Tag Archives: Members

CMLE

Read Your Book Session Feb. 27th

❄❄❄It’s that point in the winter when the ice and cold work hard to get us down. But thankfully, we have a few tools to keep our spirits up! Reading + friends + opportunities to get together = 😊

Recently, we enjoyed another evening of book discussion at Mexican Village downtown St. Cloud. We also met members in Princeton to share book suggestions and get to know each other! You can join our Meetup Group and see all the fun upcoming events scheduled!

Next week, we have our last Meetup event for February: Read Your Book Session! At 6pm we will be at the food court at Crossroads Mall with our books and a sign so you can find us easily. We’ll be there from 6pm – 8pm, arrive and depart as your schedule permits.

Finding the time to read can be HARD, life is so busy! So that’s why we are setting aside this designated time to get together and just read our books.

We aren’t going to analyze our book with others, we aren’t going to share plot points, we’re just going to read and enjoy ourselves!

RSVP on our Meetup site and we hope to see you there! (Feel free to bring several books, if like me you are waaaay behind on your TBR list!) 📚📚💕😂

CMLE, Communication

CMLE Office Hours

After our recent poll investigating what type of summer social event our members and fellow library people would like, we discovered there was interest in having time available for people to drop in to our CMLE Headquarters, to chat, ask questions, do some planning, or discuss other library topics!

So we decided to start CMLE HQ Office Hours!

Starting Wednesday, July 12, and every other Wednesday after that (we define this as: all Wednesdays with an even numbered date), we will be in the office from 11:00 to 1:00, and ready to chat about writing policies, working through materials selections, negotiating with vendors, planning your website or social media, going to conferences as a presenter or an attendee, zines/manga/pop culture coolness, or anything else you want to discuss! Would you like to just come say hi for a minute, and put a face to our names? Do it! You can test out the bike desks, see the plants and ever-changing seasonal decorations, and check in on Orville The Official Office Bear! No need to call ahead, just drop in and we will be happy to see you.

We hope you take advantage of these hours and are excited to show you our Headquarters while assisting with your library needs!

CMLE, Public, Visits

CMLE Visits our Member Libraries: St. Cloud public

A group of CMLE members visited the Great River Library System’s library in St Cloud. And as you can see by the pictures, we had a great time!

Thanks to Karen for organizing this for us, and to Chris and Neil for being our gracious tour guides!!

Visiting libraries to see what is happening in other places, and connecting with other CMLE members, have been some of the top requests from people across the system. We will be making monthly group visits to libraries of all types in CMLE.  Let us know when we can come visit you!!

Immediately, you can see that the staff at Great River is good at not only library work, but they are also artistic! This display of art works of all media comes with the creator’s name and branch location carefully labeled. A few things have already been sold, so you might want to dash over to check it all out!

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CMLE, School Media Specialist, Visits

A visit to the Buffalo High School library

I could tell just walking into the building that this was going to be a fun library to visit.

Check out that bison!! He’s not in the library (outside the office); but he clearly sets the tone for fun things to happen – and that carries right through to the library.

I managed to be here as they were celebrating Kindness Week – and the library was an enthusiastic participant! Librarian Amy Sparks showed me all around the library, pointing out all the interesting things she and her staff have set up. Any had just finished submitting a grant proposal, and had included a video of the library with a student who raved about the service – fantastic!

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CMLE, School Media Specialist, Visits

Touring Kimball Elementary school library

For someone who is not regularly around small kids, it’s always a treat to visit an elementary school library – you see just how much thought goes into making everything size-appropriate for the patrons! That kind of usability is important in all libraries, but in a library like this it is clearly on display and fun to see.

This library is a fun open-concept design! No walls cut them off from the rest of the school, so everything feels very open and flexible. They are recessed below the hallways around them, so there is privacy and a sense of specific place; and I love this feeling of being connected to the daily activities around them.

Continuing the idea of design making the library connect with the kid patrons, this art on the wall was just lovely. Kids could see this and be really inspired to read books – but also to just dream about great things!

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