Supposedly, you can’t judge a book by its cover, but it sure is fun to admire some of the finer specimens! And, as we move more of our reading to digital devices, is it possible that we will lose the beauty of beautiful book covers?
Take a look at http://tinyurl.com/opxawmr
TO: Minnesota Libraries
FROM: State Library Services
DATE: March 18, 2014
SUBJECT: Two New Mini Grant Opportunities Available
State Library Services is pleased to announce two new competitive grant opportunities — Play and Learn Space Mini Grants and Expanded Learning Mini Grants. With streamlined applications, mini grants are short term grant awards of up to $5000 for projects taking place from approximately mid-May 2014 through September 30, 2014.
Play and Learn Space Mini Grants are offered to bolster the capacity of public libraries to create or enhance spaces that engage children ages 0-8 and their parents/caregivers in play and learning. A Play and Learn Space Mini Grant Application Guidance webinar will be held on March 25, 2014 from 1:30 p.m. to 2:30 p.m.
Expanded Learning Mini Grants are designed to support activity-based partnerships between schools and public libraries. The overarching goal is to connect students with meaningful out of school and summertime opportunities that improve literacy, academic achievement, college readiness and more. An Expanded Learning Mini Grant Application Guidance webinar will be held on March 25, 2014 from 3:30 p.m. to 4:30 p.m.
Grant opportunity documents, including timelines, are available at MDE’s grants management site.
For more information about these opportunities, please contact Jackie Blagsvedt, LSTA Coordinator at Jacqueline.blagsvedt@state.mn.us or 651-582-8805 or to request a reasonable accommodation. Note: The Minnesota Department of Education (MDE) requires a two-week advance notice in order to provide the requested accommodation and requires a 48-hour notice to cancel a requested accommodation.
National Library Week is the perfect opportunity to encourage your community to tell the story of how the library has changed their life. This year the theme is Lives change @ your library and the Honorary Chair is Judy Blume. Check out the PSA’s, letter to the editor, press releases, Twitter hash tags and much, much more! Let’s involve the public in communicating about the value of libraries.
Go to http://tinyurl.com/85yky7z for all the details!
With all of the media coverage about Ellen’s Oscars selfie recently, it stands to reason that everyone, including librarians have selfies on their minds!
However, selfies for libraries? Why not?
Q: What do you get when bookshelves full of books (and other items) pose for a picture?
A: A group “shelfie”!
I give a lot of credit to the Akron-Summit County Public Library for a great visual pun, and for a clever marketing idea too! The library has been staging “shelfies” of cleverly planned photos of book and other materials on its library shelves, and they are getting smiles from their social media followers. Read this article to hear about some shelfies the library put together, and to find out how to follow the library’s shelfie exploits! What a great way to get the creative energy flowing in library staff as they market materials and demonstrate their creativity and sense of humor too!
Note: The New York Public Library even got in the act by declaring a Library Shelfie Day on January 29th. Read the blog post for all of the details.
According to the folks at Edudemic, “a high quality hunt should have the goal of inspiring learning, creative thinking, reasoning, and qualitative assessment.” Student engagement and active learning are the big goals too. Sounds very much like information literacy to me and lots of fun too. In an effort to get your scavenger hunt jump-started, this guide offers a few useful tech tools that might be of use. They range from devices to apps to other blog posts on the subject. Read the Edudemic blog post to link to lesson plans and simple ideas to further explore this fascinating idea. If you develop a digital scavenger hunt, we’d love to hear about it and share with our readers…..let us know at cmle@stcloudstate.edu and thanks for sharing!