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:
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! 🙂
When you arrive at the library, you can immediately see where the important functions will happen. This is the Circ Desk – located near the front door for easy access to checking out and returning books, and to give patrons (students primarily) a central location to find staff who can help them.
You can get a good perspective on the space of this library here. The Circ Desk is there on the right side of the photo, and you can see all the space for students to use desks, to wander and look at books on shelves, and space for teachers and library to spend time working with students individually and in groups.
I am always, always a fan of design that considers usability for patrons – and this a great example of doing that! High-interest books are found right here, just inside the front door and easy to locate. Kids can flip through this shelf that is sized just right for them, and they can easily find books that have eye-catching cover art, and books that appeal to them and their own reading interests. Location and size both contribute to making these books more valuable to the users.
This visit happened at the end of the year, when books were due back from users; so the shelves are a little more full than usual. But you can see how many great opportunities kids (and teachers!) have to find books useful in the classroom, or books that are just fun to read. Books that are interesting to read, and well organized, encourage kids (and adults) to read more books – always an important goal in any library!
And of course, libraries have many different ways to share information. Books, of course, are always important; but we are also a great place for our patrons to use computers to connect with the internet, to hone their technological skills, and to find information using digital tools. Students can use computers right here in the library to supplement their other technology work.
Art is another important tool for sharing information, especially in a school environment. This sculpture is one of several located in the library on the shelves. They were created by students in art class. It is always great to see libraries connecting with and partnering with other groups, and in school libraries this often means working with academic departments such as an art department. (A student working in the library gave me some information about how these little sculptures were created – it was so nice to get that info from a patron!)
Sorry that this photo is kind of off kilter, but what we are looking at is two-fold. First: plants of any sort (including artificial) are always great to see in a library! Real plants can help to clean the air, and even artificial plants can help to reduce stress in people who see them. Second, it was hard to get in a photo, but you can see the very cool glass shelves! Library staff can put up books in these glass shelves, and they are on display out on the hallway – how neat!! Displaying books is always a great way to help increase circulation, and to help connect books with patrons.
Every library is unique, and every library I have ever visited (literally hundreds of them) has something interesting to set it apart. While there are several interesting and unique things in this library, I enjoyed seeing this (completely harmless, empty) wasp nest. Bringing in nature to any indoor environment is great for people, like students, who spend a lot of time inside. But it’s just a neat thing to have something unique to potentially engage student interest in coming to the library!
I’m a librarian! I like to have things labeled!! And when we are thinking about usability in libraries – always a key aspect of any library – making it very clear where all the different types of books can be found is a key to really implementing that usability!
I love to see unique features in libraries – and this stage area is just adorable! It is handy for hanging artwork on the side facing the rest of the library, and also has some steps and an area that could be used for performing or other fun stuff.
If you have been keeping up with our 
I love to see these shelves, sized just right for the patrons who will be using these materials! This school is preK through grade 5, so many of the patrons will not be very tall, and they will be interested in books that are fairly large. So these shelves are just right: a good height for easy browsing, and filled with books that are easy to flip through and lots of good cover art to admire! Thinking about the things your community members will need, and figuring out to best provide it to them, is the key to successful library services.
Another great example of this kind of usability is the labeling of the series books. As a very dedicated series reader myself, I always appreciate it when a library helps me out with finding the next book in the series. And in this library, these cute and handy book shelf tags are right there to help patrons find their next books!
Of course, in any school library students are not the only members of the community served by the library. Here you can see the packets of books collected for teachers to check out and use in their classrooms. This is an important function of a school library. We serve as information resources, and we support the information needs of all teachers, staff, and administrators. Developing and sharing this kind of resources is one great step in fulfilling that mission!
I tried to get some photos, but kids in costumes are very fast-moving! You can see some of them lined up here, waiting for their colleagues to finish parading and sharing their vocabulary words. It’s a little tough to make out the specific details, but you can just make out the yellow costume of the boy who was “light” all decked out in his glowing light bulbs! All the costumes were fantastic – these kids (and their parents) really did a lovely job of thinking through their words.
