CMLE staff are anxious to interview both school media specialists and librarians alike! We are looking for stories about how you have successfully raised funds to support your library or media center. For instance, we know that Mackin and Follett offer an online fundraising alternative to the usual book fair that many of you have been engaging in for quite some time now. Book fairs can serve tangible needs too like team building with your PTA/PTO, but the media center often gets little or none of the proceeds. With the online fundraising options, the media center often gets 100% of the raised dollars, and this option makes it very easy to solicit donations from any location. For instance, if Grandpa and Grandma are snowbirds when you are fundraising, they can still engage in the health and care of their grandchild’s school media center by making their donation online. In the case of Mackin, I also remember that their donation can even be reflected in the bookplate of the book! If you have a story to share (none too big or too small), either leave a comment below, or send email to cmle@stcloudstate.edu with Subject Line: Fundraising Story. Thank you in advance for sharing your story with your colleagues in Central Minnesota!
Category Archives: General
Easy Tips to Strengthen Your Online Privacy
If you are like me, you carry around a bit of ongoing guilt about getting more educated about your online privacy settings and then possibly making some needed changes. January is a great time to think about getting organized and such, so a recent blog post by Ellyssa Kroski (iLibrarian, Jan. 29) caught my eye. Not only was her email hijacked, but her Walmart account was also hacked using her stored credit card information. The great news is that Ellyssa did her research about privacy tips and shares here what she found helpful in making some needed changes. Read her hints and tips at http://tinyurl.com/9wwyukf
Math Blogs = Teaching Tips
Do you often have teachers requesting new tools to help teach math? Richard Byrne, a blog guru, showcases his top five blogs for math teachers looking to make their curriculum stick! Meeting challenges to how traditional math instruction can be delivered electronically to students is not easy. This 1 site adds 5 possibilities for teachers. CMLE is giving it five stars-it just adds up! Each day this week he will highlight a different subject area for interested teachers. For a complete list of his top blogs go to http://tinyurl.com/b85mb99.
New on Staff!
Hello my name is Michelle. I am the new face around the CMLE office, serving as the temporary Information Specialist.
As an alumna from St. Cloud State University, I am returning to campus with a solid background in strategic planning, marketing, and event logistics; having partnered with K-12 schools, libraries, community outreach groups and nonprofits.
I am excited to work with Patricia, Danielle and our valued members to help launch the new, innovative strategic plan initiatives!
College Grads and Problem Solving on the Job
A report from Project Information Literacy – Learning Curve: How College Graduates Solve Information Problems Once They Join the Workplace is online and worthy of a thoughtful read (only 38 pages, well organized). Twenty three in-depth interviews were conducted with employers about their expectations and evaluations of newly graduated hires and their ability to solve information problems in the workplace. Five focus group sessions with 33 recent graduates were also conducted focusing on the challenges they encounter and the informaton-seeking preactices they use as they make the transition from college to workplace. For a complete understanding read the full report; if you only want the major findings, I include them here:
“All in all, our findings reveal two sides of the same coin. The basic online search skills new college graduates bring with them are attractive enough to help them get hired. Yet, employers found that
once on the job, these educated young workers seemed tethered to their computers. They failed to incorporate more fundamental, low-tech research methods that are as essential as ever in the
contemporary workplace.The major findings from our interviews and focus groups are as follows:
1. When it was hiring time, the employers in our sample said they sought similar information proficiencies from the college graduates they recruited. They placed a high premium on graduates’ abilities for searching online, finding information with tools other than search engines, and identifying the best solution from all the information they had gathered.
2. Once they joined the workplace, many college hires demonstrated computer know-how that exceeded both the expectations and abilities of many of their employers. Yet we found these proficiencies also obscured the research techniques needed for solving information problems, according to our employer interviews.
3. Most college hires were prone to deliver the quickest answer they could find using a search engine, entering a few keywords, and scanning the first couple of pages of results, employers said, even though they needed newcomers to apply patience and persistence when solving information problems in the workplace.
4. A majority of employers said they were surprised that new hires rarely used any of the more traditional forms of research, such as picking up the phone or thumbing through an annual report for informational nuggets. Instead, they found many college hires—though not all—relied heavily on what they found online and many rarely looked beyond their screens.
5. At the same time, graduates in our focus groups said they leveraged essential information competencies from college to help them gain an edge and save time at work when solving workplace information problems. Many of them applied techniques for evaluating the quality of content, close reading of texts, and synthesizing large quantities of content, usually found online.
6. To compensate for the gaps in their skills sets, graduates said they developed adaptive strategies for solving information problems in the workplace, often on a trial-and-error basis. Most of these strategies involved cultivating relationships with a trusted co-worker who could help them find quick answers, save time, and learn work processes.”
As information professionals, what does this mean in our information literacy work? Do we still stress the value of picking up a phone or paging through a print resource? The full report is available at http://tinyurl.com/8jpcqvs