CMLE Headquarters wants to give you all the tools that you need to be successful in our ever-changing profession!Having support around our system is helpful, and reaching out to professional organizations across Minnesota and across the country can help you to be stronger, better, and more efficient in your daily work. Working in a library is tough!! We want to help you make it as easy as possible.
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!
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!)
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!!
Working in libraries can be surprisingly stressful. Well, not surprising to those of us who are there, working with ever-evolving patron needs, with short budgets and staff, and everything that comes with these pressures. The constant series of people who, when they find out where you work, exclaim “I wish I worked in a library so I could read books all day!” does not help!
I have talked about this topic here, and when I chat with people in person during site visits. This is something I have researched in different types of libraries, talked about at conferences, and published articles looking at it. People are always surprised when I tell them this is such a widespread issue. Inevitably, someone whispers to me that they thought they were the only one.
If you are stressed at work: You Are Not Alone!! (If you are not stressed in your library workplace at least some of the time – you might be alone in that.)
Of course, working in a library is wonderful! We do great things, we have fulfilling work, and we are generally lovely people! Libraries are amazing places, filled with all kinds of fascinating materials and programs, and staffed with interesting and fun people. I truly believe this is true, and would not work anywhere outside the library field!
In response to member requests, CMLE is going to set up a regular monthly gathering. This will be an opportunity for members from all types of libraries and from across the system to get together casually, to chat, to have lunch or dinner, and to just get a chance to talk to each other in person. (And if you want to talk about non-library things, that’s fine too! This is your chance to just hang out with library colleagues; so discuss whatever you want!)
Click to tell us what time (lunch/dinner) and day (Monday – Friday) would work best for you. Right now Wednesday dinner time is leading the voting, so be sure to chime in if that is not a good day/time for you! We anticipate these will happen monthly, and will create a schedule for the first six months of 2017 to share with you.
While you can not know your schedule in detail for the next six months, we ask that you make some predictions about days and times that you think you would be most likely to be able to join colleagues for an hour or two. We will move the location around, so people from across the system can all have a chance at a shorter drive!
Pick your day and time. And if you have suggestions on some public places to meet – think coffee, food, possibly adult beverages, and space for us to spread out – leave them below, or email them to us at admin@cmle.org!
