In 2000, the Colorado State Library published "How School Librarians Help Kids Achieve Standards: The Second Colorado Study." This follow-up study is the third Colorado study of the impact of school libraries and librarians on academic achievement, and the second study to examine their impact on student performance on the Colorado…

Public libraries deliver many benefits to their patrons, but understanding these benefits in terms of dollars-and-cents is difficult. In an effort to quantify the return on investment to taxpayers for monies invested in public libraries, the Library Research Service (LRS) initiated the study, "Public Libraries -- A Wise Investment: A Return…

For well over a decade, the "graying" of the library profession has been the subject of much discussion. To examine this issue the Library Research Service (LRS) initiated the study, "Retirement, Retention, and Recruitment: The Future of Librarianship in Colorado." During the last quarter of 2003, 1,241 librarians,…

The survey data on Colorado's academic libraries is organized by sector (i.e., public or private) and board (e.g., University of Colorado, State Board of Agriculture, Colorado Community College and Occupational Education System). There are library-by-library statistics and summary figures for boards and sectors. Full-time equivalent (FTE) student…

This submission presents sixteen issues of Fast Facts from the Library Research Service covering topics regarding academic, public, school and special libraries in Colorado, the Mountain West and Southwest Regions. The following are Fast Facts titles from 2006 (1) Colorado Public Library Performance Rankings (2004 Data); (2) How Librarians Help…

This compilation of statistics on Colorado's school media centers (LMCs) consists of three major components: (1) a 220-page tabulation of data arranged by school level and student enrollment level; (2) tables reporting statewide totals for school library statistics; and (3) tables with benchmark ratios for school library media center resources and…

Discusses findings of six recent studies on the impact of school libraries on student performance. The findings concern: (1) school library development; (2) leadership and collaboration activities that foster information literacy; and (3) the use of instructional technology to extend the reach of the library program beyond the walls of the school…

This study provides evidence of the positive impact of library media centers (LMCs) on academic achievement in 221 Colorado public schools during the 1988-89 school year. The importance of the library media specialist's instructional role is also verified. In contrast to previous research on the relationship, this study uses schools rather than…