Ep. 203 Trends in Colorado Public and School Libraries

Sunshine & Stories Episode 203: Trends in Colorado Public and School Libraries 

Episode Summary:  

Sit down with Polly Gallagher, Kieran Hixon, Suzi Tonini, Kate Brunner, and Kate Compton, members of CSL’s Library Development Team, as they share trends they are noting around our libraries in Colorado and consider the impact on services, resources, and governance. 

00:00 – Introduction
01:06– Why we look at trends
02:26 – Staff
08:30 – Digital world
10:50 – How we read
15:09 – Removing barriers
19:40 – Legalities and censorship
23:37 – Public value
26:41 – Closing  

Resources: 

Library Research Services 

Colorado Education Initiative AI Roadmap 

Healthy Kids Colorado 

Valuable Initiatives in Early Learning that Work Successfully (VIEWS2) 

SB24-216  Standards for Decisions Regarding Library Resources 

SB25-063 Library Resource Decision Standards for Public Schools 

Contact the CSL Library Development team at librarydevelopment@cde.state.co.us

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 Trends Episode 203

[music] [00:06]

Kate B: Welcome to Sunshine & 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.

[00:20]

Polly: Hi everyone. This is Polly, and I am with the Colorado State Library Library Development Team. I'm joined today with Library Development team members as we take a look at trends and what's happening in Colorado library world.

Kieran: Hi, my name's Kieran. I get the pleasure of working with rural and small libraries.

Suzi: Hi. I'm Suzi, and I support school libraries in Colorado.

Kate B: Hi everyone, I'm Kate Bruner and I have the pleasure of working with Youth and Family Services all across the state of Colorado. So that means folks serving children, teens, families, and their caregivers.

Kate C: And I'm Kate Compton. I get to champion early literacy professionals with best practices and resources to support families and children in Colorado under eight.

[1:06]

Polly: One of the things I love most about working with this team is everybody is a tomorrow thinker. That's one of the things we all enjoy about our jobs is traveling around throughout the state to see what is happening, and what is going on, and sharing that with other places. Anybody else want to touch on why you think looking at trends is important as we do our library work.

Kate B: I think for me, as someone who specializes in youth services, it's important to remember that children and teens do this thing called growing up. And then new generations of children and teens come into our libraries. Taking a look trends as they shift and grow --I think it's really important when working with children and families because the landscape is always changing.

Kate C: Gonna add, as a library professional, it was always helpful for me to keep track of trends just so I could make sure my programming related to the community I was trying to reach as well.

[1:57]
 Polly: I think it's been so interesting to see how quickly things have been changing too. Whether, I don't know if that's just due to our technology that we have, how we interact with things, or if the pandemic really was such a disruptor, but It just seems like we're moving faster and faster and faster, and things are shifting at a far greater rate.

Kieran H: I totally agree. That kind of thing, that the speed at which everything is changing feels like it's just faster than I can think anyhow.

[2:26]

Polly: Well, let's go ahead and dive into some of those trends. Kieran, you were talking about workers and library staffing and how that's shifted in the last few years.

Kieran: You can see a trend with the MLIS degree, especially in rural areas. And there are fewer and fewer degrees in rural areas. There are fewer and fewer degreed librarians in smaller communities, and whether they're rural or not. And the kind of the median and average is going down, but not in bigger cities and not in bigger areas. Although, there are places that that's not true, and there are times that that's not true, but even now we're seeing the ALA director doesn't have an MLIS, and we're starting to see other degrees that are coming into library land.

[3:21]
 Kieran: And that kind of imparts a different way of going about training for us at the State Library. A different way of figuring out how we assure Coloradans across the state are getting that same quality of library.

And it just kind of changes a lot of the ways people get paid, too. So if they can't pay as much, which is code for saying they're not going to pay as much, then they will get rid of the degree because nobody that's put all that money and effort into the degree is going to move to the middle of nowhere and get paid minimum wage and, you know, without some other major thing going on in our lives.

So that kind of trend is happening that you can watch the wage and the salaries and the degrees kind of all kind of coalesce along some lines with data. Poses some questions on how I go about my training and how I go about my work. And I'm sure y'all find that to be similar in what you're doing with training.

