Check it Out:

What Happened in 2019?

2019 was another big year for CMLE and our members!

One of our biggest achievements was getting the LSTA grant that let us buy VR/AR kits for our members to use. It’s been so great!!! If you want to borrow them, check out the information right here. And we have a training session Jan. 30. Join us! (We’re buying lunch for everyone!)

We also have our standard mini-grants and scholarships for members. And people: you guys blew the doors off of this budget line last year!!!! I am SO HAPPY about this!!!! Our purpose is to help support our members, and we want to do this in a variety of different ways. If up to $300 will help you to get some new books, bring in an author, go to a conference, add to your makerspace, or something else – we want to help you.

We held a bunch of member events, and it was so great to see people IRL and to chat about library stuff. We want to talk with you, of course; and we also want to help facilitate your discussions with other library people across the system. There are a lot of these coming up, and we would love to see you at any of them! If you join our Meetup.com group, Relaxed Readers, you will get some messages automatically. And, of course, everything will be in our Friday newsletter; so be sure you are subscribed!

What articles did people read on our site from 2019? An interesting mixed bag of things were the most-read!

And what was happening in our podcasts? We had a lot of listens!

Here are the most popular episodes of Linking Our Libraries:

  • Episode 501: Cataloging
  • Episode 502: Customer Service
  • Episode 507: Answering Tech Questions
  • Episode 505- Collection Development
  • Episode 504: Policies and Procedures

Here are the most popular episode of Reading With Libraries:

  • Episode 409: Zines
  • Episode 307- Regency Historical Romances
  • Episode 304: Young Adult
  • Episode 401: Tea, Cookies, and Murder
  • Episode 314: Weird Fiction
  • Episode 301 Cooking and Food Books
  • Bonus Episode 316 Reading Challenges
  • Episode 311: Literary Mysteries
  • Episode 302: Metaphysical and Philosophical Books
  • Episode 303: Plain, Amish, and Mennonite Books

Our Book Bites is a quickie look at a book, and they have been small but mighty for our listeners.

  • Michael Perry books
  • Jonathan Livingston Seagull
  • Emergency Contact
  • The Silence of the Girls
  • Outlander
  • Beach Town

We are looking forward to a wonderful 2020 with you all!!

Remember our mission statement: partnering with libraries for visioning, advocating, and education. Our vision statement is: We partner with our members to help them provide quality service to the communities they serve, using research, advocacy, education, and network building.

All of that means one thing: We’re here for you!!!

Let’s keep working together to build a wonderful community of all 300+ libraries across our system! We are so happy to be here with you.