Tag Archives: CMLE Library visit

CMLE, Communication, Visits

Can we visit your library?

Members, we love to visit your libraries! It’s such a joy to discover all the amazing programming, resources, and materials that you have to offer your communities!

We have an entire page dedicated to our Library Visits and we hope you take a look at some of the fantastic member libraries we have visited. (It is a long list!!)

But the CMLE system is made up of 12  counties! That is a lot of libraries, and we have not visited every one! So, we want to come to visit YOU!

And to encourage you to set up a visit, we have a lovely selection of framed literary-themed prints that we are offering to libraries that contact us to set up a visit. You can choose two prints and we will bring them to you at the time of the visit. See below for the choices:

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Our visits are casual, probably around thirty minutes long, and involve CMLE staff admiring the work you doing and finding out how we can be of more help to you in your library, archive, or media center. (They are not a test or scary or painful in any way!)

Sign up below, send  an email to admin@cmle.org, or visit our Request a Site Visit page. We can’t wait to visit you! 🙂

 

CMLE, Visits

Member Visits: Mississippi Heights Elementary School!

It’s that time again – member visiting time!! You know that we love to visit all our member libraries, to see all the neat things you guys are doing!!

This visit was to see Audrey and the good things they are doing at the Mississippi Heights Elementary School. And as you can see below, they are doing all kinds of nice things for their community members!

 

Especially when community members are going to be younger, I absolutely love to see bright colors and fun furniture. Our whole purpose as library people is to bring in people, and encourage them to use all of our stuff. This kind of thoughtfulness in design is a great example of promoting the library as a good place – one that is interesting to kids (and adults!).

 

 

See? This is both really cute, and very welcoming. (I really had to be fast in here to get pictures without the crowds of kids getting in the shot!)

 

 

 

One more, just to show you some of the possibilities you can set up in your own library. Furniture than can move around as your patrons want, to suit their individual needs, is always going to be a great thing to provide. You want people to be happy, and to use your stuff; good furniture is an important part of providing that environment, so think about what you are putting out and how you are sharing it.

 

And of course, we are known for our books! We provide information in a variety of formats that will be useful to our patrons, and here you see a great example of this. These are books aimed at the youngest kiddos, who have trouble navigating books upright on the shelves. So this is a display of books just for them, at just the right height for them to easily see and grab what they want! I love seeing this kind of attention to usability. It’s easy to get caught up in making a library work for the staff – but we need to focus on being sure everything is set up to make it easy for our targeted community members.

 

It’s our job to help with information literacy and instruction – and these signs are great tools!! I love to see this kind of explanation of books and genres. What a great way to help kids start to think about books they like, and books they may want to try!

And this was just fantastic!!! Guys: a confession. I hate the Dewy system. It is hard to understand, it’s hard to explain, and yes – it keeps things in a nice order, but it’s an order that is not intuitive for patrons to understand and find materials. So this kind of usability tool that helps people visualize the materials they want, and to easily find books they need – it’s just wonderful!!

 

  And finally, especially in a school library, letting patrons know that they are important and valued is critical. We are not here just to stuff books in their hands and send them along; we are here to teach and help kids build skills. I was having a moderately tough week when I visited, and I have to say – I felt better reading this! I’m guessing it’s been helpful for other kids and adults. What a great idea!!

Check this out. You know you are in a library, you know you are in place where people care about your learning and development, and darn it – this is just cute!!

 

Thank you so much to Audrey and the entire staff in the media center, for inviting me over for such a nice visit!!

We want to come visit YOUR library next. Send us an email at admin @ cmle.org, and let’s set up a time to come to admire your library!

School Media Specialist, Visits

Visit to the Albany High School Library!

We were so excited to get a tour of the newly redone library and learning commons at the Albany High School! Construction is still taking place around other parts of the school, but the library was bright and inviting, with lots of exciting things happening there! Thank you to media specialist Aileen Swenson for a fantastic tour!

Before you enter the media center is a large space called the Learning Commons. There are several different layouts of tables, chairs, and space to study, collaborate, or just hang out for a few minutes with a good book! We saw lots of students taking advantage of this useful space.

 

In one of the rooms right off of the Learning Commons is a classroom that media specialist Aileen uses to teach important information literacy and digital citizenship skills.

 

 

 

To your right when you enter the media center are some cool benches strategically placed near the periodicals. Aileen shared that the art department students are working on some special installations that will soon decorate this part of the library! We love to see art, especially student art, in libraries, so we are excited to see what is created.

