Ep. 212 Exactly What or Who is "State Pubs"? -- Introducing the CO State Publications Library!

Episode Summary: 

Join Kate Compton as she talks with Samantha Hager and Miranda Doran-Myers from the Colorado State Publications Library, who share the library’s mission of providing free, permanent access to Colorado state government documents. They highlight surprising and valuable resources—from historical collections to issue briefs, research guides, and kid-friendly materials—and offer tips for navigating government information. Get inspired to share the hidden gems the “State Pubs” have with your community.  

 Outline:

01:06 - Meet the Team 

05:38 - What is the State Publications Library? 

08:45 - Not to miss tools and collections   

12:43 – Mindset for searching 

15:11 – Trends in document searches 

18:29 – New initiatives and ways to collaborate  

Resources: 

State Publications Website  

State Publications Catalog 

State Publications Blog 

State Publications Topic Guides  

Phone: 720-955-5230 

Address: 180 Sheridan Blvd, Denver, CO 80226-8101 

Hours: Monday - Friday 9:00am - 4:00 pm 

Email: spl@cde.state.co.us

Transcript

[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.  

[00:20] Kate C 

Hey, it's Kate C., and I am so excited today for our episode. I'm joined by Miranda and Samantha from the Colorado State Publications Library, an office inside the Colorado State Library. We're going to dive into the hidden gems and resources school and public librarians can use from the state pubs, as it's also known.  

So to start, tell me your title, a little bit about your role, and also how you got where you are. I always find the library journey really fascinating. I think it's important for us all to think about how we can find satisfaction in different roles using this career we call librarianship. 

[01:06] Miranda 

Sure. So my name is Miranda Dorn-Myers. I'm the Technical Services Librarian for the State Publications Library. In this role, I work a lot on digitizing our collection. So we have a lot of old, interesting documents in the state publications that we want to get online. I acquire born digital state publications. So some of the newer stuff that the state publishes is only available online. So I grab those, and then I do some cataloging, and I also write our blog. 

And then my path to get here, I guess I've kind of always been in government libraries. I've worked in libraries for about 10 years now. My very first job was as a cataloger at the Bureau of Land Management Library, so a federal library. And then I bounced over to the State Library for the first time. I worked for the Library Research Service, and I just loved working for the Colorado State Library. And being able to kind of have a higher-level view of libraries in Colorado and also being able to work with libraries and library workers all around Colorado was just so fun. So then I bounced back to Bureau of Land Management to be a librarian, work on a contract with them for a little bit. And then after that, I came to the State Publications Library. I couldn't stay away from the State Library for too long. So, and I've been in this role for about four years. 

[02:21] Samantha  

Hi, so I'm Samantha Hager. I'm, so my title is the Outreach and Digital Repository Librarian for the State Publications Library, but in my heart, I'm really a reference librarian, to be honest. And my role, I have several different roles, but one of them is helping answer reference questions, so helping people do research about Colorado's state government. 

Part of my job is we try to make state information as easily accessible to everyone as we can. Because government agencies are notorious for having difficult websites. Like they put a lot of things out there, but you can't necessarily find it. So we collect things in our library and try to make them accessible by, we catalog them. We make user guides on our website. And Miranda's blog helps publicize. 

So we're trying to make the information available as much as we can. So that's my main mission, I guess, and role. The other thing I do is, since so many things are published digitally now instead of in print, so I help manage our digital repository, which is the system where we save and preserve all of our digital state documents. And the other thing I do is we have a system of depository libraries around the state. So the idea is we send print publications to them and share our catalog records with them. And I work with the depository librarians too. So that's my other hat. 

And my path is, as I said, I'm just a reference librarian to the core. I can't resist an unanswered question. So, what made me want to be a librarian was just the search for information, like, oh, that's a really interesting question. Where can I find that? And I like helping people with research. So, I started working in large public libraries, and my first ever job, like as a page, was government information. So I think I started that trend early on. So, I've worked in public libraries. I was a business librarian, and I worked with federal government documents, and I did. I also worked at Rice University Library down in Texas for a while, which was a patent and trademark library, which was kind of fun because I did classes for inventors, like how to do their research to see if their idea was truly unique, you know. And then when we moved up to Colorado, I've been with the State Publications Library ever since. One of the things that draws me to government information is just that I feel one of the tenets of democracy is having a transparent government, and government materials are free and they're there for the citizens to figure out what we're spending their money on, right? So that's a passion of mine. 

[05:29] Kate C 

We need more passionate people like you, Samantha.  

