Lona Oerther is the librarian with the Colorado Mental Health Hospital in Pueblo.
Lona Oerther is passionate about two things - fostering community and gathering information. As the librarian for the Colorado Mental Health Hospital in Pueblo (CMHHIP), Lona oversees three libraries and a hospital archive. Patients, visiting students and staff get to use the libraries, which are filled with more than just books. Lona helps CMHHIP’s teaching staff with research, publishing their studies and purchasing academic journals to stay up to date on their profession. It’s about more than just formal education, though - they also have music, a new graphic novel section and movies. “I want the patients, staff, even the groundskeepers to know they can rent a movie to take home and watch with their kids.”
Lona is most proud of the community she’s helped foster. “My job is to make each patient’s stay at CMHHIP a little bit more comfortable and a little bit more normal.” Lona recognized one of the patients only rented movies because she had a lot of trouble reading. Lona received grant funding to create a graphic novel collection, which has since become one of the most popular sections of the library. The patient who couldn’t read other books in the library started renting 3-4 per week because graphic novels are easier to comprehend.
There’s one more perk to the graphic novel collection Lona curates - a focus on equity, diversity and inclusion. More often than not, graphic novels center LGBTQ+ and people of color in their stories. Lona orders novels from various cultural backgrounds, and those that focus on important historical events, such as Japanese internment.
Lona also enjoys digging into the archive, which stores patient journals and documents since the creation of the hospital, formerly the Colorado Insane Asylum, in the 1800s. The media and interested individuals from across the world have requested to read historical documents, which Lona scans and sends off.
The throughline of her career is making a positive impact. “I realized I could do a job where I could talk to one patient and make one person’s day better. They are able to talk to someone who isn’t an authority figure – just someone to talk with.” A librarian’s dream is to get a job and keep it until they retire – CMHHIP has already benefited from her tenure and hopes to keep her as long as she’ll stay.
From the Frontlines highlights the people who work for the Office of Civil and Forensic and Mental Health (OCFMH), operates Colorado’s two mental health hospitals, the Forensic Services Division and the Division of Mental Health Transition Living. The office provides a continuum of mental health care that includes pre-trial restoration services, inpatient hospitalization and, soon, transition homes for community-based care.