Also placed right in the middle of the action is this display of New Releases! They have a great selection, and I recognized several titles from my own TBR list! Aileen said they purposefully place this display in the busier part of the library so that if students are just passing through the library heading someplace else, maybe a book will catch their eye and they’ll check it out!

You may notice those enclosed work areas with glass windows. Students who are doing group work can use those spaces to really focus on their projects without disturbing other library users.

We loved finding the festive art installations scattered around the library. This guy is doing some holiday reading outside the group work areas!

 

 

 

 

In the front of the library is the always important reference desk! You can see there is lots going on here, and it was great to meet some of the other library workers.

We love seeing libraries with a sense of humor, so these book return bins made us happy. Plus, cats and libraries just go together!

The school recently made a switch to include the 6th grade in their facility, so the library is working to accommodate the new students and their reading interests.

One way the library is making an effort to be welcoming to their younger students is by placing their book options in an easy to find spot. This row of shelves (easy to rearrange, thanks to the wheels!) is targeted  towards the middle school readers. We love the holiday decorations too!

And of course books are wonderful to see, but it’s also really exciting to hear about the programs happening in school libraries! Albany High School has a Tech Club, led by another library worker, where kids learn to fix Chromebooks and do other technology – oriented activities. We also learned about the Come Alive book groups and got to admire shirts from past years. There is a middle school group and a high school group, and it’s great to hear about all the kids that gather to share their enjoyment of books!

A few more cool aspects of this library include this puzzle table, where students can come work on the puzzle in the morning before school, or during some free time. On the back wall of the room you’ll notice a screen that shows school news, like activity schedules and more! There’s also a room where students or teachers can communicate with other school locations, which is pretty cool.

As library fans, we were so pleased to see all the books available for students. This gentleman is browsing the nonfiction section.

 

 

 

 

We also were excited to see their growing selection of graphic novels! If you need some suggestions for great graphic novels, check out our podcast episode about the genre.

We had such a great time visiting the Albany High School Library! It’s really encouraging to hear about the students that enjoy using the library’s resources, or who come to high school already knowing about the importance of using proper citations. Have we been to visit your library yet? We want to come admire your space!

CMLE, Visits

Let’s go!! Group visit to SCSU Library!

We know some of you have already been to this library, or maybe you even went to school here. But libraries grow and change – so it’s great to see what is going on, and to have a chance to admire the great work they are doing here!

I had my first visit to this library recently, and it was so neat I knew other people would want to see their resources, layout, and materials. So this is the next location in our group visit series!!

Thursday, January 11 from 3:00 to 4:00

Since we are a multitype system, we are always working to connect our members with each other. Even if the type of library you work in may be different, many challenges you face may be similar. And something that works for another library might just work for yours too!

So join us! These visits are casual so if you need to arrive a bit late or leave early, no problem. RSVP below, we hope you can make it! 🙂

CMLE, Visits

Vacation Library Visit: Evanston Public Library

We all know that visiting libraries is one of the best parts of being on a vacation, right? (It definitely is!) When employees of CMLE HQ travel, of course we visit libraries along the way!

I recently visited the Evanston Public Library, in Evanston, IL. (It’s north of Chicago, and also the home of Northwestern University.) This is a really nice library, with a ton of great programming (we featured them in an early Linking Our Libraries podcast episode).

 

The Book Sale room is nice and prominent! I love to visit libraries – but it’s hard to find books I love, and cannot check out. So I do always enjoy library book sales. As it’s obviously out of the question for me to leave any library without books in my hands, this gives me a way to support the library, and also have fun vacation books!

When you take a left, after coming in the front door, you enter a fantastic Children’s area! You can see the thought and effort that has been put into making this a welcoming and fun place for kids and their adults to visit. I always love to see libraries making this effort to bring people to the library! One of our important functions is to serve as places for all members of the community to gather, to enjoy themselves, and to have fun connecting with others – and it’s clear this space makes that happen!! (Yes, there are also tons of fun books; and yes – it was hard to tear myself away from them too!!)

As you enter the Children’s section, there was a special display set up. Librarian Betsy Bird (you may know her from School Library Journal, or her book podcast, or the books she writes!) made her annual section of 101 Great Books for Kids – and the books were right there to be grabbed by kids!

You can see this tree in the above photos, but it’s worth a closer look. Doesn’t it make you want to curl up and read books?? (I maintained a little dignity, and did NOT crawl into the tree to check it out…but it was a close thing!)

 

 

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