Library Educational Materials Project In northwest Colorado, Garfield, Mesa, Rio Blanco and Moffat Counties have experienced both the benefits and costs of the energy exploration and extraction activity in recent years. This area is within the 10 county service area of NW Colorado that Colorado Big Country RC&D Council (CBC). While drawing up the 2007 Plan of Work, CBC included a project outline for donating educational materials to local libraries in their area. In the spring of 2007, the Council approved the Library Educational Resource Project. The project concept was that farm and ranch families in the four counties most effected by the surge in energy activity, could mitigate the impact by learning new approaches to (1) noxious weed control; (2) farm / ranch business techniques; (3) water resource management and (4) renewable energy via practical applications for farms & ranches. This “home study” opportunity would be available to them through their local branch libraries. The four-county area has 19 library branches. A list of 20 books per library was drawn up and funding to cover the substantial cost of these books was contributed by several Energy Industry companies. Delta Petroleum, Williams Co., Bill Barrett Corp., and EnCana Oil and Gas (USA), Inc. stepped up and supported our project. EnCana was especially generous and funded 84% of the project. Colorado Big Country is getting the word out to farm and ranch families of the availability of the reference books by working with Colorado Farm Bureau as well as local high schools, colleges and newspapers. The effectiveness of the project will be evaluated by researching the library district computerized “borrowing” records at each county library district.	Colorado Big Country RC&D Board member, Frank Kenny (right) and NRCS Coordinator, Wayne Jipsen display some of the 380 reference books donated to the 19 libraries.