Tag Archives: change

Making Monday awesome – CMLE Weekly Review now being released on Mondays

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Start your week with CMLE!

As part of some changes we are making at CMLE to better serve our members (that’s you!) we will now be sending out our Weekly Review newsletter each week on Monday, instead of Thursday. The Weekly Review will contain information and links to content from our blog that was published Monday – Friday the week previously.

So, starting next Monday, September 19th, check your inbox for your copy of CMLE’s Weekly Review! Make your Monday a little more enjoyable by catching up on library news, resources and technology you can use, and all the other great content that comes in the Weekly Review.

Would you like to start receiving the Weekly Review? Email us and we will add you to our contact list!

Retirements or staffing updates?

calm moodAs the academic year draws to a close, we ask to be made aware of any staffing changes in your location! If you or someone you know is planning to change work locations, or retire, please let us know! We want to be sure to extend a big congratulations to the retirees, and also make sure to keep our contacts up to date with any job changes or new personnel. If our contacts are not kept updated, we run the risk of losing touch entirely with certain locations.

If there have been any special achievements or awards won, we’d like to know that too!

Please send any updates or information you may have to admin@cmle.org. Thank you for your help!

Image credit: http://tinyurl.com/ktoxfxm, licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 2.0

Retirements or Staffing Changes?

Spring LambThis is the time of year we ask for your help in identifying retirements or staffing changes that will happen at the end of this academic year. Unfortunately, if we are not made aware of these changes, we often  have no way of telling that we need to make contact with  new recruits in the Fall. Sometimes locations simply fall off of our radar as a result of these communication breakdowns.  Needless to say, we also want to  give recognition to  proud retirees too! They have worked hard and deserve some recognition before the end of the year. Thanks in advance for any information you can provide about changes in your setting or in other settings. Once you give us the tip, we are happy to track down the details! Send email to admin@cmle.org.

P.S. We would be happy to shine the light on other staff accomplishments too, so don’t be shy about sharing those too. Did someone get promoted or receive a special award?  Use the same email address, use subject line Staff Accomplishments. We will compile and share through our communication streams soon.

Image credit: http://tinyurl.com/lah599f, licensed under CC BY 2.0

My MLA Conference Recap

Patricia Post, CMLE Director
Patricia Post, CMLE Director

It is always unfortunate for CMLE staff that the MEMO and MLA Conferences are back to back. It is hard for us to both be out of the office, but we always come away from both conferences with new programming ideas and connections in the library field. The two conferences are quite different in look and feel, which is what keeps it interesting. MEMO is of course very focused on school media and their issues, while the MLA Conference is heaviest maybe in public library issues, followed closely by academics. Our staff intentionally looks for the breakout sessions that are bursting at the seams, to see what is most popular. If we join the fray, we are looking on behalf of all Central MN library types, but also watching and listening to see how the content is received, and if the questions from the attendees indicate something might be lacking in content. If the speaker is phenomenal, we ask them about their willingness to bring their expertise to our region.

We listen at the lunch tables and in the hallways to hear what people are excited about, and what they are struggling with too! For staff like ours, these are all clues as to what type of programming might be helpful in the region. Since so many meetings are now done online, conference season allows face-to-face contact with people in your network.  Face-to-face is still best for building relationships and hearing about your needs.  As several of us talked about this, we noted how much we miss the face-to-face, as it bonds people in ways that online meetings struggle to produce. A few of my highlights of the MLA Conference included:

  • Things in a Flash Breakout Session: Bursting to capacity, this fast paced session was populated for the most part with the “tablet crowd”, or the wannabes! I still had not upgraded my iPad to iOS7, as I feared I would not have the needed gift of time to figure out some fairly significant upgrade changes. This session gave me the highlights for navigating this brave new world, which gave me the confidence to download the upgrade. We also heard about many apps that fulfilled a number of professional and personal needs. Out of the twenty or so covered, my two favorites were CamMe, an app that helps you take photos of yourself without the “fully extended arm method” while using your phone! I also really liked Quixey, a search engine for apps. Read last week’s blog post about Quixey.
  • Sessions on Change Management and Mindfulness: Staff from the Minneapolis Community and Technical College (MCTC) did an excellent session (Conducting Change: Leading a Mindful Tune) about bringing mindfulness into the workplace. Presenters acknowledged that we are living in a time of unprecedented change. We need tools to help us work well in teams and embrace change rather than burrow away from it. Identifying and understanding  our strengths, and those of our team members, also makes us better. They talked about WOO (winning others over), working in “flow state”, and the pitfalls of extreme multitasking. At one point in  time, multitasking was considered the much preferred option, but it appears it can actually have negative connotations these days. Does multitasking just make us do many things in a superficial, haphazard way? If we focus and/or reflect, can we do a better job?

And, we need tools to help us in letting go of emotions. Acknowledge the emotion, let go of how things should be, and recognize that  too much attachment to the end goal can make you miss better things.  The presenters showed a hysterical, yet poignant video of C.K. Louis on the Conan O’Brien show to illustrate what they mean about acknowledging your emotions. MCTC created a meditation room in their library this year to allow anyone to engage in 20 minute segments of seated mindfulness (pillows on the floor). Every 20 minutes a chime signals when to enter or leave the room.

Mindfulness and reflective thinking are showing up in both the education and library literature. These practices not only help manage work-related stress, but also improve the quality of library services. Kristen Mastel, MLA president, recently published an article on the topic, Insights and Practical Tips on Practicing Mindful Librarianship to Manage Stress.

