Category Archives: Academic

Academic, CMLE, General, Public, School Media Specialist, Special

We Want You!

 

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Blog with CMLE!

 

At CMLE, we want to provide our members with information on all kinds of issues that they may encounter in their library workplaces. And we want to be sure we have a wide variety of voices here to pass on information, experiences (good and bad!), suggestions, tips, and just general information that others could find helpful. Everyone has a story to share, experience to pass on, and ideas to contribute to make us all stronger!

We are actively soliciting for members to share their stories with us! We want to get all our CMLE members to share with each other here on our blog.

What could you write about?

  • a program that was fantastic, everything went smoothly, and you think other libraries could adopt
  • a program that was a disaster from start to finish, and you have a cautionary tale to terrify other libraries (Halloween is coming up, after all)
  • a program that fell somewhere between these two extremes
  • a database your users really like
  • a new technology you tried
  • some collection development or cataloging strategies you have developed over the years, that could make things easier/faster/more efficient for other people
  • a problem you are facing, where you could really use some advice from other people who have also been there
  • your library’s garden
  • your library’s pet
  • your library’s pet rock
  • quick tips to make scheduling easier
  • the cutest thing that happened last week
  • the scariest think that happened last week
  • the marketing plan you just wrote
  • your special, patented, never-fail strategy for ensuring your printers never jam! (okay – if you have this one, we DEFINITELY want it!)

Are we worried about perfection in writing up these stories? Nope!

Are we looking only for people who are amazing, perfect writers? No way!

Are we available to brainstorm with you, help with writing, and do the formatting and such to get your work posted and shared with CMLE? You bet!!

You can contribute a paragraph, a page, or longer! Not all information to be shared needs the same amount of discussion, so things are flexible here for you.

In addition to being open to almost anything you guys want to share and discuss, we are putting out a call for some specific topics. CMLE will be offering Monthly Topic themes, with blog posts and training focused all in an area that should be helpful to our members. We really want to hear from you and to share your stories, ideas, suggestions, and whatever else you have to share on our monthly topics. You can get your material ready any time, and we will hold onto it until the topical month comes up.

Our upcoming Monthly Topic schedule:

  • October: Hiring (including recruiting, writing job ads, interviewing, succession planning, and more)
  • November: Advocacy (including strategies for finding your stakeholders, templates for emailing legislators, practicing your elevator speech, and more)
  • December: Stress Management (including relaxation tips, work/life balance ideas, strategies for avoiding burnout, and more)
  • January: Grants (finding them, writing the application, managing programs, and more)

We will keep announcing topics before the month in question, so you can have time to think about your contributions.

Do you have an idea you might want to share? Call or email Mary or Angie, and we will work with you to get it created, scheduled, and shared!

Academic, General, Public, School Media Specialist, Special

2015 Frequently challenged books (Banned Book Week series #2)

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Celebrate Banned Books Week

This is always a difficult count to make, because what gets challenged and/or banned may not get mentioned in the media or reported to the ALA for inclusion. Libraries may be embarrassed at getting a book challenge, or uncertain of a procedure they could follow to respond in a professional way. Ideally, this is a time to connect with community members, to talk about intellectual freedom, and supporting a parent’s right to individual choice – not choice for all. Tomorrow we will talk about strategies for writing your policy to handle challenges; today we will look at some of the most challenged material, to start thinking about conversations to have both within the library with our colleagues and also with the communities we serve.

From the ALA’s Office of Intellectual Freedom:

Over this recent past decade, 5,099* challenges were reported to the Office for Intellectual Freedom.

  • 1,577 challenges due to “sexually explicit” material;
  • 1,291 challenges due to “offensive language”;
  • 989 challenges due to materials deemed “unsuited to age group”;
  • 619 challenged due to “violence”‘ and
  • 361 challenges due to “homosexuality.”

Further, 274 materials were challenged due to “occult” or “Satanic” themes, an additional 291 were challenged due to their “religious viewpoint,” and 119 because they were “anti-family.”

Please note that the number of challenges and the number of reasons for those challenges do not match, because works are often challenged on more than one ground.

1,639 of these challenges were in school libraries; 1,811 were in classrooms; 1,217 took place in public libraries. There were 114 challenges to materials used in college classes; and 30 to academic libraries. There are isolated cases of challenges to library materials made available in or by prisons, special libraries, community groups, and students. The vast majority of challenges were initiated by parents (2,535), with patrons and administrators to follow (516 and 489 respectively).

