Category Archives: Public

Academic, General, Public, School Media Specialist, Special

Featured Book: May Day

May DayThis post is part of an original series created by librarians/media specialists across Central Minnesota featuring books.

Title: May Day by Jess Lourey
Review by: Angie Gentile-Jordan, Office Administrator at CMLE

Our event on May 5th featured a talk from author and professor Jess Lourey. Before the event, in an attempt to familiarize myself with her work, I began reading May Day, the first in her popular Murder-by-Month series.

The book is about assistant librarian Mira James, who moves to the small town of Battle Lake, MN from the big city of Minneapolis as a way to get a fresh start on her post-grad life. As she settles in, she encounters many characters that will be familiar to readers that have spent any amount of time in small-town Minnesota.

All seems to be going well for Mira. She even begins casually dating an archaeologist visiting the town on business. But when his lifeless body shows up (she stumbles across it in the library, no less!) Mira decides to find some answers.

I enjoyed reading this book for several reasons: the tone was light and clever, and I could picture many of the scenes playing out in northern Minnesota. I liked the way Mira bluffed her way through conversations about fishing to gain trust with the locals, throwing out words like “pan fish” not having any idea what it meant.

I’ve already purchased the next in the series, June Bug, and am looking forward to reading it from the boat while doing a little pan fishing of my own!

General, Public, Special

Public library creates memory lab

2010_4559410051_card_catalogWashington DC’s Martin Luther King Jr. Library opened their free, interactive Memory Lab this spring. Their goal is to help people digitize their personal media in a way that can stand up to constantly changing technology. Thanks to publicity from a local TV station, the Memory Lab has been a busy place.

Users are able to bring in VHS tapes, floppy discs, audio cassettes and photo negatives (in addition to other inaccessible media) and view the content, then share it through a thumb drive. The lab also has 3-D printing and an on-demand book printer available free of charge.

Sessions are reserved in three-hour segments, and users find instructions on the library website. If they need help processing their media, there is an archivist available to answer questions. However, users are generally left in private due to the personal nature of what they are viewing.

Another goal of the Memory Lab is to help people realize how quickly technologies change. They hope people will pay attention to the ways they document their memories, and how accessible those memories will be in the coming years.

Image credit: http://tinyurl.com/q63p7pu, licensed under CC BY 2.0

 

 

 

 

Academic, Public, School Media Specialist

Need help with your stretched budget?

Yellow butterflyAre you an educator looking for additional funding? If so, you definitely should investigate the site GetEdFunding.

Sponsored by CDW-G, their mission is to help educators with the funds needed to supplement budgets that are already stretched very thin. The site features thousands of grants and awards that are updated daily. These opportunities are available to both public and private institutions, pre-K and K-12 educators, schools, districts, institutions of higher learning, and also nonprofit organizations that assist these places.

They do require you to register with the site, but once registered, you can do very specialized searches (including 43 areas of focus) to help find relevant grant and award opportunities. They also feature a handy “Deadline Alert” section that highlights which grants and awards will need to be submitted soon.

Click Here to Search for Funding Opportunities.

Remember, CMLE has a grants page too. More info here.

Image credit: http://tinyurl.com/zhvcobz licensed under (CC BY-SA 3.0)
Academic, General, Public, School Media Specialist, Special

12 literary places to visit

alley to the oceanPlanning a trip this summer? If you like books, this article will share with you several unique literary spots not to be missed, including libraries, bookstores, and architecture!

These 12 spots were found on Google Maps so you can get both the address and an idea of the neighborhood they are in, to ensure you can locate them easily should you ever be in the area.

Check out the book benches in Istanbul, which are spread throughout the city and include the works of 18 famous Turkish writers. Or, shop for books in a castle! Hay Castle in the U.K. features an open-air bookshop.

Have you traveled somewhere with a literary influence? We want to hear about it! Let us know in the comments below.

Image credit: http://unsplash.com/(Bertrand Zuchuat) licensed under CC0 1.0

 

 

 

Academic, General, Public, School Media Specialist, Special

Misinformation spreads faster than Creeping Charlie

IrishI am seriously thinking of unplugging from social media lately. Waaayyy too many crazy, unfounded claims and bits of information, most connected to politics. Such a need for drama it seems; has society become addicted to drama? As a librarian, I feel a need to set the record straight when I see these, but I also know that engaging with such Facebook posts will only cause me to receive more! What to do?

This is such a problem that the World Economic Forum declared the online spread of misinformation to be a form of “digital wildfire,” and one of the main threats to global society. As librarians we understand the power of information, but it rises to a new level for me as I read about  a team of researchers who have conducted a five-year-long study on a wide range of Facebook users in a quest to find out how misinformation blossoms online. If echo chambers, trolling pages and confirmation bias appeal to you, please read the following results from the study. 

Wondering how to check outrageous claims to see if they are true? See our earlier blog post: Do You Really Know the Truth? Snopes Field Guide.

Image credit: https://unsplash.com/ (Irene Dávila), licensed under CC0 1.0