Estes Park Public Library

Beginning in the fall of 2008, EPRHP informed both the Estes Park Public Library staff and director, as well as the Estes Park Public Library board, of gaps in their collection of local newspapers, including, most alarmingly, Estes Park Trail-Gazette and Estes Park News newspapers from 2007 and 2008, years that the current administration is responsible for, and cannot fob off on the ineptitude of previous administrations.

In fairness, patrons are most likely responsible for these holes, as they often wander off with things that aren’t attached to other things, or things that don’t trigger an alarm. And in fairness, the library sends separate copies of the Estes Park Trail-Gazette to outside contractors for binding and microfilming each year, so, after about a year, replacements for these missing issues find their way back to the library for public use, which is tremendously useful for those researchers who have 52-odd weeks to sit around, patiently waiting.

However, the Estes Park News, a free newspaper, is not bound or microfilmed. Even if patrons wandered off with 50 copies of the Estes Park News each week, it would seem at least one issue could be placed in a locked room or file cabinet, and preserved for future use. It would also seem that once these gaps were pointed out, the library, which is granted a weekly column in both newspapers, would be anxious to petition the community for replacements, since there is no other repository for these missing issues, and since it is less likely for issues to be located as time passes.

EPHRP asks the library staff every month how close they are to filling in the numerous holes in their 2007 and 2008 Estes Park News sets, and every month, EPHRP is assured that they are getting closer, and intend to write a column asking the community for help in the near future.

We have yet to see any of these holes filled, and we have yet to see the promised column asking for the community’s help in filling these holes. We doubt very seriously if the missing issues will magically regenerate themselves.

Therefore, until the Estes Park Public Library acquires the physical copies for the missing 2007 and 2008 Estes Park newspapers, or what they propose to use as replacements, they will be known world-wide as a charter member of the EPHRP Hall of Shame


Update 20 July 2009.

The following 2007 and 2008 Estes Park News issues are still missing from the Estes Park Library, despite repeated assurances that they are "working to replace them". These are the same exact issues that have been missing since this list was drawn up and presented to the library archives, the library director, and the library trustees in November 2008. One simple way to "work to replace them" would be to ask the public, for example, to include a requent for missing issues in the weekly library column that runs in both newspapers. However, their methods are much more complex and inscrutable, and appear to the untrained eye as not unlike "doing nothing to replace them except mouth empty promises."

5 January 2007
12 January 2007
2 February 2007
9 March 2007
18 May 2007
25 May 2007
16 November 2007
7 December 2007
6 June 2008
1 August 2008 (misdated 25 July 2008)