This wasn’t our exact view of the Mississippi from the St. Cloud Convention Center, but it looked pretty similar!
Last week in St. Cloud we attended the Minnesota Library Association Annual Conference! We were especially excited about this conference because not only was it literally just across the river from our office, but we were lucky enough to give a presentation each day!
On Thursday we talked about Community Engagement. The room was packed!
These pictures are from our session and as you can see, we had participants “engage” with each other as they worked out ideas for connecting with their assigned communities!
On Friday morning we got to chat with other library podcast fans about how we use our podcast Linking Our Libraries to share leadership training with our members.
If you’re interested in learning more about either of our presentations, contact us at admin@cmle.org and we’d be happy to send you more information.
On both Thursday and Friday we participated in meetings, met new library people from all over the state (it’s always fun to hear about different libraries and their projects), celebrated seeing lots of familiar CMLE faces, and attended sessions.
One session I attended that I thought could be particularly interesting to our members was one that discussed tech tips for small libraries. The presenter mentioned Canva and Google Hangouts and Forms, all of which we definitely use at CMLE, but she also introduced some new apps. Plickers is an app that would work well in schools. We got to actually try it out in our session, but watch this 2 min video to see how it works:
Another few tools she recommended were Grammarly, which helps your online writing and has a Chrome extension, and TEDed, which lets you customize a TED talk lesson to use in your classroom.
We had a great time at MLA and look forward to returning next year!
You know that we love conferences, and the poster sessions are a really fun part of any conference! Whether you are admiring them, or presenting one to share information from your library, they are valuable. They are also easy to create, easy to share, and really help you connect with other people who like the same stuff you like!
We are passing on the call for posters for the MLA conference that will be RIGHT HERE in St Cloud this October!! If you want to chat about your poster proposal, send us an email at admin @ cmle.org – we really like to talk about posters and proposals! (No need to be a CMLE member – we like to talk to anyone!)
“We are now accepting proposals for the poster session hosted by the Academic and Research Libraries Division of the Minnesota Library Association at the MLA 2018 Annual Conference.
Poster Session Requirements
Poster sessions may present any of the following:
• A description of an innovative library program
• An analysis of a practical problem-solving effort
• A report of a research study
Poster sessions are not for product advertisements, vendor displays, or similar promotional purposes.
Participants must be available to informally discuss their posters with meeting attendees during the ARLD Poster Session, immediately following the ARLD Business Meeting, at the MLA Annual Conference October 11at the St. Cloud River’s Edge Convention Center from 1:00pm-1:50pm. Poster boards will be displayed on easels.
When submitting a proposal, you will need to provide:
Title – consider choosing a title that is short enough to be cast in an extra large font which can be read from a distance
Abstract (200 words or fewer) – a plaintext description of your proposal, its impact, and how you will present it
As you know, CMLE is a big supporter of everyone going to conferences. It can be such a valuable way for you to meet people who do what you do in a library, it lets you put names to faces of people you talk with online, and it gives you an opportunity to meet vendors and presenters of all sorts of information.
Library people can not just assume their skills are fine. Our profession requires constant updating and movement. There are a lot of ways to build skills – and conferences is on of the fun ways!
SO!!!
This October 11-12, the Minnesota Library Association Library Association Annual Conference will be in St Cloud.
To overcome any perception that conferences are only for someone else, or only for people with degrees (NOPE!!), MLA has established a specific track of presentations for Frontline Staff in any sort of library. If you do anything, in any type of library, that involves humans of any sort: THIS IS FOR YOU!!
(Does that sound expansive enough?? It’s supposed to!)
Sign up for the whole conference, Thursday and Friday, or just Friday. This track will be presented on Friday, and includes:
Remember back when I said WE WANT YOU TO GO TO THIS CONFERENCE???
CMLE will reimburse our members $50 toward your conference registration cost not otherwise paid for by other funding sources. (This is separate from, and in addition to any other scholarship or mini-grant you may receive from CMLE this year.)
Fill out the Scholarship form before the conference to get approved. Then, send us your receipts and a short write-up of the conference (photos are always appreciated!), and we will send you a reimbursement check for $50.
Pretty easy, isn’t it?
This conference is for everyone. It is for all types of libraries, all levels of experience, all job titles. And, as it’s here in CMLE’s own backyard, we particularity want to see people able to take advantage of it!
As a bonus for CMLE members, if you need a letter of support to attend this conference to give to your supervisor – we will be happy to provide one detailing the benefits of your attendance on your professional development, as well as the benefits to the library when you return.
We’ll see you at the conference!!!
PS: as a small plug, CMLE staff are giving two presentations at this MLA conference, and we’d love to see you there! Stop by, chat, and let’s have conference fun together!
Thursday, October 11 • 8:00am – 8:50am The Basics of Community Engagement: Nailing the Fundamentals so Magic Can Happen!Library people are skilled at finding, compiling, and sharing information – and these are skills we can share in our wider community! In this session, we will discuss the fundamentals of working with community groups and handling meetings effectively. we will discuss strategies for finding community groups, for connecting with them as a library professional and a community member yourself, and then for encouraging progress. Community groups can accomplish great things; but without fundamentals, that potential is squandered!
Friday, October 12 • 10:30am – 11:20am Leadership is On The Air! Training Through Podcasting! Leadership is for everyone. It’s for you! And we are here to help you with building your skills!! In this session, we will discuss the basics of using a podcast as a tool for training leadership skills and competencies. We will talk about the strategy we used to identify the competencies we are sharing in the podcast. We will talk, briefly, about setting up a podcast of your own if you want to do some training for your patrons, or staff, or other population. You will leave this session with ideas on leadership development and on learning by podcasting. Together we will enjoy discussing leadership!
