Tag Archives: CMLE podcast

Podcast

Linking Our Libraries Season Four!

We are so excited to begin our FOURTH SEASON of our library training podcast Linking Our Libraries!

This season we are focused on Leadership Competencies. Obviously this will have a library focus, but the skills we discuss can easily be applied to any organization. If you are looking to improve your interpersonal skills, work on your credibility, or bring more creativity into your workplace, tune in this season!

Podcasting has been such an adventure for us. You can read all about our early days in this article. We so appreciate all the Guest Hosts who have come on the show to share their expertise, and this season will feature several new voices!

Check out Season Three of Linking Our Libraries, or peruse all our old episodes on our streaming page.

And don’t forget to subscribe to Linking Our Libraries on whatever podcast app you use! We hope our podcast is informative and useful to you in your library work!

Programs

Podcasting With CMLE: It’s Kind Of A Big Deal

We love working at CMLE! Our jobs are to figure out new and effective ways to share information about our members and with our members, and also with the larger library community. This so often involves going outside (waaaaay outside!) our comfort zones, as we try new things and learn new things ourselves!

One of these new things that we have learned is podcasting.

When we started this, we had literally no idea what we were doing. Angie spent hours watching YouTube videos and reading websites, trying to figure out what equipment we needed, how to fit it together, and how to make it work. Mary battled with recalcitrant websites we needed to cooperate (whyyyyyyy can’t tech instructions just include ALL THE INSTRUCTIONS????), and worked out format for content and delivery.

This was the birth of our library training podcast: Linking Our Libraries.

Things went….okay.

This is a photo of our early days in podcasting! We had a teeny mixer! We only had two mics! That holder on the left didn’t even work – so feel free to admire our stack of boxes that kept the mic off the desk! Our scripts were ideas more than content! When we had guests, we had to take turns sharing the mics!

But you know – we just dove in and started swimming around in the world of podcasting. And we knew we had a ways to go (the scripts for Season One are…not awesome – sorry!), but we felt pretty confident we could grow and improve.

And we did!! Check out a more recent look at our recording studio! Fancier mixer, four mics with pop filters. The mic stands (usually) work.  Our pretty colored strings of lights is kind of washed out here (sorry!), but you can see where they hang down over our office plants and our library collection. We work in a warehouse with no windows in the building, so we brought in windows; you can see our view of Venice there on the upper right. You can also see some of our office decorations (our transition from spring to summer!), and in the bottom left you can see the cup-holder on Angie’s bike desk.

Our content is snappier, and is easier to find on our website. Our Guest Hosts continue to be impressive! That hasn’t changed – but we are fortunate to have ever-more people coming to share their ideas and experiences with us. Our sound is better.  In short, things are going pretty well!

So well, in fact, that started a second podcast!

We started Books and Beverages with great triumph! Great, inside our office, at least!! (That counts.) We had awesome guests, we had fun beverages, we had good content, and it was all pretty fun. It was a book group that anyone could join, and anyone could enjoy – and we loved hearing from people that they did indeed enjoy it!

We now run podcast seasons that are 15 episodes long. We drop a new episode every single Thursday. Last Thursday was the final episode of Season Three of Linking Our Libraries – where we presented a tool kit of 15 skills library managers will need to be successful. (They will help everyone to really be good in your library!) This Thursday, we will begin Season Two of our book group podcast: Reading With Libraries!

To make all of this good stuff happen, we had to keep buying equipment, keep paying to host not one but two podcasts, and other assorted supplies. (I think we have spent hours staring at different cords to potentially buy. HOURS!)

During the off season for the book group, we have worked on making improvements. One of those is to change the name. (We discovered that our first name was impossible to find on podcast apps – not ideal for us!) Another is to change podcast hosts – which has required dozens (and dozens and dozens) of hours to copy over our archive, to figure out a whole new system, and to make things look good. (That part is Angie; she handles the office needs in art, music, and making things look good!)

Starting Thursday May 17, our “new” podcast will debut! We are now called Reading With Libraries!!! If you joined our book group last season, you will recognize the same pieces:

  • new genre each week!
  • fun Guest Hosts!
  • beverages themed to match the weekly genre!
  • handy Reader’s Advisory material, to help you find and recommend books in each genre!

BUT! Things are even better this season! We had such fun last season talking for 20 minutes (the limit of the hosting plan we were paying for) that this season we have extended it to 30 minutes! It goes by really fast, but there is so much to say in every episode we don’t want you to miss a moment of it.

AND! Our new podcast host will allow us to add a streaming player right on our website page! If you do not want to download it to your device, it will be so very easy to just hit a play button on our site and enjoy it all! (I’ve been listening to Season One episodes to test them – and just because I’m laughing out loud in my office while I’m listening!)

AND!! Check out this excellent new logo!!

Angie made it! And I love it!! So when you see it, you know: Good times are ahead, with books, with fun guests, with tasty beverages – it’s the whole package!!

What do we need now???

YOU!!!

We want you to enjoy the podcast! We want you to enjoy the book group! And we want you to feel like you are part of the community!

HOW can you do this?

