Category Archives: General

Check this out:, CMLE, General, Public, Resources, School Media Specialist

Notable Date to Celebrate: November 29th is C.S. Lewis' Birthday

You probably already know that at CMLE, we offer a service called “Notable Dates for your Noggin” which feature special holidays and birthdays of authors, as well as publications of well-known books. In an effort to help you get more from this service, we’ve decided to select one “Notable Date” each month to feature. We will include a few fun programming and activity ideas too, all for you to use!

aslan-and-c-s-lewis
Happy birthday, C.S. Lewis!

November 29th is C.S. Lewis’ birthday. Lewis is well known for his series The Chronicles of Narnia and also for his many Christian texts. According to Biography.com, even as a very young boy Lewis had an active imagination that contributed to his love of fantasy. 

You can celebrate his birthday by reading these 6 books exploring his life and influence, or by contemplating these famous C.S. Lewis quotes. 

turkish-delight
Looks delicious!

Or bring Narnia to life, by making your own forest of snow globes or test your culinary skills by making some Turkish Delight! And here’s a link to a site that has tons of Narnia-related learning resources, like lesson plans, worksheets, and coloring pages. 

For more on C.S. Lewis, take a look at the official website and blog.

Academic, Check this out:, CMLE, Communication, General, Public, Resources, School Media Specialist, Services, Special, Tech

Do you need some pep? Check out these library advocacy videos!

Videos can be a great way to demonstrate your services, and to advocate for your library!  Check out these library videos, to see what kinds of things other libraries are trying.

Does your library make videos? Would you like to?? At CMLE Headquarters, we want to encourage video creation and sharing, so tell us about your work!

2016 Livonia Public Library Summer Reading Program … Parkour!

“Do you need a book recommendation? Have you ever seen a librarian stunt double? Check out our 2016 Livonia Library Summer Reading video featuring Phoenix Freerunning Academy and our very limber librarians. Jump into action on June 4, 2016 by grabbing a reading log at any of the Livonia Public Libraries! Visit our website for more info: http://livoniapubliclibrary.org. And for the Children’s summer reading log, visit our Children’s Programs page: http://livoniapubliclibrary.org/kids/…. Library Parkour!”

Save the Troy Library “Adventures In Reverse Psychology”

“The city of Troy, Michigan was facing a budget shortfall, and was considering closing the Troy Public Library for lack of funds. Even though the necessary revenues could be raised through a miniscule tax increase, powerful anti-tax groups in the area were organized against it. A vote was scheduled amongst the city’s residents, to shut the library or accept the tax increase, and Leo Burnett Detroit decided to support the library by creating a reverse psychology campaign. Yard signs began appearing that read: “Vote to Close Troy Library on August 2nd – Book Burning Party on August 5th.” No one wants to be a part of a town that burns books, and the outraged citizens of Troy pushed back against the “idiotic book burners” and ultimately supported the tax increase, thus ensuring the library’s survival.”

 

 

A Vision Shared: School Board/District Planning for

School Library Advocacy

 

“This short film provides pointers for creating a school board/district wide vision statement for school libraries and emphasizes the importance of advocating for school libraries.”

Librarians Do Gaga

“Students and faculty from the University of Washington’s Information School get their groove on.”

 

Librarian Rhapsody- Shoalhaven Library Staff

This is the most unusual annual report from a library that I’ve ever seen – but combining telling their community about the things they have been doing over the past year with a strong message advocating for the library is a great touch! (Keep watching to the end for the final couple of sentences!)

Academic, Check this out:, CMLE, General, Public, Resources, School Media Specialist, Special

Strategies to Simplify: Tip 10: Tackle teamwork

“Work simply. Live fully.”  This week CMLE focuses on the following work productivity tip from Work Simply, Carson Tate’s popular book.  At CMLE, we’ve boiled down Tate’s wealth of knowledge from Work Simply to a few key points; please see the book for more detail and resources. At the bottom, see links to earlier tips in the series! Let’s all be our best selves….

This week’s activity: Learn effective ways to work together

Working as part of a team can be both rewarding and at times, frustrating. According to Carson Tate’s book Work Simply, this frustration is often the result of conflicting Productivity Styles. In order to overcome these conflicts and the resulting misunderstandings, it is necessary to take into account the different strengths and blind spots of each Productivity Style.

Recently, you discovered your Productivity Style with a simple assessment. Encourage your co-workers to take the assessment to determine their Productivity Style.

mussels-756488_1920
Work Simply

Find your team members’ Productivity Style(s) to gain further awareness about their strengths and potential blind spots: 

Prioritizer: Strengths include having a clear purpose, understanding budgets, maintaining focus, and meeting deadlines. Blind spots: Tendency to be controlling, too much competitiveness, and valuing speed over excellence.

Planner: Strengths include strong organization, finishing work ahead of schedule, staying focused, and locating necessary resources. Blind spots: May be inflexible, lacks spur-of-the-moment thinking, may lose opportunities from being unwilling to change procedures.

Arranger: Strengths include following a daily plan of tasks, inclusive and interpersonal working style, and experienced at delegating. Blind spots: Takes on the problems and concerns of others, misses details, and can get distracted from the end goal.

Visualizer: Strengths include being able to complete large amounts of work quickly, thrives under pressure and deadlines, experienced multitasker, and open to taking risks. Blind spots: May miss details, be reckless, and may miss deadlines due to lack of planning.

Previous tips in this series

Check this out:, General, School Media Specialist

AASL Recommended Apps: Humanities & Arts: Spies of the Mississippi: The Appumentary

spies_mississippiIn June 2016, the American Association of School Librarians (AASL) announced their 25 Best Apps for Teaching and Learning. The apps encourage qualities such as innovation and active participation, and are user-friendly.

The app Spies of the Mississippi comes from a book by Rick Bowers, which was made into a PBS documentary. The app is filled with primary resources that tell the story of the Mississippi State Sovereignty Commission, which was founded in 1956 to preserve segregation and spy on the civil rights movement. The app has videos, a timeline, interactive map, as well as lesson plans and discussion questions.

Cost: Free
Level: Middle and High School
Platforms: iOS

Watch this video to get an idea of how the app works:

Check this out:, CMLE, General, Resources, School Media Specialist, Services

Do you know about Imagination Library?

imagination-library-1
We love our Imagination Library books! Especially since they are board books and therefore chew-safe 🙂

If you are a book-lover and have small children at home under the age of five, you should definitely know about this program! Imagination Library was founded by country singer Dolly Parton to promote literacy and an early love of books in children by mailing them a book each month, no matter the income level of the household.

The United Way of Central Minnesota has been taking part in this program, and if you live in the area, here is where you can sign up! (Tip: it does take several weeks until you receive your first book, so don’t procrastinate!) Each child from birth to their fifth birthday will receive a book in the mail each month. The program has become so popular that it has continued into Canada and the U.K.

You can get more information about the program from their website, or keep up with the book selections and other news on their blog. Also, check out CMLE’s previous post about the program when Imagination Library was donating their 1 millionth book!