Category Archives: Guest Blogger

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Brenda Przybilla Mini Grant Report

This is a guest post from Brenda Przybilla, Library Specialist at Mary of Lourdes School in Little Falls, MN. Read more about our Extended Mini Grant Program. This program is only available during the FY21 school year.

Mary of Lourdes School would like to thank you for the grant money that we received to upgrade our library system.

We were able to purchase two new scanners that we use for checking out materials to students and teachers. This has made it possible for multiple people to scan the items and has helped us be more productive. It is also a valuable tool to use in scanning new materials into our on-line library system.

In many cases this eliminates the need to hand enter information such as title, author and subjects into our library system.

We were also able to purchase label protectors that are used routinely as we add materials to our library.

Once again thank you for your support of our library, it is greatly appreciated!

CMLE, Guest Blogger

Ellie Radaj Extended Mini Grant Report

This is a guest post from Ellie Radaj, Library Media Specialist at Pinewood Elementary in Monticello, MN. Read more about our Extended Mini Grant Program or fill out one of our applications. This program is only available during the FY21 school year.

Pinewood Elementary says a big THANK YOU! to the CMLE for their Mini-Grant program.

When schools shut down in March of 2020, our library, like everyone else, was a bit unprepared.  Our large elementary school was caught with almost 2,000 library books checked out to students and staff. 

Over the course of the spring and fall, our library staff took concerted efforts to regain as many books as possible, but we knew for certain that we did not want students or their families to be burdened by paying for lost books during such a time of chaos and uncertainty.  Instead, in October we wrote off the remaining 80 unreturned books as a loss.  

Unfortunately, nearly half of those unreturned books were from our most popular topics and series – Minecraft, Pokemon, Marvel, Wimpy Kid, Dog Man, Raina Telegemeier – and while they were a small portion of our total collection, the loss hit hard, and the students noticed many of their favorite books missing.  

This spring, we reached out to CMLE to inquire about the Mini-Grant, and received funding to replace many of these popular books!  We were able to purchase over 60 brand new books for our collection from Barnes and Noble using their educator discount, and the students noticed as soon as they started to hit the shelves! 

As we processed the books a few at a time, the excitement was palpable. These are the books that make our students love the library, that spark their attention and pull them into reading.  We love being able to provide students with books that fuel their passions and open the door for life-long readers.

Our students say a huge THANK YOU!

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Mary Shaddrick Extended Mini Grant Report

This is a guest post from Mary Shaddrick, Media Specialist at North Jr. High in St. Cloud, MN. Read more about our Extended Mini Grant Program or fill out one of our applications. This program is only available during the FY21 school year.

I was very happy to be notified my minigrant application was approved for North Junior High’s media center. The money has already helped students and staff at our school. We all are very grateful to CMLE for the chance to increase our reading opportunities.

My plan for the grant was to increase the number of eBooks available to students. Last spring, companies opened up their eBook collection to schools at no cost for many titles.  This fall, we saw a lot of the titles disappear, but the need for eBook options for students did not go away.  I started the school year by using my budget to purchase almost 100 eBooks.  However, I knew we could use at least that many more to attract students to the eBook platform and provide a variety of genres and formats. 

When I read about the CMLE Extended Minigrant program, I immediately put in an application for the purpose of adding more eBooks.  Once I knew we were approved for the funding, I set to work choosing the eBooks.  The company I use for eBooks is Mackin, and they offer a service to determine which titles would be a good fit for your collection.  The suggestions are based on criteria you choose and on your current collection.

Once I had the list from Mackin, I started making edits.  Being new to the school, I relied on checkout records and what print books I saw were in demand. I was able to choose 89 titles, and I was only 52 cents off from the grant total.  I think most media specialists are fabulous at stretching budget dollars to the max, and I wanted to get as many titles as possible while keeping the needs and wants of our student users in mind. I also added some books we have in the collection as print books as they are high demand books and having the addition of an eBook version assures more students can read the book they really want. 

The next step was to publicize the new eBooks. At the time, all students were in the distance learning model.  I put together a slide show, videos, and marketed the new eBooks on Schoology.  Immediately, I saw an increase in students accessing Mackinvia.com (Mackin’s ebook platform). Students have their own login and password for the ebooks site, and I am able to track how many read books online and how many checkout a book or place a hold on a eBook. 

