Tech Bits and Ideas
Attend an Upcoming Tax Resources for Libraries Webinar
The 2016 tax season is coming up quickly! To help libraries serve their communities during the tax season, State Library Services and the Minnesota Department of Revenue invite you to attend the Resources for Libraries webinar on Thursday, January 14, 2016 from 10-11 a.m.
The webinar will cover:
– Minnesota Department of Revenue updates
– Common Minnesota credits
– Important tax dates
– Identity theft
– Free tax preparation sites
– Helpful resources
– Q&A
Please join the WebEx meeting online and call in at 1-888-742-5095 (toll-free) or 1-619-377-3319 using meeting number 594 801 277. The webinar will be recorded. Please contact Emily Kissane (651-582-8805) with questions or to request the recording link.
Minnesota Public Library Report Update
Thank you to everyone who completed our data element questionnaire. Your feedback informs State Library Services about what information is useful and not a burden to collect for the annual Public Library Report.
Seventy-one public library directors, survey filers and other stakeholders responded. As a result of that feedback, the 2015 survey will add questions about library boards and summer reading programs. Public use indicators for duration of wireless sessions and number of full text retrievals from databases will not be included this year. Libraries will report branch daily hours by number of hours rather than opening and closing times.
The 2015 survey opens in early February. Instructions and documentation will be updated to include all the changes for this year, including definitions for electronic resources. If you did not have the opportunity to complete the questionnaire or have questions or concerns about the Public Library Report, please contact Joe Manion (651-582-8640).
Calling All Kid Filmmakers!
Know some imaginative kids? The 90-Second Newbery Film Festival is an annual video contest in which kid filmmakers make movies that creatively tell the entire stories of Newbery-winning books in ninety seconds or less. Making the film is a fun, creative and multi-faceted educational exercise. Kids cooperatively write, storyboard, produce, direct, costume, act, frame and edit their films.
Public librarians, school librarians, parents, teachers, and scout leaders are encouraged to work with their kids to make movies. The deadline to submit films for the 2015-2016 film festival is January 10, 2016. Inspiration and more information can be found on the 90-Second Newbery website. The second annual Minnesota screening of the best local entries is on Saturday, February 27, 2016, from 3:00-4:30 pm at Hennepin County Library – Minneapolis Central. Make your free reservation here. Co-hosts of the event will be James Kennedy (90-Second Newbery founder and middle grade author of The Order of Odd-Fish) and Kelly Barnhill (Minneapolis author of The Witch’s Boy). Please download and print a promotional poster to help spread the word about this popular event. For more details, please contact Jen Verbrugge (651-582-8356).
Save the Date—Libraries Serving Youth Meetup
The Meetup is an annual opportunity for school librarians and public librarians to meet, network and share ideas. We invite you to join us at MDE on Saturday, April 16, 2016 from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. to learn about serving diverse audiences from author/librarian Cathy Camper and get creative ideas from colleagues. Registration opens February 16, 2016. Stay tuned to the State Library Services website and this listserv for more information.
Upcoming Minnesota Literacy Council AmeriCorps Opportunities
The Minnesota Literacy Council (MLC) is recruiting organizational partners for the Summer Reads VISTA program. If your library offers summer learning for children entering grades K-4 and you’d like to benefit from highly-skilled tutors, check the MLC website for more details. For questions, please contact Meghan Paul-Cook (651-251-9069).
MLC has a second VISTA program, Literacy VISTA, which provides full-time, year-round VISTA members to work behind the scenes on creating, expanding or improving literacy-focused programming for children, youth, adults or families. For more info, visit the website, attend an information session (attendance required prior to applying) and contact Ellen Bergstrom (651-251-9151). Organizations may host both a Literacy VISTA and Summer Reads VISTA.
We wish you a happy and safe holiday season!
The CMLE Publishing Team is going on a short holiday hiatus!
Publishing begins again on January 7, 2016.
Patricia Post and Sheri Olson
Do you have an idea for an imaginative and exciting program? In honor of Ezra Jack Keats’ 100th birthday, the Ezra Jack Keats Foundation is offering $500 Mini-Grants. Eligibility is limited to public schools and public libraries with a program idea reaching preschool-grade 12. According to the foundation’s Mini-Grants page, the idea should “foster creative expression, working together and interaction with a diverse community.” Grant deadline is March 31, 2016.
Some ideas from the Ezra Jack Keats Foundation:
~a mural
~a story walk
~a quilt
~a theatre production
~a newspaper or other publication
~an intergenerational activity
~a program that brings disparate communities together
For more information on the Ezra Jack Keats Mini-Grants click here.
Don’t forget to check out other valuable grant opportunities on the CMLE Grants page located on our website under “Resources”.
Image credit: http://tinyurl.com/oykz869, licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0
If you attended the Fall ITEM Conference, you still have a mental image of Jennifer Lagarde, AKA Library Girl! With her red glasses and upbeat content delivery, she exuded energy and wisdom. What I found most appealing about her was her acceptance of the fact that she (and we) should be continually evolving. If we ever get to a point of feeling we know everything we need to know, it is probably time for a new job. This just isn’t the way this dynamic world works anymore!
True to form, Library Girl hearkens back to earlier book displays she had done earlier in her career, and reflects that while they may have been works of art, it is possible that they missed the mark. Do your book displays show what you value and the purpose of your work with the end user? And, do you use your book displays to connect with your end user? If not, you may be missing out!
Take a moment to review Library Girls six tips for great book displays!
Adventures of Library Girl by Jennifer LaGarde is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.