[4:21]

Polly: I'm wondering about that too, with the whole work-life balance and wellness push that we've seen in the past few years and more and more and more, I've seen CAL interest groups that have switched over to co-directorships and even library systems hiring co-directors --where there's an administrator and there's the librarian. It's taking that government and library and putting them together.

Polly: Curious, I don't think it's just public libraries that we're seeing that, right, Susie? You said over in schools, a similar shift is happening.

[4:50]

Suzi: Yeah, I think there's, you know, definitely a parallel type of occurrence in schools where many schools are staffed and especially schools in smaller districts, rural districts are staffed by library paraprofessionals.

What I think about a lot, and really try to focus on with training is, what are our students losing out on? When they don't have access to those certified school librarians.

[5:07]

Suzi: You know, what are those comprehensive learning experiences like learning how to research, learning how to vet information, the training that certified school librarians have in readers advisory and building reading culture, all of those aspects of the job that we shouldn't be expecting our library paraprofessionals to do. You know, instruction is not part of their job assignment.

[5:41]

Suzi: And many times, they are expected to somehow be a substitute for someone who has, you know, had the opportunity to have really robust training in all these areas. And either some phenomenal -- many, many phenomenal paraprofessionals out there with so much heart connecting kids to books, like really doing excellent work --where I think we're missing the boat, is that awareness of what's lost when we don't have that certified school librarian in every building?

Polly: And I wonder about what that does as far as how the school then sets up or believes what a school library is, right? Because if you have somebody that's there to check in, check out, and have a recess duty, as opposed to provide those services that you mentioned, the reader's advisory, the information literacy connection, it changes what a school library is.

[6:35]

Suzi: Yeah. And, you know, we're seeing a, we're seeing some really effective strategies for building that awareness. And I really do think a lot of it is just building an understanding for what that qualified professional can, can bring to that role and the impact they can have on every kid in that building. Every teacher in that building. And the culture.

That to me is also something that we at the State Library can do and in partnership with all of our stakeholders. It is really creating that ecosystem where everyone expects students to have access to a school library similar to every adult should have access to their public library, and I think once we can really increase understanding of student learning impact and impact on student well-being, I think then we could start to pivot.

[7:23]

Suzi: We're seeing that in some districts like Cherry Creek. They are prioritizing qualified teacher librarians for their Title I elementary schools as a part of their strategy for ensuring those kids have what they need to be successful. We're seeing growth, but also this is definitely a worrying trend. And I think the key there is building more awareness.

[7:46]

Kate C: One of my favorite things is actually hearing realtors talk about public libraries that are near the space and kind of in that same vein of saying, this is a value to this community, that makes this house worth more too, to know that you have this resource close by.

Suzi: And what's heartbreaking to me is I think a lot of families will do the school tour. They will see the school library and assume that it is staffed by a professional. And assume that it's circulating materials and those materials are current and relevant and appealing for their kids. That's the piece that, based on our own experiences as students, we're just, projecting that of course there's a school librarian when oftentimes there's not.

[8:30]

Polly G: Well, let's carry on from that idea as far as creating a culture of reading. It's not just literacy as far as reading connecting with literature.It is media literacy, digital literacy, AI literacy. I'm wondering about the expertise and training for teachers to understand why they don't just go online and pull whatever sort of program they want to to have the kids register in and all those parts and pieces as far as how digital literacy, AI literacy falls into the role of a librarian, a school librarian, or a librarian, public libraries, we're seeing that too.

[9:07]

Suzi: That's definitely a trend we're seeing with teacher librarians is that they are stepping up to teach AI literacy, you know, similar to what they've been doing in information literacy, news literacy, media literacy, digital citizenship.

We want our students to be critical consumers of media. This is just one more aspect that perfectly aligns in their wheelhouse. We see them not only teaching students to understand what AI is, but also how to use it, when to use it. How do you evaluate AI content? So it’s really fascinating to see again in schools that have that qualified school library professional -them incorporating this into something that they do. That's just another aspect of information literacy.

[9:54]

Polly: We've seen such a big push and change in public libraries. Budgets have significantly changed. We used to buy an encyclopedia set and it would last us for three years, five years, 10 years. And now every year you have to have a subscription to keep that information available and to prevent a paywall from being there, right? Good information hides behind paywalls.