  • Subscribe to the podcast: Reading With Libraries on any podcast app!
  • Stream episodes on our website!

WHAT else is new for you??

We invite you to join us on Patreon!

If this is a new thing for you – no worries! Patreon is a website that will allow you to choose a level of monthly support for us (and all kinds of your favorite writers, artists, and other such people). We, in return, provide you with some nice rewards, and there will be some special content along the way that is only for Patreon supporters.

You can choose to support us at $1 a month – the Folio level. This is paying less than one dollar for each episode we provide to you. (It’s 80 cents per episode – a bargain!) At this level, you get: Our mushy, sincere thanks! Access to Discord chat with fellow book group members! And a postcard from Mary, Angie, and Official Office Dog Lady Grey!

You could choose to support us at the Octavo Level: $5 a month. Your rewards (besides the glow of helping out some struggling podcasters!): Everything from the folio level, plus we mention you in an upcoming episode!

We have assorted other levels of possible support, so feel free to browse around the page

PLUS!! Lady Grey, the Official Office Dog, has played a larger role in this season’s episodes! You will occasionally hear her in the background, and she was in-house for most of our recordings. (She was used as a shameless bribe to lure Guest Hosts over to see us; and everyone came out of that as a winner!) You can see her in the Patreon page, serving as the face of the different reward levels. (Really – go admire her! She’s super cute!!)

We have extra expenses in making this podcast, and we could really use your help to defray the costs of creating, mixing, producing, and publishing a podcast out every single week. (Plus: Lady Grey needs treats! She’s not our main expense, but come on – look at that face. She clearly needs some financial support!)

AND!! We are working to build up a community on the chat service Discord. This is a reward through Patreon. There will be opportunities to talk about your favorite books, to look for books, and to chat about all kinds of things! You may already be using Discord for other Patreon accounts (I’m pretty dedicated to my Kitten Academy chats!), or for other uses. We are excited to have the chance to try out a new technology that already has over 100 million people from around the world! (Will you meet new book friends from every single continent there? While we can’t promise that – it is possible!!)

Thank you in advance! Your positive comments, and your listening to the podcasts, really keep us going!! We appreciate your support, however you are able to show it!

We want to keep building our community of wonderful library and book people; we appreciate you contributing to making that possible!

 

Communication, Podcast

Episode 305: Discipline and Termination

Austria - Göttweig Abbey - 2015Introduction

Welcome back to Season Three of Linking Our Libraries! We are Central Minnesota Libraries Exchange, and we are here to share information with all types of libraries, archives, and other nonprofits working to build their skills. This season, we are working on building a toolbox of leadership skills and ideas. By the end of this season, you will have fifteen specific skills that will make you a stronger leader and manager in your organization.

This week we discuss two topics managers hate to deal with: Discipline and Termination. No one likes this, but it is vital to keeping your library healthy and functioning.

Joining us is Guest Host Kathy Parker, Director of the St. Ben’s College and St. John’s University libraries.

Check out our full information page for all the details, including links to this week’s books!

The Basics

These human resources topics are deceptively hard to discuss. On the one hand: employees do the wrong things, or are terrible, or get caught up in budget cuts, or other situations will occur. This will definitely happen, and managers will need to develop strategies to best handle them.

On the other hand – this is not an area where you can just guess what to do. Laws are involved; and good intentions are not wrong, but are not enough to depend on to know you are making the right decision and doing the right thing. We are not giving any legal advice here, and we really encourage you to talk to your library’s or your city or your college’s HR department, and their attorneys before you make decisions. Depending on where you work, you may also have union rules that you need to follow.

Not disciplining employees, and not terminating employees, is not an option. So let’s talk about ways to do this well. We are going to skim some of the big areas of these topics to get everyone started in thinking about it, and putting together policies and procedures for your library.

We cannot give you legal advice here – and most HR matters will involve legality. So always make a point of talking to your library’s HR department and /or the attorney. And if your parent organization has these people – then talk to them from your college, your school, your hospital, or whoever else is near you. Be fair, and do the right thing.

Podcast, Training

304: Motivation and Coaching

Motivation-arrows

Want to listen to an episode?

  • You can download an app, search for “Linking Our Libraries” hit subscribe, and all episodes will appear on your phone – it’s so easy!
    • Apps we like include Pocket Casts, iTunes, and Stitcher.
    • Download any of these, search for “Linking Our Libraries” and hit Subscribe.
    • If it is not readily available, just enter this RSS feed: http://libraries.blubrry.com/feed/podcast/.
  • Or, you can stream an episode right now on your computer by going to our streaming page, by clicking here.

Whatever tool you use, we hope you enjoy it! Thanks for listening, and sharing ideas on libraries!

This season, we are working on building a toolbox of leadership skills and ideas. By the end of this season, you will have fifteen specific skills that will make you a stronger leader and manager in your organization.

This week we are looking at strategies motivating people at work.

Although working in libraries is a wonderful job most of the time, the repetitive nature of the work, the service focus on people’s needs, and just working at the same job for years, can start to wear people down. Keeping staff motivated is an important part of that job as a leader. It is also one of the most difficult parts of the job.

