Category Archives: Programs

CMLE, Programs, Resources, Tech

Day One of the CMLE Summer Fun Library Tour!

Did you watch Phineas and Ferb? If so, you are already familiar with the concept of having a summer filled with cool things! You only have so long until summer is over, so let’s make the most of it!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xf3mRZ7SHu0

While we can not guarantee creating nanobots, giving monkeys showers, surfing tidal waves, or even climbing the Eiffel Tower, we do want to share some fun library facts and ideas.

Look for a daily series of quick posts with library trivia, programs, and models to make us all laugh, or to give everyone ideas you might want to try out this fall! The library field is filled with all sorts of interesting things – and we plan to explore them this summer.

If you have suggestions for fun library things this summer, send them in or post them to the comments below!

What will we have created by the time fall rolls around?? Who knows?? But hopefully we will all have had some library fun!

 

Day One of the CMLE Summer Library Tour:

Have you had to clean dirty books?? It’s never fun! But check out this machine that does the hard part for you!

The machine is from Italy, and is being used right now at the Boston Public Library!(Check their cute, short video!)

Advocacy, CMLE, Programs

Our Postcard Party Recap!

On Thursday, May 25 we had our first Postcard Party in the Park! (It was really TWO parties, as we hosted a lunchtime event, and another one in the evening.) It was great to see so many library people, and we collected a lot of postcards to mail to our legislators and other stakeholders. And we had a lovely day out by the river at Munsinger Clemens Gardens, with sunshine, flowers, and a surprisingly large number of rabbits dashing around. So it was a complete success!!

The story of Munsinger Clemens Gardens is a love story, as you can see in this statue of Bill and Virginia Clemens – admiring the rose garden she loved. This was the perfect setting for us to chat with our library people and to share some good library facts with stakeholders. We love libraries, and want to see them thrive!

We set up our sign, to direct traffic back to the tables where we were setting up. There are so many great things to do in this garden, we wanted to be sure our library people could find us.

We got a table all set up and ready for action before our library advocates stopped by! We brought postcards we created with library facts printed in different designs, addresses for all our state and federal legislators, some facts about libraries and their value to the community, and sample text to get everyone started in working out what to say. (It’s nice to use a postcard; you can just give a couple of facts and be done!) Not in this picture: there were also mini-cupcakes, cookies, and some healthier snack options. We know that advocacy can be hard work, so we wanted to be sure everyone was sufficiently fueled for the day ahead!

We had a steady stream of visitors to fill out postcards – and to enjoy chatting about libraries! CMLE and ECRL Board member Wendy Kafka even recruited a friend to come and do some advocacy work for libraries! It was so fun to have this chance to chat about libraries, and all the great things libraries do. All of us who work in the library field know that we provide so much value to our communities; and it is fun to have this chance to advocate and talk about our values to stakeholders who are not familiar with all our work. (Yes, a few people who were just happily visiting the gardens also got to hear about the value of libraries! They seemed pleased.)

Thanks to everyone who turned out for our first event! We had a great time, we collected a lot of postcards to mail to stakeholders, and we had such fun chatting with people about libraries!! This is the best kind of advocacy work: when we have fun, we share ideas, and we help all kinds of people to  learn more about the work we do and the incredible value we provide!

We will definitely be hosting more of these postcard parties, and want to move around our twelve-county CMLE area. Do you have a fun place we could meet to write out postcards?? We want to go there!! Email us with your suggestion, or fill out the form below, and we will get things set up!

One small advocacy fact you can use when you talk to people outside the field about our value:
For every $1 invested in Minnesota public libraries, an average of $4.2 in value is returned to the community.
That’s a pretty amazing Return on Investment (ROI)!

Advocacy, Programs, Public

How public libraries help build healthy communities

People icon(Article from Brookings.edu, By Marcela Cabello and Stuart M Butler)

“In a previous blog post, we’ve noted the importance of “third places” in strengthening communities – meaning those places that are neither one’s home (first place) nor workspace (second place). A range of such third places, from churches to beauty salons, play an important role in community building. They are the informal spaces that are often mainstays in a neighborhood, places where both random and intentional in-person relationships are made.

Several things are necessary for a particular place to play this role. Location and accessibility are important, of course. But so are trust and a sense of neutrality; they are usually the keys to success, whether the place is a house of worship, a family-owned diner, or a barbershop.