And we've seen that too as far as eBooks. And audiobooks. The rise of audiobooks, gone are the CDs, but when you have Libby, when you have those accessible resources 24-7 from your home, it's just been such an interesting shift to see the change in people's reading habits. People who swore, I'm never going to read anything on a Kindle or on my phone or on a computer, but now that's the norm. We've switched over, we've had more digital resources, exponentially more digital resources available to people now through public libraries.

[10:50]

Polly: I'm wondering, because Kate, you mentioned the shift that's happening as far as each generation is different. So how people are reading is different or engaging with literature is different. What sort of things are you seeing?

Kate B: Yeah, I think the shifts in how teens are reading are really fascinating. I think we sort of have this overall cultural myth that's out there that teens don't read, right? Or that it's hard to get them to read.

When we think about out of classroom reading, recreational reading, literacy behavior that's happening out of the classroom in their lives and for fun. I think we sometimes in libraries are not leveraging what they're already doing, and the tools they're already engaged with and the formats they're already engaged with as much as we could be. To help them develop their literacy skills in ways that maybe they're not even aware that it's literacy skill development practice. It’s something that they're really enjoying doing, but it is really meaningful literacy behavior.

[11:55]

Kate B: Sometimes see a bias towards long form, towards like hard copy, print books, and expecting teens to all move that direction in public library resources. And, I think long form is so valuable, and it's really, really important to teens' literacy development. But I also think we're forgetting how to leverage short form as well. ALA has identified that as a trend. Short form is a trend. And I think it's interesting to think about, because when we think back, like Charles Dickens and Arthur Cornyn Doyle never intended for us to read hundreds of pages of their work bound. These were short form serials.

I see that making a comeback in teens' literacy behavior through fan fiction through apps where they can read serialized content, digital serialized content, and really interesting apps where they can create that content as well, or fan fiction sites where they can create that content.

[12:57]

Kate B: There is a study in the early literacy world called the VIEWS2 study, and it really looked at how impactful intentionality is and when the library who's facilitating the storytime understands the why behind what they're doing -how what they're doing is supporting early literacy skill development, and they're very, very intentional about that and very purposeful about that- those literacy skills, children's literacy behavior increases.

I think we could, no one's necessarily studying this in libraries yet, but I think we could use the same approach to foster literacy skills in teens if we are very intentional about it.

[13:40]

Kate B: Maybe we are still having an escape room, but maybe we're using primary source material to build that escape room around a historical theme, which is something that Jefferson County teen librarians are doing. And so they're practicing early or adolescent literacy skills in a very intentional way in the library, but not in a way that is more classroom work when they're out of the classroom. That classroom work is still really important, and we can take other more strategic ways to support that adolescent literacy skill development.

[14:15]

Polly: When we were talking about short-form literacy as one of the trends that we're seeing. Somebody came up after the session and was like, well, my son has this amazing wealth of knowledge that he gains from documentaries or videos

[14:28]

Kate B: Right, multimodal literacy is really important One of the interesting things that I saw when I was looking into this is a new video game was released that had overtones connected to a YA novel and also themes that were maybe lifted from a cult classic movie. In video game forums, they're discussing the connections between a video game ,sort of traditional text as we think of text, and a movie. That is actually something called intertextual analysis and is a highly advanced literacy skill. And that is something that we could do in libraries.

[15:09]

Polly: Well, as we take a look at how people are interacting with literature, how people are interacting with I guess the world as a whole. Kate, you were doing some research into programming, removing barriers, and how we're serving the population in our libraries.

Kate C: I've been really excited to see librarians, mainly early literacy librarians that I work with, starting sensory story times.  Susie and I have also been interacting with librarians that are just changing their entire space to be more welcoming to our neurodiverse community members.

[15:31]

Kate C: This is something librarians do really well is look at who's not in our spaces, and how do we change what we're doing to make it more welcoming, to make it a space where everyone feels included and that they belong there. I think it's been exciting to see in programming where we're changing how we're delivering programs --a simple story time, even not calling it sensory story time, but maybe just changing and tweaking little pieces, the transitions between song and book that make it more inclusive, but doesn't have any detriment to anyone else in that space, too. I've been excited to see that trend kind of popping up around Colorado.