From the OIF’s page for Banned Book Week, here is a list of the ten most frequently challenged books of 2015: (links go to GoodReads, for more information about the book itself; go the the OIF page for specifics of the challenges for each title)

  1. Looking for Alaska by John Green
  2. Fifty Shades of Grey by E.L. James
  3. I Am Jazz by  Jessica Herthel and Jazz Jennings
  4. Beyond Magenta: Transgender Teens Speak Out by Susan Kuklin
  5. The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time by Mark Haddon
  6. The Holy Bible (there are many different versions of this book; this is just one example)
  7. Fun Home by Alison Bechdel
  8. Habibi by Craig Thompson
  9. Nasreen’s Secret School: A True Story from Afghanistan by  Jeanette Winter
  10. Two Boys Kissing by David Levithan

 

Thinking through your own strategies for responding to challenges, or in thinking about material that might be challenged, can be difficult. Know that there are resources available to help you as you write your library’s policy, and in handling challenges and collection development complexities. The ALA’s Office of Intellectual Freedom is available to help you with challenges. CMLE is available to help you with policy creation and strategies for working through your ideas for challenges and effective collection development.

Academic, General, Public, School Media Specialist, Special

Freedom to Read: Getting Involved! (Banned Book Week Series #1)

Today the library profession begins Banned Book Week! CMLE will provide information to you each day this week, from September 25 − October 1, 2016.

This is the week we band together to draw attention to the issue of books and information being banned from our patrons. As a profession devoted to distributing information, and connecting great materials with our patrons, any sort of censoring of that process is troublesome to us. We support the freedom to read, and intellectual freedom, across genres, platforms, and formats.

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Support the freedom to read!

 

Today we are looking at the resources the American Library Association’s website provides to us.

Do you have questions about this topic? A handy Q&A has been provided for you. Talking about censorship, banning books, and restricting freedom to read for some or all patrons can be tough. It can be hard to bring it up in your library with your colleagues, and hard to discuss with patrons. ALA provides you with some content to share and discuss, and some suggestions about spreading ideas of intellectual freedom. You can also follow the ALA’s Office of Intellectual Freedom on Twitter. It is filled with facts and information, as well as fun displays and activities libraries around the country are doing!

How can you get involved in publicizing banned books? Check out this information about making your own videos for the Virtual Read Out! Your library can participate, and you can bring in your patrons if they want to share in the video making experience.

Many libraries are doing interesting programming for this week, and there is a lot of great information being shared in advance. You can look at the things libraries and librarians are contributing here. And you can share the contributions from your library here.

Sadly, book challenges happen all the time, so we need to be aware of banned book information the other 51 weeks of the year. You can get involved, and learn more about the issue – before you have professional problems in your library.

Does all of this make you want to have Banned Book Week swag in your library or for yourself? The ALA has you covered! Check out all the material available, and see what you might want now, or get started planning out next year’s displays!

Intellectual freedom is a continuing struggle, and libraries of all sorts are on the front lines. You need support and information to help you in providing the best possible resources to your community, and CMLE and the ALA are here to help you!

Academic, General, Public, Resources, School Media Specialist, Special

Strategies to Simplify: Tip 2: Set your READY goals

“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: Set your READY goals and work to achieve them using your Productivity Style

In her book Work Simply, Carson Tate suggests setting goals in four main areas of your life: Professional, personal, health, and spiritual. Keep the acronym READY in mind – it is the first step of the READY, Aim, Fire method that will “not only assist you in getting very clear on your goals and priorities, but also ensure that you achieve those goals in the most efficient and effective way possible”

R – Realistic, E – Exciting, A – Action-oriented, D – Directive, Y – Yours.

Recently you discovered your Productivity Style with a simple assessment. Find your style to use these tips for fulfilling your READY goals:

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Work Simply

Find your Productivity Style for some personalized tips:

Prioritizer: When setting your goals, challenge yourself to look at the big picture – think about the action steps required over the next several months (instead of the next several weeks). It may help to keep in mind why this particular goal is important to you.

Planner: Similar to the Prioritizer, try to move your focus beyond short-term action steps, and focus on the big picture. Focus on what the final outcome is that you are hoping to achieve.

Arranger: While it’s helpful to keep in mind the people that are able to encourage you to meet your goals, don’t forget to also focus on how you will complete the actions required to achieve the goal.

Visualizer: Seeing the big picture comes naturally to you. Try to also think about who else needs to be involved in making your goals a reality.

Previous tips in this series