Let’s talk!

We are approaching the end of our strategic plan, and we need some ideas on new directions to take for the next three years.

Our mission is to serve our members, and to share information resources for everyone. We have been expanding the kinds of information sources we provide – from the weekly newsletter,  to the library training podcast, the books/reader’s advisory podcast, the online training programs, the member events, and more.

And now we need to hear from our members. What do you want? What is going to be valuable for you? What kind of library information would be helpful to you?

We know there are a few specific needs across the system:

• better connections between libraries;
• more skills, information, and training in advocacy for yourself and your library;
• an easier way to build library skills of all sorts.

We will be sending out a system-wide survey to everyone, to find out what kinds of ideas and needs you have. For now, we want to build on the work our Board has started, and set up some focus groups to chat with people.

If you have not participated in a focus group before, it might sound intimidating. It’s not. The idea is just to gather a few people together to chat about libraries of the future, and some ideas on how we can continue to work together to make CMLE libraries well-supported and fantastic areas of service to their communities! (No pressure here – we aren’t going to solve all the issues of the library world in an hour session. We are just going to get some ideas and work on being more fabulous!)

If you can come join us for an hour or so, we will give you food and enjoy chatting with you! Let us know what day and time would work for you in November. We will work out some locations to reach out to people across our twelve counties. And if you know of anyone else who would like to express ideas for CMLE, forward this on to them. We are looking to have opinions from anyone who wants to share!