Welcome back to Season Seven of Linking Our Libraries!

Check out our full show notes page here.

We are the Central Minnesota Libraries Exchange, and our members are all types of libraries and their staff.  

Today’s episode is part of our series on Library Basics. We are working through some of the skills people need in every library. Not everyone is going to school for a Master’s degree in Library Science, and that’s fine. We want to be sure everyone has the skills to be comfortable in a library and to be successful for the community you are serving.

All libraries have three basic things they do: services, materials, and programs. This week we are talking about the third of those fundamental things: services to the community. Libraries are all serving their communities, in all sorts of ways. This is always the heart of our mission: we are there to serve the needs of the community. You might not think the work you are doing every day is special, but for the people you are serving the services you provide are unique and valuable. (Sometimes you have to also remember to tell them about all of it, so they know how cool your stuff is!)

Books are wonderful, of course; and providing materials of all sorts is the hallmark of libraries everywhere. We talked about programs a couple of weeks ago, and gave you several resources you can use to build more programs in your library. So now we have some time to look at the final piece of our library work, and we talk about the services we provide to our community members.