New Books in School

New Books in School
By: Aubrey Mangram

Michelle Provinzano, librarian and media tech, at Pueblo County High School. In January of 2020 she was hired and got the idea to renovate the library. “I had the idea in January of 2020, but at that time I was mainly just doing a lot of cleaning out and getting rid of stuff that had probably been here for about 30 years,” said Michelle Provinzano. When COVID  hit, funding was cut and she was unable to do more, but the next school year brought new changes for the library. Provinzano said “When we came in this year Principle Dilka said that they were going to morph the library into more classrooms and so I needed to move all of the library books down to the south end of the library to make it more welcoming for the students here.”

She then began the long process of weeding and renovating the library, and received the grant in order to do so. “It was a two part process. I contacted a library organization here in Colorado. And a woman named Anna came down and kinda helped me organize how to do a major weeding, so we’ve gotten rid of a lot of books and VHS’s. We donated a lot of books to books again, we donated some to teachers, different students also came in and got what they wanted. I have given a lot of books to the homeless, and there’s a town  in southeastern Colorado that I’m going to be donating a lot of my books to their library. So that was the first part of the process and then I applied for a state grant from the Colorado State Library. I just kinda threw my hat in the ring and didn't really expect to win and since no other schools applied for the grant they granted all of the money to me, so I got $5,580 to purchase all new books for PCHS library,” said Provinzano. 

Provinzano hopes to make a few different improvements that make the library more welcoming to everyone to enjoy. “I’m hoping to get some new titles in. I’ve made things to where it’s easier to access for students and I’m hoping to get feedback from the students here at PCHS as to what kind of books. I wanna bring in some graphic novels, I want to get some updated titles, fiction, what kids are interested in reading, and I'll probably send out some type of email to the student body to get some feedback to see what they're interested in,” said Provinzano. She hopes that this will help encourage kids to get excited about reading and go to the library to browse around and find something that they’re interested in at any level that they are at.

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