[16:21]

Polly: That's continued on, right? Up into the tweens, teens, older ages, and different programs and opportunities. I think, Kate, you started with the State Library with Growing Readers Together, looking at friends, families, and neighbors that were caregivers for the littlest in our community. And now you're shifting that work.

[16:40]

Kate B: Yeah, actually, Susie and I are working together on this. We did a lot of work around early childhood and grandparents or their family members or neighbors who were providing early childhood care and learning environments as opposed to the more formal environments. We continued with this theme of like unseen caregivers. And Susie and I came across some information that came out of the Healthy Kids Colorado survey, which comes from our Department of Public Health just kind of blew my mind.

[17:10]

Kate B:The original article that I spotted in the Colorado Sun said 12% of Colorado's high schoolers are providing care for an adult in their household who's an elder, disabled, chronically ill, or some combination thereof.

 I did the math, right? And like, that's like 33,000 Colorado high school students. And then...

Susie and I started looking into this, and it's 21% of middle schoolers, 43,000 middle schoolers. And as they get older, that percentage of high schoolers is likely to rise then too.

[17:44]

Kate B: Thinking about when we ask ourselves, how do I get teens in the library? I think I've seen a trend towards teen services folks really thinking about who is in their community and how they could reach out to those individuals, like reach out to those young people, try to help them understand that the library is a place for them. And...

I think there are barriers for certain underserved populations of youth that we don't think about. So, typically youth caregivers is not on our list of underserved populations that we look at. Teens that are employed are not either. Like we have a 40% participation rate in the labor force for 16- to 19-year-olds. We don't necessarily think about that group of teens.

[18:27]

Kate B: There is a lot of focus on teens that are from immigrant families or immigrants themselves now, which is great. I'm seeing that trend too. Just broadening our perspective about who are these underserved teens in our community. Who are we not seeing in the library? And then they may not be able to come to our library, so how can we bring library service to them?

[18:48]

Kate B: Or there may be small shifts, like maybe our after-school homework help program happens at the same time as a program for older adults. And so maybe that caregiver, that caregiving youth and that elder in their family that they're taking care of could come to the library at the same time and benefit.

[19:05]

Polly: Seeing a lot more, and I don't know, Kieran, if you're noticing this too, as far as outreach vehicles going from public libraries out and about into the community.

Kieran: Oh yeah, definitely. In Colorado, we even have a bookmobile that's being lent from one library system to another library system on a regular basis.

Polly G: That's amazing. I was reading about a place in, I believe somewhere in Scandinavia that's working with a self-driving company, car company, to see about doing the reverse, and I wonder what impact that could have in the future in regards to going and picking up and bringing them to the library as opposed to the library going out to them.

[19:40]

Polly : We're seeing more and more legislation specifically directed towards library. I mean, we had some great legislation in Colorado this year and last year protecting library workers and public libraries and school libraries, as well as materials and just codifying a lot of the best practice policies that were already in place.

Polly: But then one out of left field was the law that was passed in regards to interaction with ICE law enforcement and federal. Public libraries were specifically noted on that piece, which is a little concerning, just having to follow more and more of the legislation as public libraries are specifically identified.

[20:20]

Polly: Kieran, you were saying question happening as far as self-censorship, trying to avoid some of that.

Kieran: And that's something when I moved 30 years ago to this community I live in, I went into the library and the librarian, the lady that working in a library, the librarian said, “Oh, we don't have any sci-fi books because I don't like that kind of thing.” I was like, But I read sci-fi, right? And that's a small example of a lot of what I think self-censorship, that kind of, “Well, I don't want to get a book that's going to be controversial, and then there'll be some sort of protest outside of my library.” So I'm just going to avoid that and not get those books. Or, “Well, we don't have any of those kind of people here because I don't know them personally.”

[21:06]

Kieran: And that kind of self, It's self-censoring that affects the entire community's library because it's the community's library. And kind of figuring out like where that comes from. And, you know, is it the fear of the protest or is it the not having skills with picking diverse books? Is it, you know, I don't know anything other than my personal preference and I don't want to learn anything but my personal preference, like where does it come from?