I tried to take pictures of people on stage, but they are just very cute looking blurs. So I grabbed this one of my library guide, Mary Berning, District Library Media Specialist for the Chisago Lakes Area Schools. Her word is so long it was hard to get in the photo: cruciverbalist, 
So you can see right from the start this is a nice place – check out that sign! It’s nice and obvious, and just looks good. (Sorry, the picture is off center – the sign itself is lovely!)
Surprisingly – this is not the only library in CMLE with a cool garage door! (Well, it was surprising to me, anyway.) I love the industrial design look it gives the room as you start into the library. Design is always important in any organization – and it makes libraries more usable if we look good for our community members.
I love these little stools! They give some nice pops of color to the room, and make for some nice, versatile seating for students as they are using the library. Being able to move around makes the library more usable for everyone; and the nice ripple bench seating adds another air of coolness to the design.
I am always a big fan of making a library as usable as possible. Installing these nice catalog computers at the ends of aisles makes it fast and easy to find the books each patron is trying to locate – or to find a nice group of books. Usability is key in any kind of library. Notice the nice tags on the endcap – another great tool for making searching easier for people hunting for their books!
Check out these shelves! The primary users of these shelves are not going to be really tall; so proving shorter shelves means the books are accessible. And of course patrons want to be able to see over them, and lower shelving units will make the room feel more open – always nice!
This display is lovely! It is always good to get books out there on displays, to encourage people to take them home! A perfect collection development policy would mean every single book in the library was checked out. That never happens (and wouldn’t be ideal, I guess), but cover art on books sells, and you want to do what you can to encourage those books to head out the door!
Look at the nice tables! Individual desks give students a chance to sit down with their work and any projects they need to work on in the library. You can see the wall shelves – nice and organized, with some cute art displayed on the top. Eye-catching is always good!
Tech is important in libraries – our patrons need to access, manipulate, and share information. This library has those great wall screens, with desks right there; they are all ready for groups to work together on their projects for class!
Printing is important in a library! We are responsible for helping our community members to cross the digital divide; and printers can be hard to find at home. Additionally, printers available are ready to go for the important work being done in the library – ready for class work as needed!
Design is important. There is no value in making a library look blah and dull. Libraries are fantastic! We provide amazing resources, all kinds of assistance and services, and our Return on Investment (ROI) would make a stockbroker weep with envy!! So adding these nice touches makes a library look as good as the work being done there – the neat trees, the excellent pops of orange (I love orange), makes the place look good!
Yes, it’s always exciting to see a sign letting me know I’m in the right place for the library! (Yes, I’m a massive library nerd; that should have been clear a long time ago here!) And check out this signage – on the wall and on the ceiling. Information literacy is a huge contribution of a library to the students; demonstrating this is valuable by at least having good signage is excellent!
I love to see signs and the ideas they share. (I’m a librarian – we like to see things organized.) Of course, any library needs to have some rules for effective use; but I like to see them phrased in a cheerful way. Look – we are way, way past the bad old days of libraries, where we were better known for shushing people than providing outstanding service. Seeing cheerful service is lovely here!
Printers, and other hardware, are one of the big services provided in libraries. Sure, it doesn’t sound so very exciting; but without printers we are adding some unnecessary barriers to patrons who need to use our services. Thumbs up to all libraries who provide tech services to patrons, even the less-glamorous-but-vital ones!
And while we are on that – good seating is just crucial in any library!! (Note: it was nearly impossible to find some empty areas of this library to take pictures – there were tons of students and teachers using it. That is a fantastic problem! As you know, we are pretty fervent about privacy rights; and we never include pictures of patrons on our site.) Check out these seats!! The adorable, rocking stubby chairs are great for temporary seating – attractive and comfy. The longer benches are likewise comfortable, and gives students the back support for a longer visit. Providing movable seating is going to be a service to your patrons – let them decide how they want to sit and to work. (We, as a profession, are moving steadily away from our micromanaging past – and I could not be more pleased!)