First off, welcome back to a new academic year! Our K-12 and college libraries are gearing up just as the public libraries breathe a sigh of relief after their summer reading programs come to an end. We have lots of exciting news at CMLE, so hang in there for a few minutes, and let me know if you have concerns or questions! Hopefully, during our eight month strategic planning process, we did our homework, and our plans for the future will meet your needs. If not, please know that I welcome any and all of your suggestions!
Our mission: CMLE is a Central Minnesota library hub, a clearinghouse of talent, materials, and expertise for all types of libraries.
Our new strategic focus areas for the next three years include:
- Refined focus on K-12 media center needs
- Convening and bridging libraries around issues
- Stretching dollars: Cost avoidance and cost savings
For more detail on our Strategic Framework and our Strategic Workplan, go here
New Communication Streams: Our staff strives to get you important library/school media information, yet keep your life uncluttered. With our new communication strategy we hope to reach you wherever you are:
- Each Thursday, you will receive a CMLE Weekly Review message recapping our blog posts of the week. Just click on the links of what interests you; it is as easy as that! So, going forward, you will receive fewer emails from CMLE, but will lose no content from us.
- Twitter: Find us, follow us, and we’ll follow you back! Our Twitter handle is CMLEMN
- Facebook: Find us by searching for “Central Minnesota Libraries Exchange”. Please “Like Us” right away so you never have to do this search again!
Service Changes….
Interlibrary Loan (ILL): After conducting a 10-year trend analysis which showed consistent drop in ILL requests, and a cost-benefit analysis of what it costs us to provide this service, our governing Board is in agreement that we sunset our physical ILL service. However, we do not want to end our tradition of resource sharing in Central MN and will evolve resource sharing into more digital resources. We will spend this academic year helping users of the ILL service to find alternative methods for getting the resources they need before our end date of June 30, 2013. We will also be unveiling new resource sharing strategies soon, so stay tuned!
Annual Meeting: After careful debate and thought, the Board agreed that we can serve more of you better if we convene some smaller, targeted gatherings around the region rather than one big event. Please watch for more detail about possibilities, and if there is a conversation you would like us to convene, please let us know. Example: Would you enjoy a conversation about information literacy with academic, K-12, public, and special librarians to hear what works best in their settings? Information literacy and e-books are already on our wish list of possibilities, what is on yours?
As we work through this exciting but difficult transitional year, know that we are seeking ways to further assess and serve your needs, and engage you. We hope that some of our new ideas including our new communication streams provide new opportunity and energy in your world.
Patricia Post, Director of CMLE
Interlibrary loan (ILL) has always been one of my favorite library services. My librarian “passion point” is equitable access for all library users, and ILL nicely fills that bill. Here in Minnesota, we enjoy the goodwill of most of our libraries in sharing their collections (not true in all states). I thought this recent blog post by OCLC was interesting on two fronts. It is always interesting to hear OCLC’s take on four ILL trends, but the bonus is that OCLC also shared their most often requested ILL titles! Tip: this years book list is near the top, scroll way down to see the previous years too!