An ongoing state grant to the Longmont Library is helping to pay for access to ancestry databases, 24/7 tutoring and more.
On Tuesday, the Longmont City Council approved an intergovernmental agreement between the city and state for a library grant that the library receives annually. Amounts are determined by the population served, and Longmont Public Library was granted $27,678 for 2022-2023.
The grant can be used to acquire a variety of educational resources, and Longmont’s will do just that, according to Library Director Jon Solomon.
The grant covers ongoing access to Ancestry.com and Heritage Quest, popular resources for ancestry databases.
It also goes toward Tutor.com, which provides 24/7 one-on-one tutoring primarily used by students but available for all ages. The library signed up for Tutor.com during the pandemic and the program has proven to be very successful, according to Solomon.
Additionally, the money will be used to acquire children and teen audiobooks and ebooks through Overdrive, known to users by the app’s name, Libby. The library maintains a subscription to Overdrive through its main budget, but as ebooks and audiobooks can be expensive the grant helps fund additional acquisitions.
Another purchase funded by the state grant are Playaways. The devices are preloaded with a book or two and were more popular before people could carry books on their cell phones, but Solomon said they are still popular for children who don’t have their own electronic devices.
The state grant is a small portion of the library’s material acquisition budget, but the library director was glad all these additional projects continue to be funded by the state.
“I’m excited that we get it and are able to add on to those collections for people,” Solomon said. “That’s always a good thing.”
Because of the many different ways these resources are accessed by library patrons, it’s hard to quantify just how many people benefit from this specific state grant. However, Solomon noted that all of these programs are popular and see regular use.
