We are the Central Minnesota Libraries Exchange, a multitype library system serving all types of libraries.

You can find our show notes page here, with links to all of the books we are sharing this week.

This season we are suggesting books you might enjoy for our Goodreads group: Armchair Travel to Minnesota State Parks. We give you a prompt connected to each state park, and you find a book to fulfill the challenge. You can use one of our suggestions, and you should feel free to read any book!

Lake Bemidji State Park was established in 1923. https://www.dnr.state.mn.us/state_par… This is a busy state park, with a lot of neat things to do! Read a book with a bike, to celebrate the Paul Bunyan Bike Trail that starts in this park. 

We give you links to each of these books on our show notes page, taking you to Amazon.com. If you click on any of them, and buy anything at all – including a nice book – Amazon will send us a small percent of the profits they made on these sales. Thank you for supporting CMLE!

(This is a reprint of an article we wrote a couple of years ago, rerun here for your entertainment and education!)

Everyone working in libraries knows that Information Literacy is a vital skill. From Wesleyan University’s library: “Information literacy is a crucial skill in the pursuit of knowledge.  It involves recognizing when information is needed and being able to efficiently locate, accurately evaluate, effectively use, and clearly communicate information in various formats. ”

But effective Information Literacy skills can be a challenge for everyone. Sometimes observation of others effectively using their skills can be the best way to learn.

CMLE, in a constant pursuit of research-based knowledge, and effective pedagogical practices, somewhat surreptitiously shadowed a team of  Peeps as they endeavored to fulfill an information need assigned to them. We will be following them throughout four different research scenarios, to see how Information Literacy skills are applicable across different settings and different information needs.

For our first research project, we visited the Sauk Rapids-Rice High School library, where librarian and Tech Integration Specialist Maria Burnham assisted our team.

Step One: Identify Information Needs

Their project for this day was to find sources for photographs of cats for an upcoming report they were going to give. The photos could be in books or printed out.

They were not with a teacher for this visit, so signed in at the desk.

At this stage, all was going well with the visit.

(There could be some quibbling about the specifics of the yellow sign. The CMLE researchers, and the library staff, chose to interpret the sign as being followed for the purposes of this project.)

Things immediately took a sharp turn away from finding good information when the team discovered Maria keeps puzzles in the library for students. This one was so fun, it distracted the team away from their work on cat photos; and they spent some time there until they were reminded of their original purpose.

Step Two: Locate and Retrieve Appropriate Sources of Information

The team likes technology, so they gathered at the computer to start typing in key words they thought might be useful in finding cat photos they liked.  As many students discover, this is not necessarily a great strategy, as the information that pops up may not be the most useful. All sorts of weird images were appearing, and the Peep team knew they needed help.

Author Neil Gaiman, the 2010 Honorary Chair of National Library Week, famously said “Google can bring you back, you know, a hundred thousand answers. A librarian can bring you back the right one.” There are so many possible answers out there to any question asked that it can be tempting to just grab the first one. Library staffers are on the front lines of information seeking, and ideally placed to help people go beyond their first, messy searches.

Step Three: Evaluate Information and Its Sources Critically

The team knew they needed expert assistance, so they consulted with Maria on a more effective search strategy. As demonstrated in this photo, she introduced them to a wider range of materials available at the library than just using a search engine. Utilizing these resources helped them to quickly identify a variety of different results that may be useful for their work.

Their discussion of why or why not this result would be good for the specific information need they had identified when they came to the library was very instructive. After weighing the pros and cons of this specific material they ultimately decided not to select this resource for their project. (However, Barbara – third from the left – decided to read it as a personal project; so the time was not wasted.)

Step Four: Synthesize the information retrieved

Maria assisted them in finding other resources online, then moved them to the shelves. Here you can really see the project taking shape. They located and pulled several different potentially useful resources and began to put them together. While the final project is not yet clear, you can see how the photographs they are assembling are starting to have a pattern, and they are collecting material that is applicable to their needs.

Oh no! Things really started going off the rails here!! Maria had to attend to some other students, and the Peeps – as students sometimes do – started acting out! They were retrieving the book for Barbara, and suddenly they started flipping books over and turning them around. What a mess!

Behavior really deteriorated from there! Barbara and Juan were playing with the library’s display for National Poetry Month. Instead of taking a poem for the pocket, as instructed, they hopped into a the pockets and tried to pass themselves off as poems!! (Nobody was fooled.)

Whew! They pulled themselves together, and gathered their material to depart. They did stop off to admire the display for the upcoming Teen Lit Con, Saturday May 12! Although they would not find cat photos, this was a great example of serendipitously finding other fun and useful information when in the library! (It is at Chaska High School, and there will be so many great authors there!! The Peeps were absolutely right to stop and admire the books and authors for this cool, FREE, event!)

After they left the library they completed the final steps of good Information Literacy:

• Step Five: Present newly acquired knowledge so others can use it
• Step Six: Translate these abilities and concepts to new projects and disciplines.

