All posts by Angie

Check this out:, CMLE, Communication, Public, Resources, School Media Specialist, Training

Interested in adding sign language to your storytime? Join CMLE for ALA's webinar!

macmillan-livenup_300indHave you been looking for new ideas to spice up your storytime? Sign language with babies and toddlers can be a fun addition! It encourages participation and can make the experience more interactive and entertaining.

ALA is offering a webinar “Liven Up Baby and Toddler Storytimes with Sign Language Workshop” and CMLE wants to extend an invitation to any interested librarians that may want to participate! If we can get just two additional people that would like to come view this webinar from CMLE Headquarters, we will qualify for the group rate for the workshop, which is $40 instead of $60.

The online workshop is 90 minutes long and begins at 1:30pm on Wednesday, Dec. 7th.

At the completion of this workshop, you will be able to:

  • List 3 benefits of using sign language with young children
  • Describe at least 3 ways to use sign language in baby and toddler storytimes
  • Demonstrate 3 ASL signs appropriate for use in baby or toddler storytimes

You can find more information about the workshop here.

Please contact us if you are interested in joining us!

Academic, Check this out:, CMLE, Public, Resources, School Media Specialist, Special

Strategies to Simplify: Tip 11: Reform your meetings

“Work simply. Live fully.”  This week CMLE focuses on the following work productivity tip from Work Simply, Carson Tate’s popular book.  At CMLE, we’ve boiled down Tate’s wealth of knowledge from Work Simply to a few key points; please see the book for more detail and resources. At the bottom, see links to earlier tips in the series! Let’s all be our best selves….

This week’s activity: Change the way you handle meetings

When done correctly, meetings can be a powerful way to communicate, share ideas, and delegate work. They can lead to more productive teams. Unfortunately, as Carson Tate shares in her book Work Simply, “Too often, meetings are ineffective, irrelevant, wasteful, and costly.” In order to rectify this, she suggests a few fixes to try: examine the value of each meeting you are invited to, explore the alternatives available to an in-person meeting, require an agenda be used in each meeting, and assign accountability for any tasks delegated during the meeting.

Continue reading Strategies to Simplify: Tip 11: Reform your meetings →

Academic, Check this out:, CMLE, Public, Resources, School Media Specialist, Special, Visits

Missed a blog post about a library visit? No problem!

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Keep up with our library visits!

At CMLE, we are dedicated to connecting our members with each other, in order to share resources, experiences, and library enthusiasm! As we make our way to each member library and hear about all the great things that happen at each one, we write up a blog post and put it on our website for everyone to access.

But, just in case you happen to miss a Library Visit post, we have created a page specifically for them! Check it out and admire all the great work your colleagues are doing! We will continue to update the page as we continue to visit more libraries.

We will be taking a short break from visiting libraries, as the holiday time is crazy for everyone, but in the New Year we will be back at it! So, if we haven’t been to see your library yet, keep an eye on your email! 🙂

Check this out:, CMLE, General, Public, Resources, School Media Specialist

Notable Date to Celebrate: November 29th is C.S. Lewis' Birthday

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!

aslan-and-c-s-lewis
Happy birthday, C.S. Lewis!

November 29th is C.S. Lewis’ birthday. Lewis is well known for his series The Chronicles of Narnia and also for his many Christian texts. According to Biography.com, even as a very young boy Lewis had an active imagination that contributed to his love of fantasy. 

You can celebrate his birthday by reading these 6 books exploring his life and influence, or by contemplating these famous C.S. Lewis quotes. 

turkish-delight
Looks delicious!

Or bring Narnia to life, by making your own forest of snow globes or test your culinary skills by making some Turkish Delight! And here’s a link to a site that has tons of Narnia-related learning resources, like lesson plans, worksheets, and coloring pages. 

For more on C.S. Lewis, take a look at the official website and blog.