All posts by admincmle

The Central Minnesota Libraries Exchange (CMLE) is one of seven regional multitype library systems established to meet the needs of and share the resources of all types of libraries. We love libraries, and are here to support them!
Academic, General, Public, School Media Specialist, Special

Where Have the Media Specialists Gone in 2015?

We’ve Crunched the Data! This is the fifth year that CMLE has been pulling the Minnesota Department of Education (MDE) data and studying the slow decline of school library media specialists in our CMLE twelve-county region. Sharing the data is our attempt to engage people in helping think of solutions to this issue. If there is inadequate media specialist staffing in high schools, are students going to be prepared with the skills they need to be successful in college? Will middle schoolers be prepared to do high school work, and when students have no library program at school, are they simply going to the public library for assistance? Are the public libraries funded or staffed to absorb this work on a large scale? Everyone is stretched for resources, so it is critical that K-12, public, and academic libraries all step up to do their part.

Without further ado, here is data for Aitkin, Benton, Chisago, Isanti, Kanabec, Mille Lacs, Morrison, Pine, Sherburne, Stearns, Todd and Wright counties in MN. In a nutshell, the grim news is…..

  • 90 individual schools (45%) in Central MN have no licensed media specialist. This compares with 79 individual schools in 2014, 53 in 2013, and 48 in 2012.
  • 52% of the schools without a media specialist are middle, secondary, or high schools. A whopping 70% of secondary schools are functioning without licensed staff!
  • 43 elementary schools have no media specialist (compared to 38 in 2014 and 28 in 2013), yet as far as I know, we are still focused statewide on demonstrating reading proficiency by 3rd grade!
  • 16 out of 52 districts (31%) have no media specialist in any school in the district. This compares to 16 in 2014, 14 in 2013, and 9 in 2012!
  • Is there any good news? Yes. The great news is that 35% of CMLE schools have a full time media specialist. Let’s applaud those school administrators for understanding the value of maintaining a professionally staffed school media center.

According to public 2014-2015 MDE data, here are the CMLE school districts with no licensed media specialists in any school: Annandale, Belgrade-Brooten-Elrosa, Bertha Hewitt, Browerville, Eagle Valley, East Central, Foley, Kimball, Long Prairie-Grey Eagle, Maple Lake, McGregor, Onamia, Royalton, Staples-Motley, Swanville, and Willow River. Are parents in these districts aware of this issue?

CMLE will use this data in its advocacy work, in targeting its programming, and in working statewide to bring attention to this growing problem. How can we change this trend?  All Minnesota students deserve a high quality, K-12 academic experience that prepares them for the next step in their life. We need students to be able to proficiently use  the research process and to think critically about competing sources of information. These are key lifelong skills needed by all high-functioning members of society.

If you have comments, solutions, or ideas, please email me at papost@cmle.org

Academic, General, Public, School Media Specialist, Special

Minneapolis is most literate city in US

Off the Train and Into the Big Apple, Grand Central, NYCDid you know that Minneapolis was recently ranked the nation’s most literate city? Up from number two last year, the city beat out Washington DC for number one!

What sets us apart? Did you know that MN has some of the largest book publishers outside of New York, Boston, and Chicago? Local publishers include but aren’t limited to: Lerners, Capstone, Graywolf, Coffee House, Milkweed, MnHS, and UMN press. Did you also know, there are at least 130,000 MN published titles in WorldCat?

So, a great big cheer for Minneapolis and the state of MN for supporting literature and publishing!

Image credit: http://tinyurl.com/qanyu9n, licensed under CC BY-NC 2.0
General, School Media Specialist

LitWeaver: Netflix for English teachers?

4220-the-last-dogAuthor Will Weaver’s new company, LitWeaver, is getting a lot of buzz lately and its for good cause. With writers such as “Bridge to Terabithia” author Katherine Paterson and “Maniac Magee” author Jerry Spinelli on board, many teachers and librarians are getting excited.

“I’ve gathered a cohort of leading authors and we are making an end run around… the big publishing companies in delivering content directly to schools,” Weaver said after being 1 of 3 winners of the annual IDEA Competition sponsored by the Bemidji-based Northwest Minnesota Foundation. “We think textbooks are too expensive, and teachers need more choices and more options. We’re providing them.”

Joyce Valenza’s interview with him highlighted that LitWeaver’s “focus is the shorter work of well-known authors in the form of essays, short stories, plays, poems and mixed genre pieces. Teachers can easily set-up classrooms and populate them with students, assign readings, post online questions and writing prompts.” These writing prompts, or reading guides, help with learning as well as help teachers guide the discussion.

