The Great Falls Public School board unanimously approved new library standards during their Jan. 9 meeting.

The Montana Office of Public Instruction adopted new state standards for library media and information literacy in July 2021.

The state standards are based upon national library standards, according to GFPS staff.

Over the summer of 2022, district library media specialists met to collaboratively analyze, unpack and write “know-understand-dos” for the GFPS library curriculum.

All of the district’s library media specialists were invited to participate in the training, and most chose to engage in the process, according to Rachel Cutler and Beckie Frisbie, district curriculum coordinators.

The Great Falls Public Library director was also involved in process, according to Cutler and Frisbie.

The new standards were first discussed during the Dec. 12, 2022 school board meeting.

Cutler and Frisbie said that since that meeting, they’d received no public comment and no feedback on the new standards.

There are no fiscal implications at this point, according to GFPS staff.