[21:33]

Kieran: So those kinds of things that I've been looking into, and we're seeing, Colorado, we're doing pretty good. But you see it, and you see it going on in, especially in smaller communities, and less so in bigger communities when there's more people to double check that you got all the things. And there's probably somebody on staff that loves the sci-fi, and there's somebody else that likes the Maeve Binchy. And there's probably even a James Patterson fan. And then you get all the books.

Polly: And maybe that's part of that training piece, right? Going back to the beginning as we shift away from librarianship as a targeted degree coming back in as far as how and what to do in order to support those. Because it's not just with materials, right?

[22:11]

Polly: Kate, you're seeing that in programming as well, or we were. I'm hoping that the law will help impact this, right? That's going to be a trend, but maybe it'll be a fad. It's not a trend. It's a fad. It's just momentary.

Kate C: Right. Yeah. I was excited to hear just at CAL LRS, our library research service, talking about kind of the decrease in library material challenges. I think their numbers are from 2024, that's  the most recent information that they had.

But still, 70% of those are children's titles.

[22:47]

Kate C: That kind of comes up, I think, in Kate and my world a lot and I, in the last year, have heard librarians checking in about programs that they're putting on and thinking about, “How does this impact my community?” But hopefully with Senate Bill 24-216, correct me if I'm wrong, that we'll see some more protections for folks and people will feel less chilled in what they're providing and how they're showing up for their community.

Polly: It's funny you say that because I was speaking to a couple of people who mentioned that they've seen an increase in books disappearing from their shelves since the bill passed. Rather than people doing a Request for Reconsideration, they're hiding the books either under the bookshelves, over the bookshelves, or just walking away.

Kate C: I found a book in an elevator once, like up in the top of the elevator.

[23:37]

Polly: All of these come back into that value of the public library. Kieran, if you don't mind just wrapping us up on this one, as far as value of public library, what sort of things are you seeing. Is it that we're shouting it out, we're doing that, we're not, or just the actual issue of the public and what public value means?

[23:56]

Kieran: You know, I think this is one of those things where there's so many meanings to the word value, IOI, because it's the impact on investment, right? But, you know, the impact on investment for a library is astronomical. Like, I don't know how to do that high math. My calculator doesn't take that many numbers, you know, like,

What we provide a community and the impact we can have with things like the digital literacy, with things like any kind of literacy, being the place that you can go without spending money, that third space -to exist, to use all the digital thing. I mean, the value is there.

And then, you know, we live in a state with and a lot of different property tax laws and a lot of things and a lot of our library funding comes either through a city's sales tax or a property tax and a mill levy with a district.

And, a lot of people want to know the value of the library in dollars and not an impact. And that's really a hard one to really break down. But if you start looking at workforce development, helping with the resume, get your first e-mail account, you know, like all of these things, you go, where in your community do you go? Oh, you go to the library for that. And that kind of impact and value is really starting to be studied.

[24:17]

Kieran: I think it fits into this term wellness, right? And we look at a community's wellness, we start looking at all of these factors. And there's a lot of folks involved in looking at the wellness of communities. And when I started to look at that data, I started to find that libraries participate in many of the columns. The value of libraries, to me, of a public library and of a school library and of an academic library, they all have their place and the public library is picking up, I think, a lot of the stuff that falls through the cracks.

And our staff are doing that. We've hired social workers. We're starting to, we've hit all of these fronts.

If you can think about it, we can probably figure out how we can help you learn it. And that kind of stuff, value for library, communities, it's all connected. And all of these trends in a lot of ways are connected.

And we're providing more impact.

And our communities need it.

[26:13]

Polly: Appreciate that. Well, that's a great way for us to close. Thanks for joining us today as we explored some of the biggest trends shaping Colorado public and school libraries. From AI and digital resources, staffing, wages, neurodiversity, these aren't just buzzwords, right? They're actual shifts happening in our spaces. And I think the big question is, what do we as libraries -library staff, library personnel- do with them as we lead into the future?

[26:41]

Kate B: That's our sunshine and stories for today, y'all.

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

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.

KateC: 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.

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 U.S. government.

All: Thanks for joining us, and we'll. Catch you next time

[music]