As the earlier piece explained, public spaces and buildings can become important and successful third places. And one particularly interesting, emerging and important example is the public library.
Continue reading How public libraries help build healthy communities →

Programs, Public

Library Lock-ins for Adults

Lock Clipart
(From Public Libraries Online, by Melanie A. Lyttle and Shawn D. Walsh)

It’s a Friday night and library staff are planning to be awake for the next twelve hours, plus the time it takes for them to drive home and fall exhausted into bed. It’s another lock-in, but this time the youngest attendees are 18. It’s an adult lock-in, and just like when they were in high school, there is no expectation of sleep. Squeezed in around jobs and school, new adults make time to gather with their friends at the library and be kids again.

We can’t say that this is an activity that would work everywhere. It seems quite situation-dependent. For example, our Adult Library Lock-In consisted of a core group who grew up attending lock-ins and other library programs. However, this time they brought their college friends, roommates, co-workers, and significant others to meet the librarians and former classmates they spent hours with at the library sometimes as long as five years ago.

How does an adult lock-in look different from a high school lock-in? Instead of large coolers filled with lemonade and water there is a carafe of very strong coffee and some 2 liter bottles of soft drinks. There isn’t a litany of rules to go over at the beginning so everyone behaves because everyone is an adult now. Anyone can leave when they want because most have cars, so there isn’t a need to call an over-sleeping parent and remind them to come get their child in the morning. There is more talking among the participants at the beginning of the event as they catch up with each other on what they have been doing since the last time they saw each other. Even in the age of social media it seems like talking face-to-face is still the best way to get information. There are also new friends from outside the community. It isn’t just kids from the local schools in the area.

How does an adult lock-in look the same as a high school lock-in? There are current and retro-gaming systems set up around the building. Tables are filled with board games ready to play. One television is ready for movie-watching. There is still pizza to eat, and someone still wants to organize a game of capture the flag. There are still people who decide to curl up in a niche on a comfy chair and read during the night, and there are still one or two people who decided to sleep for an hour or two during the event.

Why an adult lock-in? Whether these new adults are attending some type of post-secondary education in the area or farther away, they still want to come home. For many of them the library was their home during high school. This was their third place other than school and home. They could be themselves here. Now they want to share that with their significant other, their college roommate, or their co-worker who likes the same things they do. It is also a time to show the important adults in their lives, the librarians, that they have grown up and become something. Now they tell the librarians about their jobs, their classes, and their internships. And just like during high school, the librarians listen attentively, praise their efforts, and remind these young adults that they still believe they can do anything.

These kids aren’t kids anymore. They are now able to vote for library levies and generally support or ignore libraries. Soon they will have kids of their own, and hopefully they will bring their babies to your library for storytime!

(Read this entire article here!)

Academic, Communication, Programs, Tech

UC Merced Library Chosen to Digitize AIDS Historical Archives

Gary Fisher (1961-1994) was a gay African American man who enjoyed writing and drawing and was a dedicated diarist who died of AIDS at the age of 32 in San Francisco. This page, dated February 7, 1991, is from one of his journals and it illustrates the fear, uncertainty and hope that surrounded the use of new medications to treat HIV and AIDS. (Gary Fisher Papers, San Francisco Public Library)
Gary Fisher (1961-1994) was a gay African American man who enjoyed writing and drawing and was a dedicated diarist who died of AIDS at the age of 32 in San Francisco. This page, dated February 7, 1991, is from one of his journals and it illustrates the fear, uncertainty and hope that surrounded the use of new medications to treat HIV and AIDS. (Gary Fisher Papers, San Francisco Public Library)

 

(From UC Merced website, by By Lorena Anderson, University Communications)

“The UC Merced Library Opens a New Window. ’s digital assets team is playing an important role in providing access to a swath of modern history that will contribute to research and society.

The team has been asked to digitize about 127,000 pages from 49 archival collections related to the early days of the AIDS epidemic in the San Francisco Bay Area as part of the AIDS History Project, which is being funded by a two-year, $315,000 Implementation Grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities.

The project is a joint effort of the Archives and Special Collections department of the UCSF Library, the San Francisco Public Library, and the Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, Transgender Historical Society.

Continue reading UC Merced Library Chosen to Digitize AIDS Historical Archives →