Category Archives: General

Books, CMLE, General

Happy Reading! Join us in our Goodreads groups!

New month, new books!

If you’ve been reading along each month with our Goodreads book groups, we hope you have been enjoying the selections, and learning great things to help further your professional life! If you are just joining us, fantastic! Here are the books we are reading for the month of February:

For the CMLE Librarian Professionals group, we are reading People Skills: How to Assert Yourself, Listen to Others, and Resolve Conflicts by Robert Bolton.

This book addresses several different communication problems and offers solutions, in order to build more meaningful relationships. We will learn how to listen better and how to handle ourselves effectively during conflict!

For our CMLE Librarians Enjoying Books group, we continue with our theme of books about librarians with this mystery: Books Can Be Deceiving by Jenn McKinlay

Read about the mystery taking place at the Briar Creek Public Library when a body is found and the librarian’s friend is named as a suspect!

Happy February reading!

Communication, General

Library of Congress Recommended Formats Statement – Call for Input by March 31

Even if you do not spend a lot of time cataloging, or working with the LOC standards, the catalog and this format for information organization is the foundation of our profession. So you are encouraged to dive in here and share your ideas about LOC formats that will affect us all!

From LOC:

The Library of Congress is once again calling for input as it looks forward to the upcoming review and revision of the Recommended Formats Statement (http://www.loc.gov/preservation/resources/rfs/).  In April, the teams of experts charged with maintaining, improving and ensuring the accuracy of the Statement will begin the annual process of examining the Statement and the creative works represented in it, to ensure that it reflects correctly the technical characteristics which best encourage preservation and long-term access.  Given the interest and the feedback received over the past few years since the Statement was first issued in 2014, we at the Library of Congress feel that the Statement could benefit this time around by focusing the review and revision process on a few key areas. Continue reading Library of Congress Recommended Formats Statement – Call for Input by March 31 →

CMLE, General

Thinking about circulating games? Here are some ideas!

The-Chinamen's-game-board
let’s play!

I know some of our CMLE members are already circulating games in your libraries; and it’s a topic brought up fairly often when we are talking about materials and services to reach out to communities.

Games are great, and very engaging ways to encourage patrons to come to the library! They can be somewhat troublesome to circulate, as everyone wants to be sure they have the materials to share with the next patron – and small pieces or cards can be easy to lose. You can usually buy replacements for missing parts to games, but it is another step to consider when you are including them in your collection development plan.

There were some ideas being shared online about circulating games, so we are sharing them here, to help you think about your own circ policies! Continue reading Thinking about circulating games? Here are some ideas! →

CMLE, General

CMLE is celebrating Mardi Gras!

Angie decorated our cake! Drop by to enjoy a slice before it’s all gone!

CMLE members – we have a King Cake here in the office, and invite you to drop by to try a piece! It may go fast, so we can’t guarantee it will last; but if you miss the cake, we also have Valentine’s Day candy canes to distribute. At CMLE Headquarters, we are always ready to celebrate a holiday!!

If you are not familiar with the history of King Cakes as part of the Mardi Gras celebration in New Orleans, Wikipedia has some good information. And NPR wrote a story about their discovery of King Cakes: “Is that a Plastic Baby Jesus in my Cake?”

From our bakery’s information on the history of King Cakes:

“Today in New Orleans, the King Cake is an oval-shaped braided coffee cake which is decorated with cinnamon sugar in the official Mardi Gras colors – gold (for power), green (faith), and purple (justice) – and contains a tiny plastic baby that has replaced the coin used in medieval times. The person who gets the slice of cake with the baby in it must host the next party. At come parties, they are crowned king or queen. [Mary’s Note: more traditionally, the person finding the baby buys the next cake!] The cake, a gift shared by family, friends, and revelers alike, is eaten between the Twelfth Night and FatTuesday, the beginning of Lent. However, the cake often begins appearing during Christmas.”

 

Academic, General, Special

Coming Soon: Love Your Data Week!

BigData 2267x1146 white
Love Your Data week is fast approaching on February 13-17, 2017! Please tell us if you plan to participate and we will list your institution’s name on the site so we can continue to grow the community of data lovers.

This year’s theme is emphasizing data quality for researchers at any stage in their career:

Blue heart for Monday Monday: Defining Data Quality
Green heart for Tuesday Tuesday: Documenting, Describing, Defining
Yellow heart for Wednesday Wednesday: Good Data Examples
Orange heart for Thursday Thursday: Finding the Right Data
Red heart for Friday Friday: Rescuing Unloved Data

Visit our website (https://loveyourdata.wordpress.com/) for content, resources, and activities for each day.  And join the conversation on Twitter #LYD17 or #loveyourdata!

  Continue reading Coming Soon: Love Your Data Week! →