Tag Archives: extended mini grant

Check it Out:, School Media Specialist

Annie Allen Extended Mini Grant Report

This is a guest post from Annie Allen, Media Specialist at Rogers Middle School. Read more about our Extended Mini Grant Program or fill out one of our applications. This program is only available during the FY21 school year.

I was awarded an $800 CMLE Extended Mini Grant to purchase ebooks for our middle school students. Getting books into the hands of our students has been a challenge during Distance Learning. Students and parents are not able to easily pick up print books at the school, so expanding our ebook collection was a priority. With a limited budget, ebooks have not been something I’ve really been able to expand access to. This mini grant allowed me to purchase 108 new ebooks for our students!

Of these, 81 of the titles ordered were able to be shared across our secondary schools through MackinVIA, the platform we use for our digital content. This means that not only are these books impacting access for my 700 students here at Rogers Middle School, but thousands of students across our district! All of the titles purchased are perpetual ownership, which means our students will be able to enjoy access forever!

Historically, ebook circulation has been low at my middle school. Our students really prefer print books, but with Distance Learning ebooks became some of the only books easily accessible for students. With most of our access being those from the EbooksMN collection, I wanted to purchase some additional titles with strong middle school appeal, specifically fiction novels.

I purchased the new ebooks in late December, and they were ready and available for students when they returned from winter break. I heavily promoted the new books the first two weeks back to school, posting on Schoology, creating featured book content in MackinVIA, and sending out a video for our ELA teachers to show to students. These efforts paid off!

Last year during the same time frame (Jan 1-Jan 31, 2020) there were only 38 total logins to MackinVIA and 0 views and 0 checkouts of ebooks. This year between January 1 and January 31, 2021 there were 1,972 logins to MackinVIA, 1,080 ebook views and 12 ebook checkouts! January 2021 ebook usage exceeded TOTAL usage of ebooks from March 2020-June 2020 when we moved to Distance Learning for the first time (109 ebook views, 2 checkouts)! February has seen continued usage due to I Love to Read Month promotional activities (again featuring the new ebooks) and a virtual book tasting with 6th grade ELA classes. Through February 23rd, there have been 555 views of ebooks and 12 checkouts. This is encouraging since more than 90% of our students are now back in-person 4 days per week. 

Having the additional ebooks for our students will be a game changer for the rest of this school year and into the future. Our students who have remained in Distance Learning will continue to have easy access to our expanded ebook collection in addition to those attending school in-person. The titles purchased are newly published, old favorites, or titles in our book club collection which means they will have broad appeal for a while. I am excited to use our ebook collection for a summer reading promotion since our students will have continued access over the summer months!

CMLE, Guest Blogger

Michelle Buettner Extended Mini Grant Report

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This is a guest post from Michelle Buettner, librarian at St. John’s Area School in Foley, MN. Read more about our Extended Mini Grant Program or fill out one of our applications. This program is only available during the FY21 school year.

St. John’s Area School is a small rural school community in Foley, MN. The school has 74 students in Kindergarten through Grade 6, along with 14 faculty and staff.

St. John’s Area School is very thankful to the CMLE Minigrant Program. Without the Minigrant, I would not have been able to replace more than 150 books that were damaged in our school library.

In the middle of October 2020, a second floor pump valve broke on our school’s boiler system. This breakage caused gallons and gallons of a water/oil mixture to leak through the ceiling down into the library, soaking and damaging several shelves of books, and worst of all, closing down the school library for about three weeks to clean up the mess. The students were very disappointed to have the library closed for that long.

Once the library was opened back up, they were sad that many of their favorite books were no longer available because they were damaged. I talked to the students about which books and series they would like to see replaced and added in our library.

Thanks to the CMLE Minigrant Program, and generous donations by several families and individuals in our school and community, I was able to replace every book that was damaged. I was also able fulfill many of the students’ requests and purchase books to complete several series.  Many of the new books that were ordered came in just before Christmas and during Christmas break. The students were not able to see the new books until the middle of January due to Christmas break and two weeks of distance learning (due to COVID-19 health concerns).

Once the children returned, each class came to the library that first week back and the students were very excited when they saw all the new books waiting for them to check out!

Thank you CMLE!

Michelle Buettner
Librarian
St. John’s Area School

Check it Out:, CMLE, Programs

CMLE Extended Mini Grant Zoom Meeting: You’re Invited!

logo for CMLE extended minigrants

Join us at 10am on Tuesday, January 12th to learn about our extended mini grant program! There will be time for you to ask questions and share ideas about grant projects. RSVP below!

In case you missed it:

“For this school year only, through May, 2021, we will be soliciting minigrant applications from member libraries for funds up to $1,000. This is our Extended Minigrant program, as brought to you by the CMLE Board of Trustees.” Read more and apply on our page.

This year has been hard on everyone. So we really encourage our members to apply for this grant! You can read more information about our special extended mini grant program on our page.

We understand that if you’re new to writing grant applications, this process can seem a bit intimidating. So we want to provide this opportunity for you to ask questions about the application or just share thoughts on how your library could benefit from this program.

Please RSVP below for the Zoom session at 10am on January 12th. We’re looking forward to talking with you!

Attending?(required)

Check it Out:, School Media Specialist

Mark Your Calendar: Zoom Q&A for CMLE’s Extended Mini Grants

logo for CMLE extended minigrants

CMLE has been so pleased by the wonderful applications we’ve received for our Extended Mini Grant Program! In case you missed it:

“For this school year only, through May, 2021, we will be soliciting minigrant applications from member libraries for funds up to $1,000. This is our Extended Minigrant program, as brought to you by the CMLE Board of Trustees.” Read more and apply on our page.

We understand that if you’re new to writing grant applications, this process can seem a bit intimidating. So we’re holding a special Q&A Zoom session on Tuesday, January 12th at 10am! Join us to ask any questions you may have about the grant program or application. (RSVP below)

This year has been hard on everyone. So we really encourage our members to apply for this grant! You can read more information about our special extended mini grant program on our page. Otherwise, please RSVP below for the Zoom session at 10am on January 12th. We’re looking forward to talking with you!

Attending?(required)

CMLE, School Media Specialist

Join Our Extended Mini Grant Review Team!

We are very pleased to be able to offer an Extended Mini Grant Program to our members this year. If you missed our previous post, here are the basics:

For this school year only, through May, 2021, we will be soliciting minigrant applications from member libraries for funds up to $1,000. This is our Extended Minigrant program, as brought to you by the CMLE Board of Trustees.

Members are libraries in these counties: Aitkin, Benton, Chisago, Isanti, Kanabec, Mille Lacs, Morrison, Pine, Sherburne, Stearns, Todd, and Wright. You do not need to apply to be a member. If your library is in one of these counties, it is one of our members. Preference in applications will be given to school libraries.

You can be pretty flexible in what you apply to use these grants to fund in the library. Programs, materials, services – the three hallmarks of a good library – are all accessible with this money.

Potential minigrant applications that would be relevant in this program include requests like:

  • filling in a hole in your collection budget
  • buying software that will let you do distance library service
  • bringing a virtual program, or program series, to your students

You can apply here: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/1eng1oti0BIBWjczPPDLBZW0wnluJ57aqlHAqqEY3BLA/edit.

And we are looking for individuals to help evaluate the applications we receive! We will provide evaluation rubrics and will communicate on a monthly basis to review applications. This will not require an extensive time commitment, and will be a great way to see what other schools in the area are working on. Email us at admin@cmle.org to indicate your interest and we will be in touch soon!

We look forward to hearing from you.