[05:34] Miranda 

You might be the only person to say that a patent and trademark office was really fun. 

[05:38] Kate C 

That's so true, too.  

Okay, so tell me, we've got a little idea just based on your roles, but what is the State Publications Library and what resources do you hold that maybe a school or public librarian would be interested in? 

[05:57] Miranda 

So I mean, I love our mission, which is we provide, providing Coloradans with free, permanent public access to state government documents. To follow up with what Samantha was saying, government transparency and access to government information is so important just to create accountability for government. And it's also information like reports that taxpayers are funding. And so it's really great to be able to provide free access to them. So essentially we're a collection of information published by the state government that is intended for use by Colorado's public. So I think, yeah, that's the short answer. 

And we were also what's kind of something else that is kind of cool about us is that we were actually established by the Colorado legislature. So our library is written into the Colorado Constitution, Samantha, or just the law? 

[06:42] Samantha  

It's just the law. 

[06:46] Miranda 

Okay, great. In order to provide that transparency and provide the Coloradans with access to government information. 

[06:52] Samantha  

Just a little bit about the materials that we get. So it's their reports and anything that a state, a Colorado state agency produces that's meant for public eyes. So it could be an annual report. It could be consumer health information. It might be, we get things like on identity fraud, protection, things like that. So things from the attorney general's office, we get things about different species of wildlife. So it runs sort of the whole gamut of topics. A lot of people think that government just is about regulations and taxes, you know, but actually they're studying everything and they're publishing reports on all different topics. 

[07:38] Miranda 

Something that was really surprising when I first started working with the State Publications Library was how much information and science, like new information that our state government is producing. That was something that was really cool to me to kind of dig into and like see what my taxes are paying for. And it's like funding some really interesting and like great things and things that are really helpful for the people who live in Colorado. 

[08:04] Samantha  

Yeah, and we have a rich historical collection. So we've got things that go back to even we have a few territorial documents, but a lot of things that go back to 1876 and when Colorado was became a state. So there are some very interesting historical things things in there too. So we're a good source for primary sources, I would say. History of Colorado and everything really, wildlife, mines, agriculture, you name it. 

[08:34] Kate C 

So if someone's doing a project on anything in Colorado, you've got something that's probably for them. I love that. 

[08:42] Miranda 

Yeah, get the civics teachers over to us. We can help. 

[08:45] Kate C 

Are there any specific collections or tools that you think people often overlook and should be using? 

[08:52] Samantha  

So I've been thinking about this and one of the. Some of the most used documents that we have are these things. They're called issue briefs that are done by the Colorado Legislative Council staff. The Legislative Council is they're done by nonpartisan researchers about topics that happen to be that the legislators are working on. But as a result, they're really good. They're short overviews of pertinent topics. So I think those would be really good for like kids who are doing debates or, any research topic in schools. And so we collect copies of those, and then they're also on the Colorado General Assembly website. But I think that's something that not many people know about, but it's a really good resource. 

[09:45] Miranda 

Yeah, they're always really fascinating whenever I come across those. I think something else that's on our website, Samantha has put together some really great research guides and user guides for state government information. So if you're interested in a certain topic or you just kind of want to explore, going to our website and looking at the user guides or the research guides, that's a really great place to start digging around some state government information because pretty much most of the questions that we get asked frequently, Samantha has made a really great research guide for them. 

[10:13] Kate C 

It's not your first rodeo. And then, so if somebody was interested in a research guide or was interested in one of these briefs or maybe an original territorial document, what kind of support does the Pubs Library offer as far as kind of helping, training, anything like that? 

[10:25] Samantha 

Yeah, so we're open to the public and we take walk-ins. We have a large parking lot with free parking, which is good. And we take reference questions by telephone and e-mail. Most of ours come in through e-mail. But yeah, we're happy to help anybody with a research question. And do our best to, if we don't have something that they're looking for, we do the best to find a good referral for people. 

[11:00] Kate C 

And we should say you're located at the Talking Book Library location in Denver. 

11:04] Samantha 

That's right. We share a building with the Colorado Talking Book Library. It's at 180 Sheridan. 

[11:11] Kate C 

And we'll put that in the show notes too, just so people can find you. And are the depository libraries also open to the public or how does that work? 

[11:21] Samantha 

Yeah, so most of them are college and university libraries. We do have a couple of public libraries. So the one down Pueblo City County Public Library District is one of our depository libraries and Mesa County Public Library is too, and the rest are universities. 

So, but all of the state government information is available to the public. So even if you're not a student at the university, you can still go in and. 