Ideally people will enjoy their jobs, but may need work in expanding their horizons so they don’t get stale. Many things librarian staff do in a day or a week are pretty repetitive. You can only show people to the bathroom so many times, or set up a new library card account, before you have the whole procedure and all its nuances completely understood. And then what? This is where motivation comes in – helping staff to see how their small daily actions add up to a larger effort, in support of the library’s mission and strategic plan.

Most leaders – the good ones anyway – want to help staff to be as successful as possible. But knowing how to do this is tricky; your employees (rightly) insist on being unique individuals, each with their own set of motivators, which you may or may not know. And you need to help push all of them to be their best at work, doing that without a lot of the information that would be very useful. Keeping people going is much more complex than a quick pat on the back, or an occasional “good job!” But it does not have to involve a huge amount of work – just consistency.

Think back to our first episode on theories; there are all sorts of ways to deal with motivating and directing people. You can try yelling and screaming, you can try being everyone’s friend and letting them do what they want, or you can find something in between.

One management study looked at ways to motivate people who were working on an assembly line. Researchers tried everything: they sped up the line and they slowed it down. They changed around break times. They turned up the lights to be very bright, and then turned them way down. What do you think happened? Every single thing they did increased productivity, and decreased absenteeism. The staff were so happy that people were paying attention to the work they did, and that the researchers were taking the time to talk with them about their jobs, that they responded by working harder. The group as a whole worked together to make everyone’s individual performance stronger. This is called the Hawthorne Effect, after the Hawthorne Western Electric factory.

Regardless of your management style, it is not likely that all people will respond the same way to the same motivators. It will be your job to figure out different motivators for different people (or departments), while trying not to let anyone feel others are getting preferential treatment. Being a good leader is tough!

Motivating and coaching can be challenges for everyone involved – it is hard to maintain a generally positive attitude toward work all the time. When people work for your library for several decades, every needs to stay focused on providing great service. Taking some positive steps to motivate yourself and the people around you can help to build a good organizational culture!

Thanks to everyone for joining us this week! And check back in with us next week to discuss our next topic: Discipline and Termination.

Check out our full information page for all the details, including Self-motivation, Motivating Others, Gamification, and links to the books we are reading this week!

Do you need more books in your life? Sure you do! Subscribe to our Books and Beverages book group podcast. Each week we look at a different genre, chat with our guests about their book suggestions, and sip our beverages. It is always good to find a new book!

CMLE, Communication

Episode 303: Hiring and Staffing

Now Hiring

Want to listen to an episode?

  • You can download an app, search for “Linking Our Libraries” hit subscribe, and all episodes will appear on your phone – it’s so easy!
    • Apps we like include Pocket Casts, iTunes, and Stitcher.
    • Download any of these, search for “Linking Our Libraries” and hit Subscribe.
    • If it is not readily available, just enter this RSS feed: http://libraries.blubrry.com/feed/podcast/.
  • Or, you can stream an episode right now on your computer by going to our streaming page, by clicking here.

Whatever tool you use, we hope you enjoy it! Thanks for listening, and sharing ideas on libraries!

Check out our full information page here.

(Note: Lady Grey was in-house while we recorded this episode; so the parts that sound particularly great may have been influenced by her calming presence!)

Welcome to another episode of Linking Our Libraries! This week our Guest Host is Carla Lydon, director of the East Central Library System here in Minnesota.

If you like libraries, archives, or history centers; or if you work in a nonprofit; or if you just want to learn more about management and leadership, you are in the right place!

We are the Central Minnesota Libraries Exchange, and our job is to help libraries! We are a multitype library system, with member libraries of all sorts: public, schools, academics, special libraries, archives, and history centers. Yes – we are pretty lucky!

This season we are looking at a variety of topics related to management and leadership. Our focus is on libraries, but our topics are relevant to all types of nonprofits working to improve their leadership skills.

Do you want to talk with us about a topic? Want us to set up some training for you? Check out our website under “Can We Help You?” and let’s talk!

First we are going to look at a somewhat idealized hiring process. Every library varies in how they are able to hire: some have no input and a new person is just plopped into the library, some have complete freedom to structure their hiring as they want. Hopefully, the steps we look at today will happen, at some level!

One of the most important things a manager can do for an organization is to hire well. You need good staff to have a well-functioning organization, and a bad hire – one that brings in an unskilled, unmotivated person, or person who spends time complaining, giving bad customer service, or just doing poor work – can throw the whole place into chaos. The cost of a bad hire can be very high, and this problem can be very difficult to fix. A good hire will do good work, and add to the positive organizational environment you want to build!

Hiring and staffing are extremely important challenges any library needs to face; and making good decisions, bringing in good people, and getting them deployed to best serve the mission of the library are crucial! It is tough to do, but if you have questions you can always check in with us here at cmle.org!

Tune in next Thursday for our next episode of Linking Our Libraries, where we keep going with our discussion of management and leadership topics.

Do you need more books in your life? Sure you do! Subscribe to our Books and Beverages book group podcast. Each week we look at a different genre, chat with our guests about their book suggestions, and sip our beverages. It is always good to find a new book!