bit about the history of the kits and book club kits. How did the program get started? 

Mike: Yeah. So I should just first say there are two collections which are available to Colorado libraries, but they're really two sides of the same coin. So both collections are aimed at Colorado library workers. They exist for their use exclusively. And so the first one is the Colorado Book Club resource. And those are the book club sets that you mentioned we have eight or more copies of a title per book club set plus discussion materials and things like that, ice breakers, and we have about 1300 sets in 2025. Now that project started, I think in the late 2000s just quite a small collection is like purely manually done, so it took some time before it became like formalized and became a bigger collection. When I joined in 2019, I was able to with my director Reagan Harper expanded a lot and diversify a lot. So now we have, like I said, about 1300 book club sets, over 1000 of those were added since 2020. 153 titles as of today are by Colorado authors, 77 are Spanish language materials. And 137 titles have been challenged or received challenges in the US. 

[02:42]  

Mike: So that kind of gives you an idea of the sort of the diversity of the collection. I've set up a little kind of project really about local authors. There's a web page on the Colorado Virtual Library now that lists any of the local authors who have a set in the collection and who are also willing to appear at library events or your book club. I would definitely recommend if you are thinking of doing that to check out that list. We also have a listserv called Colorado Authors and Libraries Connect, and it's exactly what it sounds like. It's just a list of, I think it's about 200 members now of library workers and authors and some publishers, I think, who are all interested in creating a bit of community. And that's a great place to post updates like a call for panelists, things like that.  

[03:30]  

Kate C: See, I didn't even know about that. Now I'm learning something too. This is great. 

[03:33]  

Mike: Yeah, yeah.  

The kits started a little later. I want to say like mid twenty 10's and there were just a few kits at that time. I think the early literacy kits were some of the earliest kits. Those were initially created by Beth Crist, who I'm sure some of you may be familiar with. And Kate recently did a revamp on those kits or kind of updated them and expanded them, and they're looking great. We have lots of early literacy kits at the moment. But yeah, it started kind of in the 2010s and gradually expanded from there. It's a very collaborative collection, that one. It's something that I think the State Library has, like a shared ownership with and you know I'm able to collaborate with all of our subject matter experts at CSL and work with other units like library development and create something tangible, really and useful. 

[04:34]  

Kate C: Tell me a little bit about the details of how a library gets involved. Walk us through the process of looking for a kit, to receiving it, to sending it back to you. What are kind of the needs to know there? 

[04:47]  

Mike: Yeah, so I suppose the most important piece of information to understand about what I do is that I work directly with libraries. So, I don't work with sort of book clubs or the general public as much. We interface with libraries and the reason for that is, is just the courier, which is how we transport our materials. So, if you're on the courier system in Colorado, you can have access to these collections as simple as that. And even if you're not on the courier system, by the way, we can, we can often work out a way of doing it. And sometimes a library will receive a kit for, you know, like a historical society that may not have a courier number, but they're willing to receive those materials. So that's the only real sort of prerequisite. But at this point we have established accounts with most of the libraries in in Colorado. What tends to happen is that folks will leave and not necessarily assign that account to somebody new and then a new person will come in who wants to be that point person and I just have to sort of update them and give them access really so all you have to do is contact me there. There's an enrollment form that, we're going to link to. But you can e-mail me, you can call the state library directly 303-866-6900. You can also get in touch with Kate, I'm sure, and she'll point you in the right direction. But yeah, once that happens and I'm in contact with somebody from the library, provide them with the login and the links and directions to get them started and then few ways of sort of approaching the collections. Anybody can search the collection in the catalog itself and both collections are in the same catalog, which is public. We also have a website for the kits in particular, so you can get a real detailed view of the kits and we have some downloadable lists of the book club sets as well. So you can slice and dice that collection in a variety of ways. It's the same login for both collections and one login per location. Exactly what I said, most libraries at this point have had a login, or if they don't, I'm happy to make them a new one. 

[06:50]  

Mike: As for requesting a kit, they just like, place a hold themselves. It appears on our holds list, and then I'll send it out in the courier. You can expect a week turn around depending on the courier from where you place a hold. And that's with an item that's available. If it's not available, each hold lasts for eight weeks or each checkout lasts for eight weeks plus renewals. If there are no holds waiting. But yeah, if it's already checked out and there are other holds waiting, you might have quite a wait and it won't necessarily tell you that on the catalog. But I'm happy to give you an estimate of how long you you'll be waiting for any given kit, but it's not an exact science because you know we're transporting materials. 

[07:32]  

Kate C: And then once the library receives the kit, you said they get it for about two weeks or two months. Sorry. And then what's the process like for returning to you? 