This guest post was written by Violet Fox, Metadata Librarian at the College of St. Benedict/St. John’s University.
The theme for the 2017 Minnesota Library Association’s Annual Conference was “Radical Librarianship,” and I couldn’t have been more excited! I was excited to hear from library workers not only about the great things that libraries do for our users, but also how we as a profession should strive to recognize and address our shortcomings.
I was delighted to be able to present alongside some of my favorite library folks: Hannah Buckland (Leech Lake Tribal College), Tina Gross (St. Cloud State University), and Jessica Schomberg (Minnesota State University, Mankato). In our session, we talked about how centralization in cataloging often prevents libraries from responding flexibly to the needs of their users, and encouraged all librarians to argue for the value of local control in our standards and vocabularies in order to provide respectful and responsive metadata.
A number of MLA 2017 presentations gave me ample material to reflect on. Standouts included Safiya Umoja Noble’s session on how increasing reliance on opaque algorithms results in upholding societal inequity and oppression, as well as an interesting session from librarians at Dakota County Library (Christie Schultz and Lori Veldhuis) on their valuable project to make their world language collection more accessible and attractive to patrons.
Alhough I don’t do usability testing or user surveying in my job, the most exciting session I attended was “UX is Social Change: the Feminist Impact of User Experience Work” by librarians at Metropolitan State University (Christine Larson, Jennifer DeJonghe) and Hennepin County Library (Amy Luedtke, Tony Hirt). The presenters talked about how they use feminist principles within their work, in part by centering patron experiences and recognizing that patrons have knowledge and experience that we don’t. They also discussed their efforts to recruit UX participants intentionally, and acknowledged that it can be uncomfortable to have one’s design ideas critiqued. I very much appreciated the presenters’ unapologetic embrace of “disciplined empathy” in their work, and their presentation encouraged me to find ways to do the same in my own day-to-day work.
I’m grateful for CMLE’s support to attend MLA 2017 and I’d like to encourage Minnesota library colleagues to attend and present at next year’s conference!
Do you want to attend a conference or take part in some other professional development? Apply for a scholarship from CMLE today!
It is always great to meet library colleagues – you have so much to talk about right away! Going to conferences is a very good strategy for meeting up with colleagues; and attending a state association conference lets you put faces to the names of people you may be emailing with, talking with on listserves- or maybe did not even know yet!
This year the Minnesota Library Association’s Annual Conference was in Duluth, September 29-30. From everything I saw, did, and enjoyed there, I can say that a good time was had by all! And it was definitely a learning experience, with so many great sessions and presentations, and many opportunities to connect with people from across the state.
Do you want more information about it, or to see some of the events? MLA has you covered!
It all looks fun, doesn’t it?? Sign up for next year’s conference, which will be held in Rochester! Apply to CMLE for some money to offset your registration. If there is enough interest, we can rent a van and drive a group over one day! (Trust me: it’s ALWAYS fun to travel with library people!)
There were so many different sessions, looking at so many different types of libraries and library issues, it was impossible to see it all. No matter what you like to talk about and learn about in libraries: it was here! There were exhibitors, from assorted library vendors; all ready to chat with everyone about products and strategies to make libraries better. There was a poster session, with a variety of ARLD (Academic and Research Division of MLA) people presenting current research, professional activities, and things interesting to the members.
CMLE was represented in a great session on advocacy. “Library Legislative Process 101” was presented by Barbara Misselt, Director, East Central Regional Library and Jami Trenam, Associate Director of Collection Development, Great River Regional Library. “Library advocacy is for everyone, not just library directors and administrators. Join both seasoned and not-so-experienced library advocates at this roundtable to explore and share how we can advocate for library services for Minnesota citizens at the legislature.” This is such an important topic for all library people to explore, it was great to see it at MLA!
That evening, there was a social and networking event at the Glensheen Mansion! “The Minnesota Multicounty Multitype Library Systems and the Kathryn A. Martin Library, University of Minnesota Duluth invite you to the Glensheen Mansion for fun, food, and networking. There will be guided tours of the mansion and grounds – including a rare peek into the family library at Glensheen led by Director Dan Hartman – chili buffet and a cash bar.” This was a very fun event, with a lot of opportunities to talk about history and libraries, to chat with people from all over the state, and enjoy learning the history of the house, the inhabitants, and all the household items.
Crabby Ol’ Bills: it’s a landmark, not JUST a good place to have doughnuts! (Though, it’s also that!)
What else happened? So many things! For more information look over the schedule and get some ideas about things you might want to learn about, or people who you might connect with from around the state. You can see all kinds of topics and learn about people who are doing things that you are interested in trying. Don’t hesitate to send an email to people who are involved in things you would like to know more about (politely, of course!). Conferences, and the after-conference discussions, are a great way to learn about different ideas to try out for yourself!
Partnering with libraries for visioning, advocating, and educating
On Thursday we talked about Community Engagement. The room was packed!
These pictures are from our session and as you can see, we had participants “engage” with each other as they worked out ideas for connecting with their assigned communities!
On Friday morning we got to chat with other library podcast fans about how we use our podcast Linking Our Libraries to share leadership training with our members.
On both Thursday and Friday we participated in meetings, met new library people from all over the state (it’s always fun to hear about different libraries and their projects), celebrated seeing lots of familiar CMLE faces, and attended sessions.