They used their cat photos in a class presentation, showing them to the other students and discussing the process they used to find these specific pictures. They shared information on how those search strategies could be used to find photos of other mammals for other projects – or even pictures of other items students might want to use in their own presentations!

They even remembered to thank Maria, and the Sauk Rapids-Rice High School Library for the help and resources to make their presentation such a success.

In short: Everyone lived happily ever after.

…..Or did they?????

The next week, the fame of the Peeps team had spread, and their search results were legendary. They were assigned a project that sent them off to an academic library to use their Information Literacy skills in all new ways!!

Tune in next week for the next installment of Peep Team Information Literacy Training: Part Two (Academic Library)

You know that it’s always good to wash your hands a few times a day, and right now we should all be washing our hands every time we go outside too. Making some soap can be a cool way for all of us to have soap that smells and looks just the way each one of us wants it.

This is appropriate for kids to do, with an adult – there may be some cutting and some melting things in a microwave that may be really hot. (We’re having fun here, and it’s not great if anybody gets hurt!)

Here are all the materials you will need:

• Plastic soap molds or plastic cups
• Vegetable cooking spray or petroleum jelly
• Pure glycerin soap (sold in blocks or cubes at craft stores)
• Microwave-safe measuring cup
• Red, yellow, and blue soap dyes (found at craft stores)
• Small plastic animals or trinkets (optional)
• A chopstick or popsicle stick
• (You can add in some essential oil, if you want it to smell a certain way.)

You can find all the instructions right here! Make some soap for yourself, and have some left over to share if you want!

We talked about this a couple of weeks ago, and now that the CDC has recommended we all wear masks out in public, especially when it’s hard to keep our distance, it’s a great time to follow up!

This can be a great time for your creative side to really shine!! Do you have some cool fabric? Something hanging around the house that could be transformed into a mask? Since this is going to be a big change for everyone already, we might as well make some fancy, stylish masks so we stand out for our awesomeness!

Remember: these masks are not going to be medical/hospital quality. They are for YOU to show your respect to your neighbors, friends, and community members! They may stop YOU from transmitting a virus that you couldn’t even know you have yet. People with the virus may have no symptoms yet – and still be sharing it with everyone they see.

I might be fine if I get it, you might be fine if you do. But my mom is nearly 80 and in bad health – and if one of us gives her COVID-19 that might kill her.

So, even though it feels weird, even though it feels awkward – wear a mask when you go to the grocery store or to other such places. Let’s do what we can to not let my mom get sick, or your mom, or all those other people out there.

Show your respect, and let’s wear masks. All the cool people will be doing it!

I’ll put in a quick note to update the instructions (below) we gave out at that time: finding elastic at this point is probably a big challenge. Consider adding in some tie strings you can use instead.

Do you sew? Well, do you sew yet? Because it’s just not that hard to do some basic sewing. (I know: I can do basic sewing! It’s not hard.) Sewing some face masks now would be a good way to spend time!

This link goes to the Instructables website. You will find patterns and directions, and photos, to make masks for adults and for children.

What do you need to get started???? They tell you right here:

• 9″ x 15″ fabric outer layer
• 9″ x 15″ fabric lining layer
• (3 regular or large size masks of either design, can be made from 1/4 yard (9″) of 45” wide fabric)
• 3” piece of soft wire (this can be decorative wire as shown, or picture wire, or even a paper clip if that’s all you can find)
• approx. 22” of elastic cord (child size length 10″, regular size length 11-12″, large size length 13″)

“WHAT KIND OF FABRIC?
You can choose any tightly woven cotton or cotton/poly fabric you like. Hold it up to the light to see how tight the weave is. Use the same fabric for outer and lining if you want, or use different ones to help you remember which side is clean and which dirty.

The research (see links at the end) shows 100% cotton having some effectiveness. Cotton/polyester blends may have additional properties of repelling water, making them better barriers to keep droplets from soaking through outer layers.”

Set up a Zoom session, sew with friends, and let’s get some good things going!

We hope you have already been listening to our book group podcast, Reading With Libraries! This is a good time to be part of a flexible book group. Join us! We talk about a different genre each week, we drink beverages related to the genre, and we chat with our Guest Host about books.

We usually record this in our in-office studio, but you may have heard – there’s a global pandemic happening, and we want you to stay home and stay healthy.

So we are going to open this up to people who can record from their homes! We are looking forward to chatting with some people who have not had a chance to participate because they couldn’t make it over to our office.

Do you have a genre you like? We want to talk about it with you!

We will write up the script, we will find the resources to discuss, and we will find the beverages for the episode. We will bring books to chat about in your genre.

You need to be have a microphone with a USB plug – not the microphone on your computer. (We want you to sound good!) And you need to come ready to chat about four or five books.

If you have that, send me an email: mary@cmle.org. Tell me a genre, or two, that you like. Send me a day/time that works for your schedule. And let’s see what we can get set up!

Our book group can always use some new members – and we would really like talking with you about books. Join us!