LitWeaver promises it “will always have free reading for schools.” Sign-up is quick and easy, so check it out and let us know what you think!

Bottom Line: As of the writing of this post, the service is free and a piece of it will likely remain free, but a low-cost subscription (Plus version) will be added. Also, look for more and more authors to be added to the collection.

Academic, General, Public, School Media Specialist, Special

Your Peek at the Data: A Few Survey Results

Recently, staff in CMLE member libraries had almost one month to respond to an online CMLE Needs Assessment (survey). We sincerely thank the 152 people (20%) who took the time to share their thoughts, feedback, and dreams for library support services in Central Minnesota. CMLE serves 320 libraries in 12 counties, and one of the biggest challenges is understanding your specific needs while also trying to spot opportunities to convene academic, public, special and school librarians when a topic cuts across library type. In the next few weeks, we will highlight a few questions/responses  in order to provide manageable bites of data.

This week we highlight data about who participated, and
how they engage with various tools including social media!

Makeup of the Needs Assessment Respondents

na_1* Of K-12 respondents, 50% were in elementary schools; no surprise as there are more elementary schools overall.

 

The following chart shows tools that are blocked for use at work. Tip: Sometimes, these tools can be used in the  workplace by requesting special access for the specialized work you do!

na_3

 

Social Media Use by Respondents: Professional and Personal Use

na_4

Other interesting, notable facts!

  • 85% of respondents currently receive the Weekly Review email every Thursday from CMLE
  • The Tech Bits and Ideas, and Resources You Can Use categories of weekly blog posts, are the two highest ranked categories in the Weekly Review lineup
  • 44/46%  of respondents felt either there would be value, or there might be value in having a place online with others in Central MN for asking questions and getting answers.
  • Read the From the Director post to get my commentary on these results!

Do any of these results surprise you? How so? We would love to know….admin@cmle.org

Watch for a new set of Needs Assessment results next week!

Academic, General, Public, School Media Specialist, Special

From the Director

PPphotoI cannot believe we are once again staring down the end of another academic year!  My social media world reminds me that many of you are pushing through grueling testing in the K-12 schools, enduring exhausting budgeting exercises when there simply isn’t enough money, and yes, some of you are defending your jobs too. Welcome to spring in library land. Oh wait, I forgot pending legislation!

Legislatively, it doesn’t help that although the state has a wonderful budget surplus of $1.8 billion for the first time in years,  funding to K-12 education AND libraries will probably not happen in any meaningful way this year (I don’t equate the current 1% increase for K-12 education meaningful). There are many opinions about why this might be. Last year,  the heavy price tag to the state for all-day kindergarten did us no favors. And, the Governor’s push for statewide Pre-K this year, may have pushed too far, and fueled the legislator’s need to block the Governor on yet another pricey education improvement. Personally, I am not sure we were quite ready for another budget item of this size, and I am not sure the schools were ready for it either. Unfortunately, all education related funding (including libraries and multitype systems) get punished when all of our requests are included in a big old education omnibus bill. When things get adversarial, unfortunately we all lose! And, let’s not forget the students, what price will they pay?

On a positive note, I also see good things this time of year!

  • Summer reading lists and hammock plans are growing,
  • We only see snow showers occasionally each week, and
  • Great summer events like the MidMN EdCamp in St. Cloud are taking on an exciting life of their own. CMLE is a sponsor of this event, and we are hoping to see you there!
  • And, I see that 152 people in Central MN took time out of busy schedules to participate in our 2015 CMLE Needs Assessment. To those people, thank you; we are prepared to suit up and serve the expressed needs of the majority of respondents!

Doing a Needs Assessment is an emotional roller coaster much like a legislative session!  As you can imagine, trying to determine and/or serve the needs of almost 800 people in 320 locations is a tall order, and you can only ask for the information if you are brave enough to face it! We are happy to see that 85% of our audience is receiving our weekly email that acts as a launching pad for important library information. Help us discover who we might be missing. We saw few surprises in your use of social media, but still think Twitter is underutilized as a collaboration tool  with colleagues. Our Tech Bits and Ideas category of information was rated highest which fulfilled our hunch this year when we added it to the Weekly Review lineup. The open ended questions are the hardest….we hear worried, isolated, and exhausted voices in some of those responses. CMLE will continue to listen, support you,  and respond! Thank you for the important work you do in Minnesota libraryland and watch for the next installment of Needs Assessment data next week. Did you miss this weeks results?

Not receiving our CMLE communications? Send us an email, and we will get you subscribed.