  • After little sleep and a hastily read breakout session description, I stumbled into Roll With the Changes: A Percussion-Based Experiential Approach to Change Management. I will admit I almost backed out of the room when I saw a circle of chairs with a variety of drums and rattles placed in front of each chair. We were quietly instructed by two academics to “sit near the drum that speaks to you.” Okay…I sort of felt like I needed someone to work some WOO on me! However, I pushed through my discomfort while chiding myself for not reading the session description well enough. I have little musical ability and what if I needed to perform solo?  But then, I remembered that I could be mindful about my discomfort, embrace it and own it, then let it go, which is exactly what I did! This session began with a review of the research on group drumming or drum circles, some simple rhythmic exercises, and culminated in a full blown structured drumming exercise and debrief as the exercise relates to facilitating change and positive growth in work teams. It was energizing, easy and fun. I left the session smiling and energized to keep exploring new ideas!

I always roll out of Fall conference season on an adrenaline high about what I have learned and whom I have met. Then, I get back to the office and see the piles of work left undone as a result of attending the conference. By writing this blog post, I got my “conference high” back, which felt great.

What about you? Can you share conference high points with others to increase the learning and show the value in developing yourself professionally?

Tip 1: To mine the comments (tweets) of Twitter users at the conference, go to Twitter. Use the search window to type in the #mnlib13 hash tag. By doing this, you may pick up other useful links to materials others shared as a result of  breakout sessions they attended.

Tip 2: Were budgets too tight to allow you to attend a conference this Fall? If you work in an academic, public, special or school library in Aitkin, Benton, Chisago, Isanti, Kanabec, Mille Lacs, Morrison, Pine, Sherburne, Stearns, Todd or Wright counties in Minnesota, you are eligible to apply for a CMLE scholarship. Watch our blog posts for other upcoming conferences that might be a good fit for you!

From the Director

This fiscal year concludes on June 30, 2013, and it has been a whirlwind of change and transitions in Central MN Libraries Exchange (CMLE)!  It’s good to look back over the year, while also looking forward to next year and exciting new possibilities! I’ve included a few highlights as a warm up to writing year-end reports soon:

  • Beginning last July, CMLE vowed to Refocus, Retool, and Evolve at the conclusion of its strategic planning process. The Governing Board helped us make some hard decisions. The most significant one was the sunsetting of our physical interlibrary loan service after a 10 year downward spiral in usage. Costs for providing the service have not decreased, so the cost/benefit analysis spoke loudly to all involved. We continue to assist users of that service in finding alternate ways to order interlibrary loans.
  • The Board got even more excited about the results of an opportunity analysis for CMLE, some of which you experienced this year.
  • Beginning in September, we replaced our quarterly newsletter and began to use our  weekly communication streams including our Weekly Review email messages, our blog posts, Facebook and Twitter. The first month we made this change, we went from 62 hits on our blog to 584! News on the street was that our users loved this change and we loved the new freedom and immediacy that a blogging platform provided to us. By January, we more than doubled our September blog hits at 1,506!
  • We offered two popular e-book events in the fall; one for academics, one for K-12 media personnel. We also continued our Bridging Information Literacy Across Libraries initiative work, including a college student survey to 400 students, and beginning development of a video.
  • Kate Bessey left CMLE in January to return to her librarian role at Rasmussen College.
  • Michelle Kiley began as our invaluable new Information Specialist upon Kate’s departure.
  • I took a six week medical leave of absence to replace a very worn out hip in mid-February. Ouch, but much better now!
  • Upon my return we initiated seven Quick Question Polls (QQP’s) on various topics to gather data to help us refocus our programming in FY14.
  • In early June, I will return to the orthopedic workshop for a new knee. I know, it’s been a tough year!  Michelle proved her ability to hold down the fort during my first leave, and will valiantly do the same this summer.

Our summer CMLE to-do list is quite different from our weekly work during the academic year. Summer is an important time for administrative work including year-end reports, discount agreements, internal system updates, program planning, and  our commitments to library conference planning too. So, it might seem a  bit sad, but our Weekly Review and associated blog posts will be on a short hiatus during the summer months, but we will be back in the Fall! We will continue to wrap our arms around the glut of library news and opportunity, distill it down to an easy to digest format, and write it up again for you starting in September. We remain committed to offering tips, shortcuts and application ideas too. According to one of our QQP’s, many of you will be gearing down a bit in your professional  summer reading too, so we hope this little blip in service gives everyone a refreshing “breather”. Watch your email in the event that something significant happens this summer that we feel a need to share immediately. Otherwise, enjoy quiet moments of summer serenity curled up with a good book under a big shady tree. Summer is a great time to renew and refresh. See you online in the Fall!

Didn’t have time to read any of our blog posts this year? Go to http://cmleinfofeed.wordpress.com/ and meander through this year’s posts!

 
CMLE Director, Patricia Post
CMLE Director, Patricia Post
 
  Patricia Post, Director
  Central MN Libraries Exchange (CMLE)
  A Minnesota Multitype Library System
  St. Cloud State University, Miller Center 130-D
  720 4th Ave. So.
  St. Cloud, MN  56301-4498
 
  Phone: 320-308-4779  Fax: 320-308-5131
  E-mail: papost@stcloudstate.edu