[11:49] Miranda 

Yeah, it's a really great way to make sure that people don't have to always be driving all the way to Denver to get a hold of some of the information that we have. And then we also, too, we are in the interlibrary statewide interlibrary loan system. So you can request items through your public library. If there's something that we don't have digitized and you want a physical copy of it, we can send it out to you that way, too. 

[12:09] Kate C 

You guys are thinking of it all, so accessible. I love it. 

[12:11] Miranda 

Yeah, I mean, of course, we love talking about this stuff. So if anybody has a question, they're always free. Please come ask us. We would love to help with any research question that you have about the state of Colorado. 

[12:22] Kate C 

So I've heard about these research guides. You've got a website. Do you have any tips for kind of navigating around and finding information? Are you one of the government websites that are notoriously difficult? 

[12:43] Miranda 

We hope not. Yeah, I think for government information, in general, an exploratory attitude will get you really far. So it's not going to be the same as searching Google or maybe even a public library catalog. I think searching through our documents, it's going to take a little more creativity and willingness to be flexible with what you're searching and kind of think outside the box. Something that I think Samantha actually taught me is to always think about who else, like who, which state agency or which part of the state government might be interested in the information that you're searching for. 

If you're looking up like water rights or something like that, you could start with the Department of Natural Resources. That's like an obvious place to start. But you could also find information from the General Assembly or the state legislator, the legislature, because lawmakers also like to have this information. You could look for items from the Department of Public Health, like they could have information about water. A lot of the universities, we hold their research report. They have water centers, water research centers. 

So yeah, I think just kind of getting curious and poking around, starting with our, our online catalog as kind of like the base to start searching and then being willing to try different search terms and poke around and look, click on subject headings, things like that, just to see, see what else is out there and see what other subject headings or search terms you might want to use to find the information that you need. 

[14:04] Samantha 

And I have to recommend visiting a blog too, Miranda's blog posts. And we've been blogging, I can't remember when we first started, but it's for many, many years. There's a lot of information on the blog. 

It goes back 20 years. Yeah, but it's a good way because they're very detailed. They're not just, you know, two sentences, but a lot of them are sort of expose on a particular topic. 

So, If you go back to Water Rights, you can search the blog and find an article and it talks about different sources in particular to go to. So sometimes that's a really good way to get a start on a research topic too. It gives you clues about where to start. 

[14:42]Kate C 

I know it was very helpful in last year's podcast, we started with a fun art fact, and I used all of your blogs for finding historical things. So thank you so much. 

[14:52] Miranda 

I'm so happy that they're useful. I'm not just writing out into the abyss, you know? 

[15:00] Kate C 

So, you talked a little bit about popular questions. Are there things that you feel like librarians or educators are coming to you for specifically, or types of publications they're looking for? 

[15:11] Samantha 

I don't know. We don't really know if it's specifically librarians or teachers who are contacting us. We know, we can look and see, for our digital documents, what types of things people are looking at. 

Other librarians sometimes will, so there's a network of government documents librarians in Colorado, and sometimes one of the librarians will know if it's a state document, they know to come to us and ask if it's something we have. 

But the more popular things, we get a lot of questions about, well, and a lot of use, people are interested in wildfire protection like how to protect your home from wildfire. One of the most popular things is like swelling soils. You know, Colorado, people are having horrible foundation problems, you know, and so learning about why. Lots of the issue briefs, like I was telling you, like things about water rights, marijuana regulation, special, you know, education funding, things like that. We also get a lot of hits on school bus driver manuals. So it's just a little bit all over the place. 

But yeah, we can't really tell, most people don't identify as a, say, oh, I'm a librarian or a teacher. We just kind of know in general what people are using. 

[16:37] Miranda 

Because the Department of Education is also a state agency, we have a lot of information about educators and about education. So we also get a lot of asks for education statistics, like graduation rates and dropout rates, things like that. We've also gotten some pretty cute letters and emails from kids who are doing civics projects and have to find primary resources. So that's always really fun. It can be hard to level that because a lot of the items that we have are written for adults. So we do have a few items that are specific to kids, but it can be daunting to send like a fourth grader, you know, an annual report from some state agency. You hope that their teacher is going to help them kind of break down the the report a little bit. We also have some cool books that are just kind of facts about Colorado, and those are really popular too. So I think Colorado Day by Day is one of the books. There's the Colorful Colorado series that got published for a few years. They're kind of older now, but they're still really fun to look at. They have nice pictures. 

