Those of us old enough to remember the glory days of actually using paste also remember the illicit thrill of sneaking tastes of it! Teachers and librarians were quick to stop it, usually exclaiming about the danger of eating paste. (Think about the stories of the danger of eating pop rocks and soda – it’s not real, but deliciously scary in the abstract!)
Did this poor man really die from eating library paste?? We have no way of knowing the reality. And while it seems really unlikely…maybe it could be a warning to patrons today who may be determined to do dangerous things in a library! (“Don’t send money to a Nigerian prince! You didn’t win the Irish Sweepstakes! The deposed head of an unnamed nation does not need you to hold his money! Look at this guy who died of eating library paste, and know we are here to look out for you!”)
Monthly topics! This is a way for us to look at some information about a topic from a variety of different perspectives, to cover it fully. Our topics are taken from the recent needs assessment survey, and are the ideas and skills our members said they most wanted to know about in their library work.
We have concluded our look at Grants in January, and are covering Social Media this month.
There are all kinds of tools for social media, but the purpose to all of them is the same: to connect with your community members where they are. Social media can also be a great tool for that very important skill in communication: listening. It is a very easy way to listen to issues of interest to your community members, to find out what questions are coming up, and to make connections between people and ideas.
Do you have topics you want to see this month? Do you have some great social media ideas or tips to share? Add them to the comments below! We look forward to hearing your ideas!!
At CMLE Headquarters, we are working to help our members build connections with others! With our regular dinner gatherings underway, we want to implement the next request from members: group visits to libraries across the system!!
From our feedback, it seems like there is a lot of interest in visiting other member’s libraries. (And at HQ we endorse this idea: our member libraries are SO interesting to visit!!)
We want to be sure we schedule visits at days and times that work for you! So fill out the comment form below to send your best day/time to us. Feel free to write more info into the open-ended question, or email us with ideas!
We have already established that library people are extremely cool, and naturally other people have taken notice of that! Libraries and library people are represented prolifically in popular culture. Last week we talked about libraries in the comics. And we are also well represented across all types of pop culture: books, movies, games, TV shows.
Pop culture is not just for fun (though, of course that would be fine!); there are many academic areas of study looking at aspects of pop culture. The Popular Culture Association/American Culture Association holds annual conferences for people involved in pop culture scholarship from across the country, as well as smaller regional conferences.
Of course, they have a section just for Libraries, Archives, and Museums! (Disclaimer: I have presented twice at their annual conferences. And it was fantastic!!)
One of my studies looked at the images of library people in pop culture, to see what kind of images people in our profession were identifying with as part of their own professional image. If you would like to build up your own reference collection of library pop culture images, here are some of their suggestions (not in any order): Continue reading Libraries and Pop Culture: A Natural Partnership!→
This month we have talked about a few different strategies for grant writing, and shared some ideas on places to go for grants. All of this will be collected on our website, under Monthly Topics. We will also have material available in our Grants and Fundraising section.
