Category Archives: Communication

CMLE, Communication, Research

Help us! Fill out a survey for CMLE!

MultilingualWe need your help! We are looking for information and experience from library people all across Minnesota – and that means you!

Below is the information about this survey; if you choose to take it, this will be given to you again on the first page.

Please take a few minutes to fill this out; and then please share it with absolutely everyone in your library, and any other library person in the state of Minnesota!

Two people will be randomly selected to each win a $30 gift card from Amazon, and everyone will be able to receive the results we find.

Thank you, in advance, for your help here!!

 

Minnesota residents speak more than one hundred languages at home.

Libraries of all types are working to serve their community members, including people speaking all of these languages. Serving Emerging Bilingual community members can present some challenges to the traditional library services you are already providing, as well as bringing in new strategies and ideas for providing service to your community.

Who are Emerging Bilingual community members? They may, or may not, already be using your library. They speak languages other than English as their first language, and are learning English or speaking it fluently as a second language (or third, or fourth!).

We want to know how it is going for you! We are interested in the things that are great – successes you have had, good resources you have found, community groups you have connected with. And we want to know where you see opportunities for improvement – resources, funding, training, time, and anything else that is an obstacle to your library providing outstanding service to everyone, regardless of language. Continue reading Help us! Fill out a survey for CMLE! →

Advocacy, Communication, Services

Librarians in the 21st Century: It Is Becoming Impossible to Remain Neutral

Interior view of Stockholm Public Library
This article is from lithub.com. I highly suggest you click here to read the entire thing, after looking at the excerpt we posted below.

I will add that the author is one of my former students in library school, and she was absolutely great there! I was fortunate to have her in classes, and valued both her contributions to class and the time I was able to spend with her. So I’m not neutral at all on the value she brings to the library profession!

Stacie Williams on
How to Confront Microaggressions in the Library

“Library neutrality sounds innocuous, but it’s not, if you’re a librarian. Although neutrality has long been regarded and taught as an important ethic of the profession, a growing number of librarians have begun questioning whether it is preferable—or even possible—for libraries to be neutral. In this essay, Stacie Williams makes the case that it is neither.

–Stephanie Anderson

I love working the reference desk. Like most people, it was my first introduction to librarians as a little kid: the smiling person behind a desk, asking me if I needed help finding anything. In my last semester of graduate school, I took a job working the access services desk at a medical library, where I could meet new people and help them the way that I had been helped in libraries throughout my life. Even as I gained more experience in archives, I continued to look for opportunities to assist at a reference or access point of service.

Working in such a visible position, over the years, I have been constantly reminded that my interactions with patrons are a reflection of my body: my black, female-presenting body. In ways small and large, I have been reminded that nothing about libraries is neutral. Not the desks or furniture that are sometimes built by incarcerated individuals who can’t protest their labor. Not the buildings, some of which lack physical access for individuals who can’t climb stairs or walk over uneven stones and bricks. Not the collections development theories, not the leadership opportunities, not the vacation and break schedules, or the computer use policies. Not our co-workers, our funding models, and certainly not the patrons we serve. Neutrality as we use it in libraries leaves people standing at the margins, demanding to be acknowledged as capable and professional, as human, as having histories and lived experiences reflective of the bodies we inhabit. Our bodies, like the bodies of knowledge we provide access to, are not and never were neutral. Continue reading Librarians in the 21st Century: It Is Becoming Impossible to Remain Neutral →

Books, Communication

Arizona Moon: A Novel of Vietnam wins 2017 W. Y. Boyd Literary Award for “Excellence in Military Fiction.”

 

Arizona Moon: A Novel of Vietnam, by J.M. Graham

Contact:

Cheryl Malden
Program Officer
Governance
American Library Association
312-280-3247
cmalden@ala.org

CHICAGO — “Arizona Moon: A Novel of Vietnam” by J. M. Graham and published by Naval Institute Press is the winner of the 2017 W. Y. Boyd Literary Award “for Excellence in Military Fiction.”

