All posts by Angie

Communication

Learning About Library Associations: Minnesota Academic and Research Libraries (ARLD)

Library science is an enormous field, home to every interest you could imagine! This means that there are many organizations out there for you to join, in order to connect with other people who share your professional interests.

So even if you work alone in your library, there are other people out there doing work similar to yours! Each week we will highlight a different library association for you to learn more about, and depending on your work, potentially join! You can also check out our page dedicated to Library Associations.

This week we’re learning about the organization Minnesota Academic and Research Libraries, also known as ARLD. It’s a division of the Minnesota Library Association.

“ARLD is a forum for and an advocate of academic and research librarians and library personnel, and all other information professionals that serve academic and research institutions.”

Their purposes include:

1) To contribute to the professional and career development of all academic library personnel by conducting workshops and arranging programs including Dialogues and our annual ARLD Day conference (in April).

2) To enhance the capabilities of Minnesota academic libraries to serve the needs of their users.

3) To promote and advocate for the interests of academic libraries.

4) To promote the study, research, and dissemination of information relevant to academic librarianship.

5) To promote and foster cooperation and communication among the members of ARLD, the academic community, other library organizations, and other associations.

6) To support and protect intellectual freedom in academic libraries.

7) To acknowledge and honor the achievements of academic library personnel through the innovator award.

If you are interested in their objectives, you can join ARLD by joining the Minnesota Library Association (MLA) and selecting ARLD as your division.

The ARLD site contains information like their Leadership Roster, past agendas and minutes, and an Events and Materials Archive. You can also look at their Annual Reports, find out about any upcoming events, and learn about ARLD Dialogues.

CMLE, Communication, General

Remember to Vote: Join CMLE for our Fall Social Event!

We love connecting with our members in person! It’s even more fun when food is involved, so we are having another CMLE Social Event taking place at  Old Chicago in St. Cloud. This will be a dinner event beginning at 5:30pm, but we need your help picking a date! Vote below and we’ll send out a notice of the final date.

As a multitype library system, one of our main goals is to provide connections between all different types of libraries: schools, history centers, museums, academic libraries, etc! One of our favorite ways to do this is through hosting social events where people from all types of libraries are free to get together and chat about library life.

Thanks to all of you that have already voted! If you haven’t yet, tell us which dates could work for you! We can’t wait to hear all about your experiences in the library world this fall!

Date options (feel free to select several dates that work for you)(required)

Communication, General

Weekly Holiday Series: Sept. 15th is Online Learning Day!

Have you participated in webinars, done online training, or taken online classes? Then you should definitely celebrate National Online Learning Day on September 15th!

Wondering how to celebrate this holiday? Take a look at this article from Fuel Education, which has a few suggestions, including using the hashtag #OnlineLearningDay when you share your own experiences with online learning on social media!

Or you could check out our Continuing Education Calendar, updated frequently to bring you library-related training opportunities, many of which are online or free!

Interested in the impact of online learning in K-12 education? This article from Learning.com discusses some benefits like access and personalization that can come from incorporating online learning.

Finally, maybe the best way to celebrate the day is to get online and learn something new! Learn a new language, practice your music theory, or join a Twitter chat about a topic you are interested in.

Conference, Guest Blogger, Services

CMLE Scholarship: Digipalooza!


This is a guest post written by Sarah Hawkins, Resource Librarian at East Central Regional Library Cambridge. Do you need a scholarship to attend a conference? Check out our Scholarships page!

In early August, I attended the OverDrive Digipalooza Conference in Cleveland, Ohio.  It was an exciting conference, because it managed to be both inspiring and future-focused and practical and applicable to current workflows, in equal measure. OverDrive staff and presenters were energetic, innovative, and happy to share their love of literacy, libraries, OverDrive, and Cleveland with all attendees.

A common theme throughout the conference was that building digital collections is not all about selection, but equally about what we do with what we select and the mantra: if you build it, they will come. The most immediate takeaway that I applied to my workflow immediately as a result was a hack shared by Mike Hawkins from Sno-Isle Libraries for turning OverDrive Resource Center lists into Curated Collections.  Curated collections help keep your OverDrive front page fresh, which in turn keeps your users coming back and happy.   Any trick to simplify this process and encourage librarians to create Curated Collections more frequently is a win!

The hack:  Curate from an OverDrive Recommended List

OverDrive provides a collection of lists curated by their Collection Development librarians in OverDrive Resource Center. Any of these lists can be converted to curation mode, but it requires a hack of the URL.

  1. Find and click on a list in OverDrive Resource Center that you would like to curate on your OverDrive site.
  2. Select the OneCopyOneUserAndMeteredAccess portion of the URL in the address bar.
  3. Replace OneCopyOneUserAndMeteredAccess with Curate in the address bar and hit Enter.
  4. From there the list can be curated as outlined in the How To Create a Curated Collection instructions.  

Other curation tips include: change the display settings to “Show all, but available first” so that the first items your users see are immediately available for checkout and developing collections around community events. Ultimately, the goal is to have patrons leave our websites having borrowed something.  Happy customers also leads to happy librarians!

The inspirational side of the coin included reflecting on Cuyahoga County Public Library’s mission: reading, lifelong learning, and community.  If only all of our mission statements were as succinct! Looking towards the future also included the OverDrive project roadmap with the new Libby app and forthcoming features (including getting a library card instantly in the app), magazines soon being available in OverDrive, the availability of the cost per circ model, and OverDrive’s new status as a Certified B Corp.  

Other great information included collection development, social media marketing, train the trainer, using data, outreach, and Reader’s Advisory. Plus, we were lucky enough to see a live recording of the Professional Book Nerds podcast with author Kelly Corrigan.  The video is on OverDrive’s Facebook page; I highly recommend you check it out.

At the end of the conference, I left feeling inspired to get back to work and do my part in Creating Reading Happiness!

Digipalooza fun fact: 57% of people said that the place they listen to audiobooks most is relaxing at home.

Graphic Recordings from the Sessions:

School Media Specialist, Tech

AASL Recommended App: Books: Goldilocks and Little Bear

Last summer, the American Association of School Librarians (AASL) announced their Best Apps for Teaching and Learning 2017. The apps encourage qualities such as creativity and collaboration, and encourage discovery and curiosity.

Goldilocks and Little Bear is an app that tells the familiar story but with a twist. It also tells the story of Little Bear, who ends up exploring Goldilocks family home. “Enjoy each stories in parallel, individually, or however you’d like – you can toggle between the two at any point. The app includes beautiful artwork, stunning animation, ingenious, playful forms of interactivity, original music, voice work and sound effects, and more.”

Tech for Kids has a review of the app you can read here, and School Library Journal also reviewed the app. Their article includes this link to a video by Steve Burke, who created the music for the app, which gives viewers a behind-the-scenes look at the process!

Level: Elementary
Platform: iOS
Cost: $4.99

Watch the trailer for the app here: