All posts by Angie

Resource: Letters to a Young Librarian

June 8, 2017 Angie

As library people it can be useful to hear from others in the library world and learn from their experiences, especially if they’ve been in the profession for awhile! We thought this blog might be a helpful resource, particularly if you are a new librarian. (Plus she features plenty of cat pictures, always a plus!)

Librarian Jessica Olin has been in the library profession since 2003 and she writes about her experiences on her blog Letters to a Young Librarian. In this post, she’s celebrating six years of blogging about library life and shares some of her favorites posts from the past:

Emotional Labor & Mental Health in the Library “Making sure librarians have room for bad days and time to decompress is important, and I’m so glad I wrote about it.”
Nice vs. Kind “This is such an important distinction that so many people miss. Yes, librarianship is a helping profession, but we don’t help people when we are nice at the expense of all else.”
Another Thing I Didn’t Learn in Grad School: It’s All About Relationships “I wrote a detailed account on how I built a relationship with one particular person on campus to illustrate how important I think relationship building is, and I’m still really proud of that post.”

You can visit her blog here!

Books, General, Special

Librarian discovers rare page from medieval priests’ handbook

June 8, 2017 Angie

Books can hold all sorts of unexpected treasures, and this discovery is one of them!

At the University of Reading in England, special collections librarian Erica Delbecque discovered a page leaf that came “from a medieval priests’ handbook that had been printed by William Caxton, who introduced the printing press to England.” The paper had been “pasted into another book for the undignified purpose of reinforcing its spine.”

The page leaf is approximately 540 years old and was part of a handbook for priests written in Latin called “Sarum Ordinal” or “Sarum Pye” which was used by priests for “instructions on what biblical readings to use and how to dress at Mass on different religious feast days for English saints.”

Notable Date to Celebrate: June 6th is National Gardening Exercise Day

June 2, 2017 Angie

You probably already know that at CMLE, we offer a service called “Notable Dates for your Noggin” which feature special holidays and birthdays of authors, as well as publications of well-known books. In an effort to help you get more from this service, we’ve decided to select one “Notable Date” each month to feature. We will include a few fun programming and activity ideas too, all for you to use!

June 6th is National Gardening Exercise Day!

Gardening is a awesome way to exercise, and a fun way to enjoy the Minnesota summer. You may even be able to garden at your local library, since many of our CMLE members have great library gardens.

While you are out exploring or exercising in the garden, take a listen to our podcast all about library gardens! We had so much fun talking about library gardens all over the country.

If you are interested in setting up your own library garden, check out this article which has tips for getting started.

Need motivation to get moving in your own garden? Try one of these ten books to inspire your garden. And don’t miss the Smithsonian Libraries’ seed catalog collection which represents 258 catalogs and features 500 images. If you are new to gardening, this article from Farmer’s Almanac will walk you through the steps of setting up your first vegetable garden.

Finally, get your students or young people out exercising in the garden with some of these ideas from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln (Ideas include activities like alphabet gardening or planting a pizza garden!)

Happy gardening!

Books, CMLE

Join us in June! New books for CMLE’s Goodreads Book Groups

June 1, 2017 Angie

New month, new books to read in CMLE’s two Goodreads Book Groups! We hope you are able to join us. Maybe you will even be able to find some time to read outside while enjoying the summer sun!

In our CMLE Librarians Enjoying Books group we will be reading The Invisible Library by Genevieve Cogman.
“The first installment of an adventure featuring stolen books, secret agents and forbidden societies – think Doctor Who with librarian spies!”

For our CMLE Librarian Professionals group, we’ll read The Power of Habit: Why We Do What We Do in Life and Business by Charles Duhigg.
“With penetrating intelligence and an ability to distill vast amounts of information into engrossing narratives, Duhigg brings to life a whole new understanding of human nature and its potential for transformation.”

CMLE, General

It’s going to be a busy summer!

June 1, 2017 Angie

At CMLE, we are always thinking about ways that we can better assist our member libraries. That means we are often brainstorming new ideas and projects! Since this can sometimes get overwhelming, we decided to create a Summer Project List! Ours looks like this:

It’s full of ideas regarding our podcast, website, member social events, plus miscellaneous chores that never seem to get done. Summer is a great time to check those items off the to-do list!
To make the whole list less intimidating, we are breaking down each month with the accompanying items. June looks like this:

We really enjoy our work connecting our member libraries, and hope all of your summers are productive as well! Feel free to stop by and visit, we’ll be happy to talk libraries or put you to work on a project 🙂

Central Minnesota Libraries Exchange