The additional titles we were able to purchase with this grant will have long-term benefits for our school. Even once we return to in-person instruction, I will continue to promote the eBooks and the ability to read on their 1-to-1 devices. Since we already had some eBooks on the platform, the students do not need to remember yet another login, and the site offers the ability to preview books that are not available for checkout due to another student currently using it. 

I recently started a program I am calling “Bookhub.” It is classroom delivery of print books during students’ LA classes. When I come into their classrooms, I also make sure to promote the reading they can do through Mackinvia and the books added this year with the grant money. Each week, I see one or two more students who previously had not checked out the eBook site beginning to use it. 

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Karen Gfroerer Extended Mini Grant Report

This is a guest post from Karen Gfroerer K-5 Media Specialist at Prairie View Elementary Middle School in Otsego, MN. Read more about our Extended Mini Grant Program or fill out one of our applications. This program is only available during the FY21 school year.

*Note: scroll to the bottom to watch a fantastic video Karen put together to show her students the new books!!

To the Central MN Libraries Exchange,

I want to start off by saying THANK YOU! I received my nonfiction book order today and it was so much fun unpacking the books. With every book I pulled out, I knew exactly the group of students that was going to go crazy for them and that made me so anxious to get pictures and put together a video for them showcasing the books.

As stated in my grant application, the target for my purchase was balancing out a need for gaps in our nonfiction section, particularly for the younger readers. All of the books I purchased do just that while also being high interest. Knowing this I feel certain that all of the books will have a high circulation rate.

As we prepare for students to return to school in two weeks, we have had to rethink how we operate our library. Since I have to go to the classrooms for their media time it will prohibit students from browsing shelves.  However, I have come up with a way for them to still get books THEY want. I have created a request slip where the students in K-2 can circle pictures of topics they like to read about and then our media assistant and I will pull their choices and deliver their orders to them, just as they would utilize a grab-n-go at a public library. The 3rd-5th graders will use our Destiny Discover catalog to put choices on hold. One of the nice features of Destiny Discover is it highlights new books at the top, with pictures of the covers too!  Navigating our book checkout this way leaves me pretty confident that there will be no lull in circulation. 

This grant gave me such hope this year when nearly all funding sources for purchasing new books were giving poor returns or none at all. The students at my school truly love choosing library books and I know they will be very excited to access the ones purchased from this grant opportunity.

Guest Blogger, Materials

Jessie Storlien Extended Mini Grant Report

This is a guest post from Jessie Storlien, Archivist at the Stearns History Museum. Read more about our Extended Mini Grant Program or fill out one of our applications. This program is only available during the FY21 school year.

Stearns History Museum Buys Archival Supplies!

The Stearns History Museum Research Center had a backlog of items waiting to be processed. Space and supply constraints kept us from boxing and shelving new large collections. However, after receiving the CMLE minigrant, we were able to order the boxes and folders necessary to organize and process the large collections waiting in our overflow storage room. This, coupled with the construction of 75 more shelves in the archives will clear much of the unprocessed collections backlog.

Materials cover a breadth of topics from business and politics to women and children. Specific collections include: writers, Marilyn Salzl Brinkman and Jeannette Blonigen Clancy’s, interviews, research, and photos; World War I veteran Wesley Danneker’s photo albums, pilot log, and accompanying documents; materials from Electrolux upon its closing last year; United Cerebral Palsy of Central MN collection detailing their organization’s work in the area. Most of the materials are images, ephemera, documents, audio-visual materials, and other archival items.

To process the collections, materials will be filed, boxed, and cataloged. Each box will receive a unique number and a shelf location. The metadata for the collections will be recorded at the file level into our new library catalog when it goes live before the end of this year. This processing project will allow us to create more retrievability to the collections than is currently available, both physically and through recorded data. 

The focus of this project was accessibility for staff and patrons. This includes the ability to search for and find items that are in processing. Preparing collections to be entered into the new library catalog, and creating metadata that enhances searches in that system is also a priority. The broadest goal is to allow researchers to discover and obtain information from the collections at SHM. 

We want to honor our commitment to donors by keeping materials as preserved as possible, while also creating accessible information for researchers. The boxes and folders purchased through this minigrant will help us meet our strategic plan goals to preserve, process, and create accessible collections. Thank you!