We like books; we like parks – and Minnesota is lucky to have both of them! Join our Goodreads book challenge: Armchair Travel to Minnesota State Parks.

We give you a link to each state park, a short fact, and a prompt for you to find a book. You find it, and read a book, and then tell us all about it.

In this podcast, we give you a few suggestions for books to fit a prompt for each park. Try one of these books, or find one of your own to enjoy!

Sibley State Park was established in 1919. https://www.dnr.state.mn.us/state_par…

They have canoes and a canoe route for visitors to enjoy, so you can enjoy a book with canoes or kayaks and think about your own watery adventures!

We have looked at a lot of different uses for VR. We have kits we loan out to our members, filled with all sorts of educational programming. And we are looking at a new use for VR each week here.

This week’s VR story seems like a great one! Too often kids have to be in hospitals, and it’s a scary time for everyone. Using VR is a good tool to help keep those fears dialed down.

Check out this excerpt from the article, and click the link to read the whole thing, and to see their images!

Virtual reality app aims to make hospitals less scary for children

“A virtual reality app to help children prepare for surgery and reduce their anxiety ahead of going into hospital has been launched by Sligo University Hospital.

The ‘Little Journey’ app is geared towards children aged between three and 13 and it gives them 360 degree views of all the areas they will visit at the hospital.

It also has information about anaesthesiology, which is tailored to their age.

Speaking about the anxiety children and parents can feel before undergoing general anaesthesia, Dr Anne Dolan, Consultant Anaesthesiologist at SUH said: “Children may have anxiety around the clinical environment, their expectation of events, meeting unfamiliar people and even fear of pain.”

For our school library people – I’m sharing a national survey I’m involved in, to collect anonymous information about your workplace satisfaction.

If you are interested in sharing your thoughts in this survey, you can click on the link right here. It is all anonymous – you don’t share your name, your job, or your school. (So you are kind of on the honor system here, to only answer if you are working in a school library!)

There is a list of about 20 different things you might like about your job, things that bring your satisfaction in your workplace, or even things that actively make you happy. You will quickly sort through them, in order of things you like most to things you like least. And there is a comment box where you can add anything else you like about your job.

If you are on some of the national school library listserves, you may see this survey there. The focus is not on CMLE or Minnesota – we’re looking all over the country, but are definitely hoping to find some useful results to share with everyone. And you can share your voice here too.

Workplace stress is a problem across the Library and Information Science field, and I’ve done research over the years into trying to figure out ways to help library people to make that better. So this study is the first of a series of studies, looking at different types of libraries across the country to find out what kinds of things are causing workplace satisfaction. This is building on research I did nearly a decade ago, looking at happiness in libraries.

The results can be used to help build on other studies I’ve been involved with, to help build some systems across libraries. Hopefully, even in a small way, this information can be used to make libraries even better places to work!

So, to be clear: there is no direct reward to you for participation. We will never know whether you did or not. All the data will be thrown together to see what turns up. (There is some fancy statistical analysis here, to find answers; it’s not just a random tossing of numbers!)

If you work in a school library, and would like to share your own thoughts, go head and fill it out here!

(And if you are not working in a public library, we will gradually work our way through looking at every type of library; so stay tuned!)

If you have questions, you can email me at mary @ cmle . org!

Welcome back to our final episode in Season Six of Linking Our Libraries! Thanks so much for working with us all season. If you are interested in getting clock hours for the work we are doing here, check out our website cmle.org, for our continuing education opportunities!

This week we look at one of the big skills in school library work: digital citizenship. Check out our full show notes page for all the links

Talking with us, we have a returning Guest Host, Bethany Kauffman, Media Specialist and Book Club Advisor at Rogers High School.