It is always great to have a voice in the profession, to get to know other interesting library people, and to share your experience with others. You can do all of this by joining an ALA committee! I volunteered today, and I’m looking forward to seeing some of you there too! The information from ALA is below, for each perusal. The next annual meeting will be in Chicago, and we can get a CMLE van trip organized to transport people! Of course, also consider joining your local library groups, state groups, groups that focus on your specific professional interests – no matter what you do in the library world, there is a group for you!!
CHICAGO — The online committee volunteer form (http://www.ala.org/CFApps/volunteer/form.cfm – select “ALA” in the drop-down menu) for ALA, Council and two joint committees closes on Friday, Nov. 4, 2016. Please complete the form if you wish to be considered for appointment (or reappointment).
At CMLE, we want to provide material for continuing education for our members. We have a variety of strategies for this, including the material we and our Guest Bloggers provide here.
To add to this, we are beginning a Monthly Topic. Each month we will provide a broad topic that will be relevant to our members. Within that topic will be several different topics, and we will provide information in a variety of formats.
This will include monthly training programs offered in a variety of formats to make it accessible for members. Our plans are to offer monthly in-person sessions for members to have a chance to get together and talk about the topic, and the issues it raises in their libraries. We also plan to have this session (or a similar one) offered as a live webinar for members who want to attend but cannot leave their libraries, and to record that session so members can watch it later on their own schedules.Continue reading Introducing October's Monthly Topic: Hiring!→
Attention, book-loving CMLE members! (We hope that is most of you!)
You may have read our earlier post introducing CMLE’s two new book groups on Goodreads. One of our groups is aimed at professional development for librarians, and the books that we will be reading will hopefully be useful to you in your place of work. Our second book group is more about reading for fun, and the books we read will be a little more light-hearted!
Do you want to read with us, but need to borrow a copy of either book? CMLE has two copies of The Life Changing Magic of Tidying Up and one copy of Curiosity Thrilled the Cat that are available to borrow!
Email Angie and let her know if you are interested. Looking forward to reading together!
At CMLE we take our commitment to providing our members with information and continuing professional training opportunities very seriously. We will continue to build on the courses and seminars we have offered, and hope to expand things for you. The library field is fast-moving and ever-changing; and we are here to help our members to keep their skills sharp, and to be able to better serve patrons’ needs.
We have set up a Continuing Education page on our site, with a Google calendar of all kinds of events that might be interesting to you. Most of these are offered as webinars, or online classes; and a few are in person seminars or conferences. Many are free, and some require payment. We will also include professional conferences, so you can keep up with the ideas being shared in your area of the library world. No individual person, or library, will be interested in all of these; but we will have a broad range of topics, to be sure you have all kinds of possibilities for building new skills and making yourself more valuable! And, seeing some of the things other libraries are discussing – even if you do not want to participate in the class – may give you some ideas about new things to try, or new people to contact to talk further about a topic.
We will also be offering regular continuing education programs through CMLE. We want to be sure our members have a chance to talk about topics of specific interest, or frustration; and to be able to gather and connect with their local colleagues. So, we will offer monthly training at the CMLE Headquarters, as well as streaming it through Go To Meeting for members to attend virtually.
To build on the training we will offer each month, we will offer additional material on our blog posts on the same topic. In October, our Topic Of The Month will be the broad subject of Hiring, including recruiting plans, succession plans, writing successful job ads, and motivating staff once they have been hired. In November, we will cover Advocacy. In that month, we will look at connecting with your funders, identifying stakeholders, writing an advocacy plan for your library, and provide templates for you to use to contact people to share your good library news. And in December, our monthly topic will be Stress Management. By the end of the year, and in such a busy season, we know everyone will need some tips on stress and relaxation, avoiding burnout at work, and ways to increase your professional satisfaction in your workplace.
Take a look around the calendar, and feel add it to your own Google calendar for easy viewing any time! (Just click the blue plus sign in the bottom right corner of the calendar.)
Do you have other suggestions for training? Email us! We always want to hear from our members!
Looking to learn some new skills, or enhance your abilities in a particular area? The Minnesota Multitypes are here to help!
The Minnesota Libraries Continuing Education Calendar always has some events to check out. These events are open to all library staff across the state, although there may be some registration requirements. The seven Minnesota Multitypes hope that this calendar makes it easy for library staff to see what continuing education events are already scheduled. Libraries are encouraged to submit their own learning opportunities to calendar@mnlibs.info as well!
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