In an historic election on November 6, 2012, Manitou Springs residents voted to have their local library become part of Pikes Peak Library District. The approved Issue 2B will raise property taxes by up to 4 mills in Manitou Springs, generating $240,000 in 2013 and allowing Manitou Springs Public Library to join PPLD and its 14 other facilities serving El Paso County.
“The positive election results for the Manitou Springs Public Library to join Pikes Peak Library District means that we are combining over a hundred years of service in each of our two library systems together,” said PPLD Executive Director Paula Miller. “With the passage of this issue, we have literally made history together. We are excited to welcome Manitou Springs into the Pikes Peak Library District. This will provide better and more consistent library service for all residents within both of our service areas.”
The Manitou Library was among proposed budget cuts in Manitou Springs before citizens petitioned to place Issue 2B on the ballot. MSPL was excited to hear that library service to Manitou Springs residents would not only continue, but be expanded.
“This is an exciting time in the life of our library and we’re thrilled to become a part of Pikes Peak Library District,” said MSPL Executive Director Margaret Morris. “This merger into such a progressive, nationally-recognized library district allows us to not only provide an abundance of additional library services to the Manitou Springs community, but to keep those services in place for many years to come. This ballot initiative always has been about sustainable library services in Manitou Springs, and the citizens recognized and showed their support with a favorable outcome.”
While the transition will not be officially effective until 2013, PPLD will soon begin issuing cards to all Manitou Springs library patrons who wish to begin using PPLD services immediately. Manitou patrons will still need their MSPL card to check out materials from the Manitou Library until the end of the year.
A celebration of this historic transition will occur at MSPL in January.
Pikes Peak Library District employee Vincent Colicchio never considered himself an artist, but he became one nonetheless, through the curiosity and caring he exhibited at his job in Circulation at PPLD’s downtown Penrose Library. According to Colicchio, “It began by me saying, ‘That’s a treasure. That shouldn’t be thrown out.’ " Colicchio handles books for a living, so he sees a lot of them on a daily basis. But he recently found his love of books extending to damaged books that were being discarded. “I, like other people who work in libraries, get heartbroken when I see books in the recycling bin. I think it’s a waste,” he said.
When Colicchio turned his eye to the bare shelves behind the checkout desk at Penrose Library, the altered book project began to take shape. “I was telling my supervisor, ‘You know we could jazz it up back there.’ I said, ‘We’ve got this space, we should do some displays.’ “Then around Christmastime, my supervisor said, ‘I like your ideas. Go ahead and make a display and let me know if you need anything.’ “I hadn’t really intended to do anything myself, so I was like, ‘Oh no! Now I actually have to do something!’ So I did some altered books around the holidays in a matter of just a few days just to have something there.” Colicchio said he found books in the Library’s Catalog on how to make altered books, and then he found “quotations by writers that I liked and really reflected the spirit of a book and its relationship to a reader. And those became the focal point. By just contemplating that quote, vague visions and imagery would come up, and I would try to follow it and let it grow as I was creating each altered book.” “It just lends itself to being at the library. It’s recycling and it’s creativity inspired by books we have in our catalog that have the techniques on how to do it.”
Colicchio recently donated two of his altered books to the Colorado Library Education Foundation for their upcoming silent auction to raise funds for scholarships for Colorado library employees to attend Colorado Library Association and division workshops and the annual CAL conference. Colicchio’s art speaks to the great potential of books -- even discarded books--to enrich and change lives. The images below show the extreme care and detail Colicchio brings to his work. The work is even more impressive in person and is currently on display in the Friends Bookstore in East Library. 
At a ceremony on Saturday, July 21 in Denver’s Seawell Grand Ballroom, Pikes Peak Library District Multimedia Producer Jamey Hastings was awarded a 2012 Heartland Emmy Award in the Interstitial Program category for her piece, “Colorado Springs Beat: The News Photography of Stan Payne.”
The short documentary chronicles the work of Stan Payne, a Gazette Telegraph employee from 1947 to 1976, and was based on research by PPLD Special Collections Assistant Manager Dennis Daily. The Heartland Chapter Emmy Awards represent excellence in television and media production.
“This is a huge honor,” Hastings said. “There were a lot of great submissions and I’m so thrilled that our piece was chosen.”