You only have to be in a library for a few minutes to understand that working there is tough! There are different challenges and obstacles, and no two days are the same. Between patrons, community members, books, technology, facilities, and everything else that happens in a library – it’s tough.

Developing some skills, and honing your current skills, is the best way to help you to be successful. So, keep looking for opportunities to build your skills. Not just today, but every day – keep doing this for your entire career. Libraries of all types are fast-paced and ever-changing; and none of us will ever have all the skills we need to be successful.

Keep growing!

Check out this opportunity from Mankato State University:

Join us for our Spring into School Libraries series!

Free Professional Development Zoominars. 

The School Library and Information Studies program will be providing free virtual professional development Zoominars during the 2022 – 2023 school year. These are live, interactive sessions that enable participants to ask questions, share information, and earn one CEU credit per session. All sessions are free of charge. 

Each Zoominar begins at 10:00 AM (CST) and is approximately 45 minutes in duration with time for questions afterwards. For further information or questions regarding these sessions, contact Belle Nelson.

February 25th Session: School Libraries and Your Local Multitype Library System

Session description:

The seven multicounty, multitype library systems provide critical links between the academic, public, school, and special libraries in the state. Each multitype system responds to the needs of the librarians in its region by providing support services. Ashley Dress and Olivia Moris will join us to discuss what Multitype library systems are and how they can work together with school libraries.

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March 18th Session: Now Banned at Your Library:  Challenges, Policy, and Student Rights

Session description:

Public school libraries are facing coordinated attacks, not just in Florida and Texas, but right here in Minnesota. Book challenges and anti-school campaigns are at record highs, threatening students’ rights and creating legal, financial, and public relation ramifications for school districts. Administrators and Media teams need to be ready. Hear how Eastern Carver County is navigating these issues and what resources are available when, not if, this hits your school. It is important to create collaboration with parents, Media, principals, and district administration while putting students at the center. Erin Rathke, Assistant Superintendent, and Linda Dierks, Media Specialist, will be sharing one district’s story.

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April 1 Session: Bookshelf Tech

Session description:

Consuming and Creating Books in Your Learning Space: Tricia Louis of Richland Center, Wisconsin Schools will be with us to share dynamic educational technology tools to help students become book creators with you as their guide.

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Contact Information:

For further information on the Spring into Libraries Zoominars or our School Library and Information Studies MS program, contact Belle Nelson. 

 

Thank you for joining us again on our book group and Reader’s advisory podcast: Reading With Libraries!

This season we are exploring all new ideas for books and book suggestions, so you can expand your reading horizons, and share more information with your library community. We are looking at prompts from the 2023 PopSugar reading challenge this season. You can read along with their challenge, linked in our show notes, or just enjoy some different books. 

This week will be a fun one, because we can all use a vacation right now. And of course it’s always fun to have your favorite people on vacation with you. So we invited the coolest person we know: Ariel Kirst, our official Podcast Correspondent, from the Great River Regional Library System!

Check out our show notes page for links to our beverages, our resources, and the books we share today.

We are fans of all kinds of books, of course. But during Black History Month it’s worth spending a little extra time looking at some of the good books you can find to read about Black history and culture. Understanding more about a culture you may not be part of is valuable for everyone, in developing more empathy and a broader view of the world. And being able to share books with people, so they see themselves reflected in your collection, is the whole point of working in a library!

This excerpt from an article from BookRiot site shares some good suggestions. Look through this part, and read the whole article to get the full picture, and suggestions for more books to add to your collection.

“During Black History Month in the library, I’m always looking for titles to recommend to the teenagers at the high school where I work. Of course, I spend time highlighting books by Black YA authors — all Black authors, YA or not, to be perfectly honest — yet I wasn’t doing much to educate about the history itself. My focus has been on celebrating Black voices by amplifying living authors to show my students successful writers they can look up to presently. This is a good and noble aim, yet it’s leaving out a key facet of Black History Month. It’s in the name, even. 