[7:38]  

Mike: Yep, so all they need to do is just pop it back in the courier with the courier slip to C912, which is the State Library and it will get picked up from their location and delivered back to the State Library which is it's located in the Department of Education which is part of the Colorado Capital Complex in Denver. We'll receive it there and then I'll do an inventory on it and make sure everything is looking good. 

Sometimes I'll you know there are missing items and so forth, and I'll communicate with the library and see if we can't. Can't find those stragglers.  

[8:24] 

Kate C: So tell me a little bit about the most exciting kits and some of the popular titles that we have at the State Library. 

Mike: Well, I actually did a post recently on the Colorado Virtual Library of the top 20 most requested book club sets. So, if you if you're interested in reading the top 20 or like checking those out, definitely visit the Colorado Virtual Library, the number one most circulated book club set is called Nothing Daunted, and the subtitle is the Unexpected Education of Two Society Girls in the West. And it's by Dorothy Wickenden. 

And so yeah, that's about two high class ladies who came to Colorado when it was still quite wild. Back in the early 20th century and yeah, they so-called, roughed, it taught they were teachers in in the Wild West basically. That one's a really popular one. Some of those, like local interest ones are quite popular with book clubs. There’s one called Murder at the Brown Palace, which is a hotel in Denver. And there's one called East of Denver by Gregory Hill. It's really about rural America, but then you'll see like really just popular titles like The Goldfinch by Donna Tartt, The Keeper of Lost Things by Ruth Hogan, the Book Thief, Ready Player One and things like that, which these appear on a lot of book club lists and things like that. So the chances are, if it's on some kind of a book club list, we likely have it. Or if it's like a favorite of book clubs, we likely have it.  

As for kits, the Fossil Kits were some of the earliest kits that were created by the University of Colorado. Those are still going really strong. People love those. 

[09:54]  

Kate C: Oh, interesting. What's in that kit? 

Mike: They're replica fossils.  

[10:02]  

Mike: The Curiosity Cabinet is one that I, at least I think last year and that has actual fossils in it, a couple of little real specimens as well as just a bunch of, like, physics toys and curios of all kinds. That one's been a big hit. I actually got a picture from a librarian who requested this kit recently, and they showed me their social media post about it that they did. They did a like a photo with a huge old timey trunk which somebody brought in and they displayed it on this trunk that they sort of like tip sideways and made it stand up like a cabinet. And I thought that was a really clever way of displaying the kit.  Games kits are always really popular. We also have a suite of digitization kits so these are tools and technology for library staff to do digitization projects, and those are almost always circulating, especially the one big digit that we have. 

[10:57]  

Kate C: And how do you get your ideas for what to put in these kits, or even what titles to purchase for a book club kit? 

[11:04]  

Mike: Yeah, that's a good question. It's collaborative, I would say often times. So I should mention about the the book club, over half of that collection and we have about 1300 titles, are donated books. So, Colorado libraries over the years have kindly donated a lot of amazing book club sets to us, so we've been able to curate it in that way when we've had funding to expand, expand the collection. Like I said we did when I came on board after 2019, I worked really closely with my director, Reagan Harper, and we do a lot of research really and come up with like a wish list. And then we look at a lot of lists. We look at a lot of reviews. So like user reviews and professional reviews, lots of like year end lists, things like that. We also have a suggestions form that we get suggestions from the public and from library staff as well, so those can be really helpful. 

[12:00] 

Mike: As for the kits, like I said, it's very collaborative. So we're really tapping into the ideas of subject matter experts like yourself, Kate. Who you just offer this opportunity to me, which is to work closely together and create something really fun and unique and new. And useful hopefully. So that's my kind of guiding principle is like is this useful? As basic as that sounds, it's like utility is what's sort of top of mind. I really over the last couple of years kind of hit onto this idea with the kits of like a traveling pop-up exhibit like I'd mentioned with the Curiosity kit, I really like the idea of capturing the attention and curiosity of patrons who are just roving the library and them having positive experience in the library that maybe we're not expecting. And hopefully a memorable one as well. 

So that's been a kind of a guiding idea with a new range of kits that I just released called the Art Exploration kits. Yeah, those can be set up kind of as like a like a little exhibit within the library. And I just, I'm kind of in love with that idea at the moment. 

[13:03]  

Kate C: I think it's so great that, you know, I think one of the ideas for the Music and Movement kit, we had a librarian reach out and say oh, I'd love to run that kind of program, but I don't have the funding. So we said, OK, how can we support that from the State Library? But also, that people are using them in such different ways. So it doesn't have to be a Music and Movement program. With the Cabinet of Curiosities, it's just even maybe a passive exhibit that people are looking at that then you can tie to your collection or use in some other way. Do you have any other stats about how people are using the kit? How long people wait for them, or how long they use them for? 