We also have a lot of books published by Parks and Wildlife or Department of Natural Resources about dinosaurs, and I feel like those can span ages. So if there's a librarian or educator interested in teaching about fossils, we have this really great book called like Darren and Denise Discover Denver's Dinosaurs or something like that. And it's written for kids, but I love reading it. And I learned a lot about Denver's dinosaurs, like that the first Stegosaurus fossil was discovered here, which I didn't know. And so then I think that weekend I went to go visit it. There's all kinds of hidden gems in our collection. 

[18:14] Kate C 

This summer's theme is Unearthing a story, kind of with an archaeology and dinosaur theme. So perfect timing. Well done, Miranda. 

[18:16] Miranda  

Oh, thank you. We can put together a really great book list for that. We've got a lot of dinosaur content. 

[18:29] Kate C 

Yay. I love it. Awesome. So do you guys have any kind of future goals or initiatives that you're working on that you're excited to share? 

[18:37] Miranda 

Something big that we're working on right now is kind of updating our digital resources. So the catalog, our digital repository, and then we also sort of rehauled the website, and that was part of CDE's larger website rehaul. So I think, yeah, just making our digital resources more accessible. So whether that's just getting more information online so that folks can access it without having to call us or come to the library. Digitizing new things, that's a big priority for me always. 

And also, accessible in the sense that we want to comply well with Colorado's new law to make sure that state government information is accessible to people who can't read standard print well. So I think that those those have been pretty big initiatives that we've been working towards. 

[19:18] Samantha 

We don't have a big budget for digitization, but little by little, you know, we would like to digitize all of the historical collection if we can and get it out there so, you know, people don't have to drive here to see the the state constitution or something, some of the older, really more rare items. 

[19:41] Miranda 

And I think too, it's just kind of education of everybody, our government, state government colleagues, the public, and about the importance of open government and accessibility to these government documents. I'm not sure it's something, I think it's something that people would miss if it wasn't there, right? But, you know, you can notice, like Samantha was saying, when it's difficult to find a piece of information that you need online, you notice that, but I think you don't notice when it's easy to get to. 

[20:06] Samantha 

So just making sure that folks understand our mission and why we're here and why it's so important that we have this permanent access to government documents. 

[20:15] Kate C 

Are there any ideas that you have about ways that libraries or librarians can collaborate more closely with you? 

[20:26] Samantha 

I think there are a couple of different ways. I mean, if you're interested in becoming a depository library, that's one way you can choose to only be, we have what we call virtual depository libraries so that you just commit to loading catalog records for digital state publications into your catalog and having a designated person who's like a specialist in state government information who can help patrons. 

And what we do is we post our catalog records. Every month we put up a set of the newest titles so people can just download those for free. And you don't, that's another thing. You don't have to be a depository library. You can just go grab our records if you want to from our website. And if you prefer to have print things, there aren't very many things that go out, but some of the fun things from the, Division of Parks and Wildlife get distributed into all of the libraries around the state. So you could be a depository library. 

Another thing is, if you're interested in learning more about state information, we're happy to come give training sessions about, you could tell us a specific topic you're interested in, like, oh, business resources or disaster planning information, or we can just tell you general stuff about, hey, here's all this cool state stuff, state government stuff, here's how you find it. So we're happy to work with librarians or teachers. 

[21:51] Kate C 

Spread the mission. Bring them out. 

Well, I have one last question. And I think we've, I feel like you've given me a million different things to look at, but if a librarian only had 5 minutes to explore resources, where should they start? 

[22:07]Miranda 

Well, I think Samantha already mentioned this, but I think the blog is a really good place to start. It's pretty easily searchable by the keywords. You'll pull up a lot of information. And yeah, it's just a good place to get going and find the resources that you need and kind of get off on the right track. So you're not kind of staring at an empty catalog search bar thinking, what's my type? It'll just kind of get you going in a good research direction. And it's also just kind of interesting to poke around, I think. I've been writing it since 2021, but like Samantha said, it goes back to 2006. So there's all, there's a ton of really good information in there. 

[22:42] Samantha  

Yeah, and I think even if you don't have a specific topic in mind, it's a good way to browse and then you can see just the wide variety of topics that we have. It'll give you a clue to sort of what's in our library collection. 

[22:57] Kate C 

Well, thank you both for all of the work you do to keep government documents accessible and people able to know what's happening in their government. 

And thanks for your time today to share it all. I really appreciate it. 

[23:09] Miranda and Samantha  

Thank you for inviting us. I appreciate the time. 

[23:13] Closing  

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 libraries learn.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.  

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.  

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.  

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

[Music]