Library people: We all know our patrons use Wikipedia. We use Wikipedia. It’s a pretty awesome tool! But it can be better!! We are passing on some information about strategies you can use to help Wikipedia to be better and more accurate.
Try it for yourself! Set up a Wikipedia event in your library! Use this as a starting point to make our of our frequently-used resources to be stronger!
Continue reading Libraries improving Wikipedia: Are you in??
As we close out an interesting 2016, CMLE is moving ahead with our book groups! If you have time over your holiday celebrations, you might check out our latest additions to our book groups. As always, this is a low-key opportunity to read books; so read and join in the comments, read the discussion questions, or just read the book and thing thoughts to yourself and chat with your colleagues about the latest picks. Whatever works best for you is fine! (We are library people; we just like to read!)
For the CMLE Professional selection, in January we are going with How to Win Friends and Influence People.
It seemed like a good choice for January, when many of us are working on our New Year’s resolutions, and thinking about ways to improve our work lives. Dale Carnegie’s book is a classic, and can help to jump-start all of us in making new relationships.At CMLE Headquarters, building relationships around our system, and across the profession, is our main goal! So let’s all make this a part of our daily work.
Of course, we also have a “for fun” book selection in the Enjoying Books group. This month we are going with The Ice Queen by Alice Hoffman.
As always, our book pick has a librarian as the main character. We are moving through different genres each month, and in this literary fiction book you have the chance to look at all kinds of imagery of fire and ice. Have you read any of her other books? It would be interesting to see what kinds of themes and symbolism carry over across her many novels!
Enjoy your holiday! Enjoy your reading! And come back to us in January – ready to do some great library work!!
You may have seen the news stories about the value of meditation, and in this month of looking at Stress Management at CMLE we want to share more of that information with you.
Most studies are being done to show the value of meditation in reducing stress levels, reducing anxiety levels, reducing your sensation of pain, and actually changing the physical structure of your brain.
All these great things, and it only takes a few minutes a day. If you have not already incorporated this into your daily routine, looking at the science behind the benefits of meditation may encourage you! Continue reading Stress management through meditation
As library people, our code of ethics pushes us to strongly respect and defend the intellectual freedom of the communities we serve. You can see this commitment across the American Library Association, including at the Office of Intellectual Freedom.
CMLE Headquarters likewise is passionate about this topic, so we are passing on some news from the ALA. We are copying their material here this month so you can see what is going on right now; but you can always go to their site yourself and get familiar with the issues facing us across the profession. You do not need to be an ALA member – this is for all of us in libraries to know and to share.
We are the guardians of free access to information for our communities; it’s not a responsibility to take lightly. Let’s all get familiar with these topics, so we are ready before problems come to our library!
Scroll down to the bottom (or read all the way through!), and consider signing up for the training offered in January: How to Respond to a Security Incident in Your Library. Continue reading ALA News: Intellectual Freedom
Are you an academic librarian? We need you!
Do you know an academic librarian? Forward this on!
Maria Burnham is the media specialist at Sauk Rapids-Rice High School. She wants to be sure her students leave school post-secondary ready, a goal of her building and of her district. But what does that really mean for libraries??
We do not have a good sense of what students need to know to be successful when they get to you in an academic library. So we are asking you!
This is a quick survey (same survey in all those links above!), and it should only take you about five minutes to complete.
Maria will collect the responses, and turn it into some material that she can use to help her teachers and students to know what it is they need to know to be successful! We can also share the results with you, and we will be building on this work to reach out to libraries across the CMLE system, and across the state.
We all want students to be ready for their next step after high school; let’s see what we can do to make that happen!
We really want to get input from all types of academic libraries, so your help is really appreciated!! We know you are busy as you wind up your semester; so to thank you CMLE will award a $10 gift card from Amazon.com to a randomly chosen person who completes the entire survey before Dec. 16.
Thank you for your help!