James LaRue - myliblog

A famous Wyoming bumper sticker reads: “Lord, Please Give Me One More Boom — This Time I Promise Not To P*ss It Away.” Boom and bust defines the West. Some of us get caught on the wrong side of each end of the cycle. The smarter ones learn from it. They hedge their bets. They invest their money in things they can sustain. I’ve been a library administrator for almost 45 years. This is the first time I’ve worked in a district that got 50% or more of its revenue from the natural gas sector. It makes you cautious. It encourages you to save. In 2026, library revenues fell by over $830,000, all due to a decrease in natural gas valuation. In 2006, Garfield County voters approved a 1.0 mill levy for libraries. Its purpose was to build or renovate branches in each of the county’s six municipalities. The money also provided some operational support. That’s why we have six beautiful libraries, one in every town in the county. We keep them up, too. In 2027, those bonds (basically mortgages for pub...

When I was a child, my mother did three things that turned me into a reader. First, she signed me up for a library card. Later, she enrolled me in the Landmark series of American biographies for children, aimed at kids 10-15. There were similar series: Bobbs-Merrill’s “Childhood of Famous Americans,” which ran from the 1930s through the 1960s, had famously orange bindings and were also popular. Third, and maybe most important, my mother belonged to the Book of the Month club, which resulted in a modest home library. My mother knew what she was doing. It happens that there’s a lot of research about all of this. I often cite a University of Nevada, Reno study conducted back in 2010. It examined 27 countries over a span of 20 years. The surprising finding was that regardless of parental income or education, just having 500 books in the home was as good as having two parents with Master’s degrees. Early exposure to literature boosts the developing brain. It grows vocabulary. It builds empa...

In 2017 a sudden drop in tax revenues from oil and gas properties precipitated a library crisis. Almost overnight, a third of the staff lost their jobs. In 2019, Garfield County voters approved an ongoing mill levy of 1.5. Included in that ballot language was a series of promises: restoring library hours; keeping our libraries well-maintained and in good repair; retaining qualified staff; providing books, technology and materials; providing educational classes and events, including literacy programs to help children and teens learn to read and do homework, train veterans and job seekers for new careers; prepare students for college and careers; help seniors fight isolation and prevent the effects of aging; and finally, to do all that “with citizen oversight and an independent annual audit of expenditures.” I thought it would be interesting, just as today’s crop of election-seekers are making their own promises, to highlight how well we’ve kept ours. Our Citizens Oversight committee, wh...