Category Archives: Academic

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

Stress Management: Why Bother??

stress
which way do you want to go??

Stress!!

We all feel it, and the end of year can bring all kinds of extra stress for us with the semester winding down and holiday celebrations winding up. Working in libraries is no protection against workplace stressors; in fact, working with patrons – which is generally rewarding – can provide a significant amount of stress in our daily work.

I have spent a lot of time talking with library people across the country about workplace stress, and it was pretty depressing. Most of us are here because we enjoy our jobs, they provide us with a lot of professional satisfaction, and despite the problems we face libraries are still great places to work!

But minimizing discussion of workplace stress just minimizes the real problems we face. It is better to face the issue, and to help ourselves and our staff to resolve problems that can be fixed and to get some training to handle problems that cannot. Stress causes all kinds of problems, from an uncomfortable workplace to workers suffering from burnout and never able to return to their jobs. Employee health is an important part of providing good service, and stress can just torpedo that.

Everywhere I went to conferences to talk about stress, people would come up to me and whisper that they were glad someone was talking about this. They thought they were alone in it, that they were doing something wrong because they were feeling stress.

Ignoring stress does not make it go away!

Thinking that “real” librarians wouldn’t get stressed is incorrect!

Acknowledging this is an issue in our profession is important – and the best way to help us all to overcome it. We need to think about ways to manage workplace stress on the individual level, in our library organizations, and across the profession.

So this is our December Monthly Topic: Stress Management. We can’t fix everything in your workplace, but we hope we can give you some tools to work with and some ideas to think about in your library.  Continue reading Stress Management: Why Bother?? →

Academic, Check this out:, General, Guest Blogger, Public, Resources, School Media Specialist, Services, Special, Tech

Four Resources To Improve Your Library’s Accessibility

accessibility
Accessible is not Optional!

 

CMLE Guest Blogger: Carli Spina

Accessibility for individuals with disabilities is an important topic for any library. Not only is this a legal requirement for virtually all libraries, but it is also important to ensure that our libraries are welcoming and inclusive for all members of the community. This is particularly important when considering the way you offer your online materials. The four resources below make accessibility improvements approachable, no matter the staffing level of your library or the level of technical experience that you have.

  1. ARL’s Web Accessibility Toolkit – Though created and maintained by the Association of Research Libraries, this toolkit has resources that will be useful to those working in any kind of library. The toolkit includes definitions and background information as well as best practices and a step-by-step process for fostering accessibility at your library. In addition, it has a resources section that includes a detailed page on best practices and resources for adding captions to your library’s video content.
  2. WAVE (Web Accessibility Evaluation Tool) – WebAIM offers a wide array of web accessibility tools, information, and resources, but if I had to pick just one to recommend, it would be WAVE. This tool makes it simple to do a quick accessibility test of any website for which you have the URL. The resulting report provides detailed information in a way that is easy to read. While this tool might not catch every single potential problem on your site, it is an excellent way to find particularly troublesome issues.
  3. Contrast Checker – One frequently overlooked aspect of accessibility is color contrast. This is important not only to those who are colorblind, but also for users who have low vision or are reading in low light. But, despite the fact that contrast is important to a large number of users, it is frequently ignored in the name of design aesthetics. This tool will not only allow you to check specific colors to ensure that they meet accessibility standards but will also let you save and share color pairs that work well (or poorly).
  4. The Principles of Universal Design poster by NC State University College of Design – This resource moves a bit beyond basic accessibility to the concept of Universal Design, which is design that is “usable by all people, to the greatest extent possible, without adaptation or specialized design.” The poster sets forth the seven principles that are central to Universal Design and offers multiple examples for each principle. Implementing these principles will not only help to make your library more accessible, but will also make it welcoming for the widest possible range of users from those who are in a rush or have their hands full to those for whom English is not their first language and beyond. This poster is a great crash course on the topic and will almost certainly spark ideas for ways to make your library more inclusive.

I hope these resources will help you to improve your library’s accessibility and introduce you to new tools that will streamline your processes. If you have any questions, let me know in the comments or contact me on Twitter where I’m @CarliSpina.

 

Academic, Check this out:, General, School Media Specialist, Tech, Training

Call for webinar proposals: Digital Pedagogy in the classroom

digital_leaders
Think Digital!

CMLE Members – we continue to pass on assorted calls for your participation in the profession. You have a valuable voice and perspective to share – yours! We want to help you share your voice and your experience with others. Many of you are doing work that will fit right into this webinar series, and it would be great to share that! Of course perfection is not required here, just a willingness to help other library people. (And don’t forget: this kind of thing looks great on your annual review!)

As always, CMLE is here to help you with your application, to look it over before you submit it, or even just to give encouragement as you do this!

The LIRT Teaching Learning, and Technology Committee is soliciting proposals for our 2017 webinar series entitled
“Digital Pedagogy: How we use technology in the classroom”

Join the LIRT TLTC for an exciting three-part webinar series to be held on February 17, 24, and March 3 from 11am-12:30pm CDT. The series is designed to encourage an interactive and multi-faceted view of digital pedagogy and inspire engaging conversations surrounding the ways in which we integrate technology into our instructional activities from three broad perspectives:

Part 1: Introduction and examples

Part 2: Best practices in instructional design

Part 3: Best practices in assessment

Proposal Deadline: Friday, December 9, 2016
Applicants will be notified by Friday, January 13, 2017
Please fill out this form to submit a proposal: http://bit.ly/2fvamar
If you have questions, please contact Cinthya Ippoliti at cinthya.ippoliti@okstate.edu

Thank you! Submitted on behalf of the committee:

Alyssa Archer, Amy Chen, Joe Eshelman, Mandi Goodsett, and Kenneth Orenic

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 →