Category Archives: CMLE

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Fall Welcome Back Event!

Library friends! Fall will be here soon and CMLE wants to celebrate with you!

Mark your calendars for Thursday, September 26th from 4-7pm! We will be in the Bremer Community Room at the St. Cloud Public Library and will have so many things to share with you! This includes:

  • Information on how to use one of our VR kits for your school
  • Details about our scholarship and mini grant programs
  • Advocacy information you can share far and wide
  • Raffle for books, CMLE merch, and other fun prizes
  • Light refreshments
  • Delightful library company!

Questions? Contact Angie at ajordan @ cmle.org.

Hope to see you there!

CMLE

Upcoming CMLE Member Events for 2019!

Have fun with library people!

CMLE members, we love spending time with you! We are already planning several activities and events for the year ahead and want to share our plans with you. (Including our Fall Welcome Back event on Sept. 26th!) Mark your calendars! We hope you can join us!

September:

  • Meet us at Chris Albani: Public reading and talk: Stories of Struggle, Stories of Hope: Art, Politics and Human Rights Tuesday, September 17 at 7:00 p.m. Gorecki Family Theater, Benedicta Arts Center, CSB (free, ticketed event). 
  • CMLE Fall Member Welcome Back Event! Thursday, September 26th from 4-7pm at the Bremer Community Meeting Room at the St. Cloud Public Library. Enjoy raffle prizes, light refreshments, and learn how to bring CMLE VR kits to your school!

October:

December:

  • Wednesday, Dec. 4th: Library Advocacy Postcard Party at Liquid Assets in Sartell. Postcards, postage, and legislator addresses provided!

January:

  • Dinner at Old Chicago! Date and time TBD.

Spring:

  • CMLE-sponsored Library Tea Party at the Mad Hatter in Anoka! (See our event recap from previous years here and here)
  • Roller Derby outing! (Check out pics from last year!)

Do you have an idea for a member event? Email us at admin@cmle.org or comment below! We’ll try to make it happen!

CMLE, Communication

Last Newsletter till Fall! Stay in touch!

It’s that time again, CMLE members and library community! We take a short break from sending our weekly newsletter over the summer since we know so many of you are in schools (plus, we really appreciate being able to use the time to focus on other projects!!)

Of course, we’ll still be available by emailing admin@cmle.org. We’ll continue to put up articles of interest on our blog, and will be active on social media.

And we’ll continue to release new podcast episodes!! Our last episode of Season Five of Linking Our Libraries will be on June 27th, with a special Bonus Episode on July 4th.

Send us an email, drop by our office, join us for a podcast episode! Come camping with us! We hope you all have a rejuvenating summer filled with lots of good books!

CMLE, Communication

CMLE’s Top Posts of the Year!

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It’s always fun for us to take a look back on our most read posts and pages from the past academic year. We like to learn what our community is reading about!

  1. Our most read page was our Book Bites Quickie Podcast! We have so much fun recording this, and we’re SO glad you like to listen! Life needs more book recommendations and this quick podcast is easy to fit into your day 🙂
  2. And going right along with number one is our second place winner – our Reading With Libraries page! Each week we invite a guest to tell us about their favorite book genre. We get to learn, share unique and delicious drink recipes, and gather strategies for Reader’s Advisory! Oh, and gush over books, too.
  3. People like to learn about our podcasts! Linking Our Libraries is in third place. This podcast is focused on improving your leadership abilities and working on specific library skills. We hear from local professionals and cover a fantastic variety of topics!
  4. Episode 209: Young Adult Literature has been a popular post. We had Kate and Dezra from the St. Cloud Public Library as Guest Hosts and it was a very energetic conversation!
  5. Officially our most listened-to podcast episode, Episode 210 Magical Realism is such a cool genre to explore! Our Guest Host Kelly from the St. John’s/St. Ben’s library shared some wonderful book titles with us.
  6. Need some ideas for apps to incorporate into your education work? Our series on the AASL Recommended Apps has detailed suggestions for you, and PBS Kid’s Games was a popular one this year.
  7. We LOVE awarding scholarships! Our page CMLE Scholarships was visited many times (and you should go check it out if you need a scholarship for some professional development!)
  8. Reader’s Advisory is such an important part of working in the library community! This article, part of our Training Tips series, won the number eight spot on our list.
  9. Another Training Tip: Student Library Assistant Training Guide: Shelving Basics made the Top Post cutoff!
  10. It is so rewarding to see advocacy efforts having an impact! Our page Did You Receive A Library Postcard? for the legislators and library stakeholders that we contacted via postcard was definitely sharing the value of libraries this year!

CMLE, Podcast

Reading over the summer? Share a Book Bite with us!

Summer is busy but it’s also a fantastic time for reading, especially if you get to do it outside, lemonade in hand! And we’d love to hear about the books you read. We’re looking for people to share a quick book review on our Book Bites podcast series.

Book Bites is just what it sounds like: A bite-sized book review in under 5 minutes! We publish these on both our Linking Our Libraries and Reading With Libraries podcast feeds because everyone could use more book ideas 😊

This summer we are really hoping to include more voices from school library people on our podcast (look out for an email from us about this soon!) but know all our library people are probably readers and have interesting book suggestions.

If you have a smartphone or computer, record yourself talking about a book for under five minutes. If you want to invite a friend to talk with you so it’s more like a conversation, awesome. Then send us the recording! Use either admin@cmle.org or ajordan@cmle.org.

We’ll edit the sound to the best of our abilities and publish it on our feeds! Then you can spend the rest of the summer bragging to friends and family that you are now podcast-famous.

As always, questions are welcome! Email me (Angie) ajordan@cmle.org and we’ll figure it out!