Ever the diligent librarian, I started to research nonfiction books we had on the subject of Black history. There were the normal biographies of Martin Luther King, Jr. and Malcolm X. We had copies of Four Hundred Souls and Stamped from the Beginning. While great books, they weren’t written with a teen audience in mind or in a way that’s accessible for younger readers. I wanted something history 101 level that I could get careful readers started on as a way to ease them up to the 400 level tomes currently on the shelves.

These titles, a mix of YA-specific editions and books that are written in a way that is accessible to teens, are added to my next book order. I wanted to share them with you all, too — just in case you have also been looking for YA nonfiction about Black history. 

• And We Rise by Erica Martin
• Making Our Way Home: The Migration and the Black American Dream by Blair Imani, Illustrated by Rachelle Baker
• Victory. Stand! Raising my Fist for Justice by Tommie Smith and Derrick Barnes
• We Are Not Yet Equal: Understanding Our Racial Divide by Carol Anderson, Tonya Bolden, and Nic Stone
• Wake: The Hidden History of Women-Led Slave Revolts by Rebecca Hall
• Overground Railroad (the Young Adult Adaptation): The Green Book and the Roots of Black Travel in America by Candacy Taylor
• Run: Book One by John Lewis and Andrew Aydin
• Black Birds in the Sky: The Story and Legacy of the 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre by Brandy Colbert
• Stamped: Racism, Anti-racism, and You by Jason Reynolds and Ibram X. Kendi

Read the whole article here, and get the information about each of these books, so you can consider adding them to your collection!

That’s right: every week we are going to celebrate some small holiday! We want you to join us in celebrating every week – because really, everyone needs a little more happiness in their lives.

Join us in celebrating the holiday just yourself, and take some small quiet time to enjoy it. Or, take our book and program ideas, and celebrate in a larger way in your library. Take a small, goofy opportunity to have a little more fun today! (We celebrate you in doing this!)

This is one of those nice small holidays – one where you can celebrate by doing small fun things. It’s been such a long time since we saw the ground and had sunny warm days; this is a good small holiday to bring the idea of nature back into your day to bring some good cheer.

You can start by reading a few books, or setting up a nice display for your patrons:

• Inspired Ikebana: Modern Design Meets the Ancient Art of Japanese Flower Arrangement, by Naoko Zaima
• Just Add Water: Easy Techniques and Everyday Ideas for Inspiring Flower Arrangements, by Cynthia Gaylin Bigony (Author), Vivian Johnson (Photographer)
• Orchid Muse: A History of Obsession in Fifteen Flowers, by Erica Hannickel
• Flower Color Guide, by Taylor Putnam and Michael Putnam
• The Flower Recipe Book, by Alethea Harampolis and Jill Rizzo
• Flowers by Design: Creating Arrangements for Your Space, by Ingrid Carozzi

And of course, there are all kinds of programs you can do with flowers and flower arranging:

• set up construction paper, pipe cleaners, glue, and other decorative items so patrons can make a paper garden. The flowers can be added to the walls of the library, or folded into bouquets to go home with the patrons
• cut the pages of old books that are being weeded, grab a glue gun, and use some green wire for stems to make book paper roses
• bring in a speaker to talk about the meaning of flowers, or flower arranging that patrons can do on site
• bring in some flower seeds and small containers, and let patrons plant some flowers to take home; keep a few back to create an indoor garden for the library (you may want to use herb seeds)

Join us in celebrating the holiday just yourself, and take some small quiet time to enjoy it. Or, take our book and program ideas, and celebrate in a larger way in your library. Take a small, goofy opportunity to have a little more fun today!

This season, we continue to travel around Minnesota, but this time we’re learning about all the fascinating historical sites our state has to offer and giving you a book prompt inspired by each site.  

We will share six book suggestions to meet that prompt, to get you started on reading new books. You can also take that prompt and find any other book to meet the challenge!

This week we admire the Alexander Ramsey House. Alexander Ramsey held many offices in Minnesota, and he helped to found the MN Historical Society. To celebrate this, we suggest that you read a historical fiction book.

In our show notes for this episode, we link each book to the local Red Balloon bookstore description, so you can get more information about the book to help you make a decision about your reading or recommendations!