The Book Riot 
site proclaims bookish things for those with a fetish for books! Take a look for some seriously clever ideas for ways to “upcycle” old books. Sounds great, right?
BookRiot, Oct 5.
Category Archives: Special
We’ve Learned: Staffing News and Updates from Around the Region
We’ve Learned… is designed to keep our readers informed about news concerning personnel in CMLE libraries/media centers. Please keep us informed of any “happenings” regarding staff members in your area so that we can include them in the next write-up! Happenings can include: changes in staffing, awards, honors… you get the idea!
- Robin Ewing, Associate Professor & Reference Librarian at SCSU, received the 2012 MLA President’s Award at this year’s MLA Conference. Way to go, Robin! Thank you for all of your hard work and dedication to the organization.
- Please use the comments area to let us know if there are updates in your library or media center!
The Flipped College Classroom
A recent Star Tribune article, Internet Flips the Idea of How to Teach a Class, highlighted the efforts of some local college professors and instructors utilizing the flipped classroom method in their classrooms. Not only is this article (and its information) local, but it also details some of the successes and failures of this new teaching method. In addition, a recent study of 720 physics professors showed that at least 72 percent had tried various interactive teaching methods (like those that are a part of the flipped classroom); however, at least a third of those instructors tried — and eventually stopped using interactive methods. Some cite push back from students in the flipped classroom, as well as little support for instructors once they’ve “made the switch”. Ongoing support, continuing education, and access to professional resources is a must for forward-thinking instructors who have gotten up the gumption to attempt the flipped classroom.
Interest in Pinterest?
At least week’s MLA Conference, I had the privilege of presenting with Minnesota School of Business Librarian, Krista Jacobson, on using Pinterest to market your library. This seems to be a topic of interest to a fair number of people as the session was pretty well attended! If you’re interested in using Pinterest to market your library, you may consider viewing our conference handout materials at http://mnlibraryassociation.org/uploads/conf12/handouts/B8.pdf. Here, you’ll get a nice sampling of the topics we covered. We hope to also present on this topic at the LibTech Conference in March, so if Pinterest catches your fancy, be sure to checkout the LibTech Conference program to see if our presentation made the cut! Oh, and between you and me, I’d love to just talk about Pinterest with you too! — Kate Bessey
CMLE Pilot Shadowing Program
CMLE provides support services to 319 libraries/media centers in twelve counties of Central Minnesota. We work with college librarians, special librarians (hospital, prison, historical socities) and public librarians. It is probably no surprise that the largest group are our 265 media centers. All libraries have a variety of services and focus areas, but it is within the media center group that we see the most variety. Some schools have district level media directors in addition to media specialists in each school. Some schools have no media specialists. And, in some schools, the media specialist has a tight focus within the media center only, in other schools, the media specialist is taking the lead on moving the district into the one-to-one (1:1) computing world! And, as you can imagine, we have everything in between too!
CMLE is in a perfect position to understand these variations and identify meaningful relationships and partnerships between our different library types. And we strongly believe that all types of librarians have similar goals, yet different ways of going about the work they do. This academic year, we will be piloting a shadowing program. We believe that there is power in walking in someone elses shoes for a day; shadowing them to see what is entailed in a typical day. We will help arrange opportunities for librarians to spend a day with a different type of libraian. We believe these shadowing experiences will help us understand what we all have in common, and enable us all to speak about libraries using one voice. We believe it is possible that all librarians may very well have the same goals; falling along the lines of education! Are you interested in a shadowing experience? Let me know at papost@stcloudstate.edu