[13:44] 

Mike: In terms of stats, we don't get a lot of stats on that so. We have a feedback form with each kit. And we sometimes hear a little about that and we're getting more feedback these days, which is really good to hear, but I do rely on the staff to tell me how it's working really, especially with a newer kit. They sort of test drive it for me and then based on their feedback, it can be a process of refining it. So their feedback is really, really useful and they'll use that form to sort of let me know if anything's amiss with the kit as well. And what went well and what didn't go so well. So yeah, the feedback forms, probably my main source of data on that and that can be really, really useful, like I said. I had one piece of feedback recently about the Fractals kit, which is one of our Steam kits. They mentioned that it was really helpful for a homeschool class and it would never have occurred to me that, you know, they were doing that or that it would be really useful for that. So things like that are really helpful for me. 

[14:39 ] 

Mike: We also have correctional facilities use our kits as well throughout the state and I've received quite a lot of feedback from them about how they they'll adapt to the kit to fit that environment. But it's really gratifying to hear when a kit goes down. Well, actually got a card recently from a group of incarcerated folks, and it was all about the Virtual Reality Kit. That they had for like I think about two months they might have been able to renew it, so they might have had it longer. But they just absolutely loved the opportunity to interact with that kit. So that was really ratifying and a little emotional to read, to be totally honest as well. I also got some feedback recently about the book club sets from one library. They said that for them funding was really limited when purchasing multiple copies like they basically couldn't use funding to do that so they like really relied on the service to enable them to do book club programming. That's the kind of feedback that I'm really interested in. But Yeah, as for how they're using it, it's like it's a little hard to generalize because you know, there are a lot of different types of kits, so like some of the kits like the Digitization kits have a very specific use and they enabled the staff to do a project basically. Some of the kits have a lot of guidance whereas some of the newer kits have a little less guidance. So it can be choose your own adventure. And then we have passive programming kits, meaning staff themselves might not be working that closely with the kit, but it's patrons themselves who are directly interacting with the materials, so they might not really be able to gauge like how successful the kit was, right? Unless they kind of interview every patron which is not going to happen.  

[16:25]  

Mike: But yeah, the collections really exist or like they're geared towards smaller libraries or that just don't have the resources to kind of offer this sort of programming. At least that's the intention, but bigger systems also use it like Denver Public and JeffCo also use our kits. Something that in all honesty I'd love to hear more about and find ways of digging into that more and I can probably work with our Library Research Service, which is a unit of the Colorado State Library and really dig into some of these a bit more. One of the comments that I got that I really liked was about the Curiosity Cabinet and I'll just read the comment, they said “we made a plan to have a Cabinet of Curiosities Museum, which involves setting up the kit in the library for visiting patrons to explore with the kids club kids serving as quote the museum docents. They took pride in learning how and then teaching how each item worked. It was impressive and inspiring for the adults to see.” And I really love that idea that blew my mind a little bit when I when I read that and so. 

[17:29]  

Kate C: It’s always amazing to hear all the things libraries are doing, we think, ohh we came up with this creative idea of this Curiosity Kit, but then the creativity just expands on that because of what people are doing with it. 

[17:41] 

Mike: They are. They're taking it to another level and that's what I love about them. Yeah, I can also add that now to the kit as a suggestion. Getting that feedback is really genuinely useful for actually like developing the kit further. Library workers are super resourceful, so I think oftentimes they'll use our kit as kind of a basis for a program. And then often supplement it or customize it to make it work for them. 

[18:04]  

Kate C: I think that's our goal, right, is to be a librarian’s, library or librarian’s Librarian. 

[18:13]  

Mike: Exactly. 

[18:14] 

Kate C: So, giving those resources and supporting in ways that we can, so. I'm just really excited and thankful to you, Mike. I hope when people hear this episode, they think of you down in the Department of Ed's basement moving around all the stacks of books and kits. It's not the prettiest location ever, but it’s, its own Cabinet of Wonders, with all the things happening down there. Thank you so much for all the work you do to keep Colorado libraries moving and full of fun things. 

[18:43] 

Mike: Yeah, absolutely. It is my pleasure. 

[18:46]  

Kate B: That's our sunshine and stories for today Y’all.  

[18:49] 

Kieran: If you want to hear even more about what other Colorado folks are up to in their libraries, check out libraries, learn org for all our past and future learning opportunities. 

[18:59]  

Suzi: This podcast is offered at no cost to listeners. Thanks to the time, effort and dedication of CSL library development consultants, as well as our state library colleagues and all our volunteer guests from across the field. 

[19:10]  

Kate C: CSL projects like this one are funded in part by the grants to states program, which is administered by the Federal Institute of Museum and Library Services. 

[19:18] 

Polly: The views, findings, conclusions or recommendations expressed in this podcast do not necessarily represent those of the Colorado State Library Institute of Museum and Library Services or the US government. 

[19:30]  

All: Thanks for joining us. We'll catch you next time. 

[19:35] [music]