We need to get them to us before we can hire great employees!
Part of hiring great people is making sure that they are applying to your library! Without a pool of good candidates, you can’t make good people appear.
How do you get these good people? Like so many things: you need a plan. A solid recruiting plan will help you to bring in the good applicants, and give you the best kind of hard choice to make when hiring – picking among people who would all be good in your library.
It sounds hard. Where will you get the time? How will you know if it is working? What kinds of decisions should you be making?
CMLE is here to help you! We will walk through the basic steps of creating a plan here, so you can start working on your own plan for your library. Then, we are here to work with members to finalize their plans, to make decisions, and to help with the evaluation. Continue reading Recruiting to hire good people (Hiring Series #3)→
At CMLE we take our commitment to providing our members with information and continuing professional training opportunities very seriously. We will continue to build on the courses and seminars we have offered, and hope to expand things for you. The library field is fast-moving and ever-changing; and we are here to help our members to keep their skills sharp, and to be able to better serve patrons’ needs.
We have set up a Continuing Education page on our site, with a Google calendar of all kinds of events that might be interesting to you. Most of these are offered as webinars, or online classes; and a few are in person seminars or conferences. Many are free, and some require payment. We will also include professional conferences, so you can keep up with the ideas being shared in your area of the library world. No individual person, or library, will be interested in all of these; but we will have a broad range of topics, to be sure you have all kinds of possibilities for building new skills and making yourself more valuable! And, seeing some of the things other libraries are discussing – even if you do not want to participate in the class – may give you some ideas about new things to try, or new people to contact to talk further about a topic.
We will also be offering regular continuing education programs through CMLE. We want to be sure our members have a chance to talk about topics of specific interest, or frustration; and to be able to gather and connect with their local colleagues. So, we will offer monthly training at the CMLE Headquarters, as well as streaming it through Go To Meeting for members to attend virtually.
To build on the training we will offer each month, we will offer additional material on our blog posts on the same topic. In October, our Topic Of The Month will be the broad subject of Hiring, including recruiting plans, succession plans, writing successful job ads, and motivating staff once they have been hired. In November, we will cover Advocacy. In that month, we will look at connecting with your funders, identifying stakeholders, writing an advocacy plan for your library, and provide templates for you to use to contact people to share your good library news. And in December, our monthly topic will be Stress Management. By the end of the year, and in such a busy season, we know everyone will need some tips on stress and relaxation, avoiding burnout at work, and ways to increase your professional satisfaction in your workplace.
Take a look around the calendar, and feel add it to your own Google calendar for easy viewing any time! (Just click the blue plus sign in the bottom right corner of the calendar.)
Do you have other suggestions for training? Email us! We always want to hear from our members!
Does your library have an idea for a program or service you could set up to benefit your community? Walmart might be able to help!
Through their Community Grant Program, the Walmart Foundation provides funds to nonprofit and government organizations serving communities. “Walmart and the Walmart Foundation have identified four core areas of giving: Hunger Relief & Healthy Eating, Sustainability, Women’s Economic Empowerment, and Opportunity.”
The guidelines are here; so read through them to see if your idea might fit into their funding. The deadline for this round of grants is December 31, 2016; but if your idea is more suitable for setting up later, this is an annual program.
They have set up an FAQ section here, and reading through these might give you some ideas.
CMLE Libraries: Do you want to discuss some grant ideas? Want to get some help in writing your application, or a second set of eyes? Email or call us, and we will be happy to help out on your application material!
Are you looking to update your school library collection? Maybe put on an event that promotes literacy, reading, or authors? Both of these opportunities come from AASL, but happily they do not require a membership. Read on for details and links to apply:
This grant is intended to help public middle or high schools “extend, update, and diversify the book, online subscription and/or software collections” in order to increase student learning and achievement
Award amount: direct assistance grant capped at $5,000
The goal of this grant is to assist public middle or high schools “create new or enhance educational activities in order to engage students within the library and to promote books, reading, literacy, and authors.”
Award amount: direct assistance grant capped at $2,000
Deadline: May 23, 2016
Have a great idea for a makerspace, or even just a classroom project? Check out these sites for grants to help fund your enterprise:
This page features 16 different makerspace grant opportunities in amounts ranging from $500 – $75,000! They also have some non-monetary grants that award Adobe software and e-subscriptions to news services.
Check out this link to 14 different crowdfunding sites specifically geared towards classrooms. They also have some helpful tips before deciding on a site to use, which includes looking at who uses the platform, the pricing structure, and what features are included (in this case, less can be more.) Remember, there’s really no limit to how much you can raise!
Remember that CMLE wants to help fund your projects for your library, school or classroom! Check out our grants page here.
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