The W. Y. Boyd Literary Novel Award honors the best fiction set in a period when the United States was at war.  The $5,000 award and citation, donated by author W.Y. Boyd II, recognizes the service of American veterans and encourages the writing and publishing of outstanding war-related fiction.

J. M. Graham has written a firsthand account of the trials and tribulations of three individuals, two Marines, Cpl. Raymond Strader, Squad Leader who is on the verge of going home and LCpl. Noche Gonshayee an Apache Indian who is a warrior but caught between two cultures. The third individual is Troung Nghi a North Vietnamese Army (NVA) student volunteer. The novel set in the Arizona Territory in the An Hoa basin of Quang Providence, South Vietnam in October 1967.  The description of the living conditions and fighting is graphic and describes how the men managed to survive, fight and die in this god forsaken place.  Their only lifelines are their radios and the helicopters that often flew through miserable weather and enemy fire to bring food, supplies ammo, and mail from friends and loved ones.  This latter lifeline also brought reinforcements and evacuated the wounded and dead.

Continue reading Arizona Moon: A Novel of Vietnam wins 2017 W. Y. Boyd Literary Award for “Excellence in Military Fiction.” →

Advocacy, Communication

Woolfolk receives 2017 Lemony Snicket Prize for Noble Librarians Faced with Adversity

Lemony snicket signature

Contact:

Cheryl Malden
Program Officer
Governance
Governance
312-280-3247
cmalden@ala.org

CHICAGO – Steven Woolfolk, Director of Programming and Marketing at the Kansas City Public Library, has been selected as the recipient of the 2017 Lemony Snicket Prize for Noble Librarians Faced with Adversity. Daniel Handler, also known as Lemony Snicket, will present Woolfolk with the prize during the American Library Association (ALA) Annual Conference & Exhibition in Chicago, IL. Woolfolk will receive a cash prize and an object from Handler’s private collection.

On May 9, 2016, the Plaza branch of the Kansas City Public Library hosted the inaugural presentation in the Truman and Israel Lecture Series co-presented by the library, the Truman Library Institute and the Jewish Community Foundation of Greater Kansas City. It was open to the public. All proceeded without incident until the question-and-answer portion, when audience member Jeremy Rothe-Kushel asked a question that was perceived to be provocative. When he attempted to follow up, he was grabbed by one of the private security guards and then by others in the private security detail, which included off-duty police officers. When Woolfolk attempted to intervene and protest the police action in defense of Rothe-Kushel’s basic First Amendment rights, he was arrested and charged with interfering with an arrest, suffering a torn medial collateral ligament in his knee from being kneed in the leg by an officer. The arrests resulted in a flurry of public discussion on the relationship between the library and its position as First Amendment defender.

Continue reading Woolfolk receives 2017 Lemony Snicket Prize for Noble Librarians Faced with Adversity →

Advocacy, CMLE, Communication

We are Ready! Join us for the Postcard Party in the Park!

Clemens Gardens

Despite our snow this week, we are getting Spring Fever here at CMLE HQ – and we want to go see flowers and talk libraries. So we are hosting a Postcard Party in the Park, and you are invited! (You, your family, friends, neighbors, polite strangers you met on the street – it’s a very inclusive invitation!)

CMLE HQ will provide postcards and addresses; you can write out quick notes to your stakeholders to tell them about libraries; and we will mail them. Quick and easy advocacy in action!

Thursday, May 18 from 11:00 to 1:00 we will be sitting at tables behind the Gift Shop at the Munsinger Clemens Gardens. Bring your lunch; we will provide snacks, postcards, pens, and addresses for your legislators. Beverages are available for purchase at the Gift Shop, and water fountains are nearby.

After our poll on the best day for this event, we have added a second time. We will also be there from 4:30 to 6:30 that afternoon. Stop by on your way home from work, or bring a sack dinner and enjoy the beautiful gardens, and the river! Snacks and postcards will again be available to everyone who attends. Bring your kids and sweeties, and let them run around the garden while we have library fun! Continue reading We are Ready! Join us for the Postcard Party in the Park! →