Our Impact

The Lowndes County Imagination Library has been making a steady contribution to the early reading skills of children under five in Lowndes County and Columbus City since 2014.

We are working continually to spread the word about our FREE program, sustain funding and track our progress. We are partnered with the Columbus Municipal School District and the Lowndes County School District to better track our program's impact on incoming Kindergarteners’ reading skills.

In 2019, the Lowndes County Imagination Library was able to provide over 17,000 books directly into the hands of PreK children. Overall, we have seen over 1,800 children graduate from our program and have mailed out over 86,000 books.

Research from HQ

Champions for the Imagination Library program have worked diligently to compile and document its impact on Kindergarten Literacy Readiness in its participants. Studies available at imaginationlibrary.com give a very clear picture of how beneficial the program can be to participants and their family members. These studies have shown that "parents read aloud more to their children and were more comfortable reading as a result of Dolly Parton’s Imagination Library" and that they also "... reported their children owned more books as a result of participating in the program." 

The research also shows that "[p]arents believed their children were more interested in reading due to receiving the books each month" and that the "Dolly Parton’s Imagination Library had promise with respect to developing children’s early literacy skills, as participants had more advanced skills than their classmates who did not participate in the program."

The Logic Model to the right showcases the specific strategies utilized by Dolly Parton's Imagination Library to achieve short-term, intermediate, and long-term goals. Click on the image for more detail. 

The summarized details above, along with each research study, can be found at https://imaginationlibrary.com/news-resources/research/ .