Tag Archives: School Library

Books, Resources, School Media Specialist

Kari Green Extended Mini Grant Report

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This is a guest post from Kari Green, Media Specialist at Monticello Middle and High Schools.

The Monticello High School library has been sorely neglected for years after the library media specialist position was eliminated. Even though it is a newly remodeled space, the full-time paraprofessional has no library training and is employed under the IT department; checking out books is a courtesy rather than a job requirement. My (nearly) full-time library media specialist position at Monticello Middle School has slowly evolved to meet different needs. Because of this, I am teaching fewer media classes and have more availability to act as a “consultant” to the high school for a couple of hours per week. 

When I began to look at the foundational pieces of the library, I discovered that the library catalog had been completely deleted after the last inventory. There were 1,700 missing books, and utter disarray of policies and procedures.

Once I got a handle on the foundational tasks, I began looking at collection development needs. You can imagine what I found! Huge swaths of essential reading were either lost, missing, or never purchased. 

I turned to my Follett representative and asked for a list of “core” high school purchases – the type of purchases districts make when building a library from scratch. The list that was sent contained $169,000 worth of titles that are not available in the high school library. Wowza!

From this list, I selected the 51 most popular titles. These ranged from essential classics such as To Kill a Mockingbird and the Outsiders to newer titles such as Seraphina and Before the Ever After. My goal was to create a solid foundation to (hopefully) built upon in future years. 

Since the yearly budget is $1,500, the grant from Central Minnesota Library Exchange is a significant boost. With the help of the grant, the collection is moving in the right direction. Monticello Schools is grateful for the support! Thank you!

Check it Out:, Guest Blogger

CMLE Mini Grant Report: Equity in Action: Building Diverse Collections

Huyck, David and Sarah Park Dahlen. (2019 June 19). Diversity in Children’s Books 2018. sarahpark.com blog. Created in consultation with Edith Campbell, Molly Beth Griffin, K. T. Horning, Debbie Reese, Ebony Elizabeth Thomas, and Madeline Tyner, with statistics compiled by the Cooperative Children’s Book Center, School of Education, University of Wisconsin-Madison: https://ccbc.education.wisc.edu/literature-resources/ccbc-diversity-statistics/books-by-about-poc-fnn/. Retrieved from https://readingspark.wordpress.com/2019/06/19/picture-this-diversity-in-childrens-books-2018-infographic/. 

Do you need help funding a project or materials for your school library this year? Check out our Extended Mini Grant Program!

This is a guest post from Jenny Hill, Ed.D. Assistant Professor of Teacher Development (Library Media emphasis) at St. Cloud State University.

Is your school library collection equitable and inclusive?  How do you really know?  Thanks to a generous grant from CMLE, I was able to attend the Library Journal/School Library Journal’s Equity in Action: Building Diverse Collections Workshop in order to learn more about how to perform an equity audit.

As topics were introduced at the beginning of the workshop, there were many great resources provided, some of which were TED talks and articles written by authors about diversity that I’d like to pass along to you:

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie: The Danger of a Single Story

Grace Lin: The Mirrors and Windows of Your Child’s Bookshelf

Jacqueline Woodson: Who Can Tell My Story

When performing an equity audit on your collection, it’s good to get a handle on the demographics of your community around you.  I found this site particularly helpful because of its detail for the specific cities throughout the state of Minnesota: http://www.mncompass.org/profiles

With your audience in mind, you can begin to audit your collection to see if it is representative of your population.  There are many ways to approach this task; there are a few things to keep in mind:

Start with a portion of your collection, maybe even a reading list of selected titles.  Trying to audit the entire library is a herculean task.   Remember the words of Mark Twain, “The secret of getting ahead is getting started. The secret of getting started is breaking your complex, overwhelming tasks into small manageable tasks, and then starting on the first one.”

Stand on the shoulders of giants!  There are many practitioners in the field who have already started to engage with this work.  Shannon McClintock Miller recently hosted a webinar featuring Baltimore County Public Schools and Denver Public Schools. They willingly share their equity audit tool they’ve created using Google Sheets.

Use the information you discover from your audit to inform your future purchases.  There are many great places to look for books for your collections, especially those that feature #OwnVoices.  Here are just a few to get you started:

Lee & Low Books

The Brown Bookshelf
Rainbow Booklist

Asian/Pacific American Librarians Association

If you are interested in learning more about the equity audit process or if I could help you start to diversify your collection, I would love to sit down and talk to you further! You can e-mail me at: jchill@stcloudstate.edu

Guest Blogger

CMLE Mini Grant: Purchasing Inclusive Books for Rockford Middle School Center for Environmental Studies

CMLE mini grant logo

Note from CMLE: We are currently in the process of updating our mini grant policies and procedures. We will make an announcement on our site and newsletter when we are ready to begin reviewing applications again!

This is a guest post from Beth Russell, Digital Skills Teacher and Curriculum Integration Coordinator at Rockford Middle School Center for Environmental Studies.

This summer saw a call for social justice that was shouted from the rooftops, marched down the streets, and written on signs, blogs, and across the hearts and minds of people in Minnesota and across the globe. We heard people demanding the right to exist, to succeed, and to matter. At RMS-CES, we heard this call and are responding in part by recognizing that our school library did not reflect the voices, faces, and stories of many of our students. 

We searched for book lists that featured writers of color, showcased diverse characters, and told stories and experiences from the past and from the present. We looked for books about everyday life and ones about traumatic experiences in history. We read blogs, followed authors on social media, and vowed to do better when purchasing books in the future, that our students will see themselves on the cover and in the pages of the books that are on our shelves. 

After the books came in, teachers who were in the building during workshop week had the chance to browse and borrow books for class read alouds. It was great to see so many teachers excited about starting to share our new collection right away, and we can’t wait to get our books into the hands of our students at the start of this very unprecedented year.

Check it Out:, Guest Blogger

CMLE Mini Grant: Nonfiction Books for LPGE Elementary Media Center

This is a guest post written by Lisa Schurmann, Elementary Librarian at LPGE Elementary School. Read more reports from past mini grant recipients on our page.

Our elementary library has purchased the ‘How is it Made’ books from ABDO and ‘Awesome Dogs’ from Bellwether.

I’ve been amazed how these new easy reader non-fiction books have attracted our students. With our students being curious, enthusiastic and eager to learn new information, these books have been a hit. The pictures are colorful, the pages inviting, and all around amazing books for young readers. I even have fifth and sixth grade students checking out the ‘How it is Made’ books.  

Having non-fiction books that are in their reading level and that they are able to use for AR testing is a plus. I find many students gravitating to the non-fiction area of our library as they enter the doors. It is fun to watch the interest in these series increase as others learn about the new books. 

The great part is they don’t realize they are challenging themselves and improving their reading skills! It is a joy to see the reading levels improve as they pick out their books. 

 I had a mother stop in and tell me her son checked out the new books and it was the first time he did not ‘buck’ about reading before bed. 

Thank you for helping us update our library with books that interest the students.

Guest Blogger, School Media Specialist

CMLE Mini Grant: PaperBackSwap.com

This is a Guest Post from Tammie Walker, Library Designee, Staff Development and Assessment chair and Advisor at Jane Goodall Environmental Sciences Academy in Maple Lake. Want to read more reports from CMLE Mini Grants? Check out our page.

We are elated at the support an organization such as yours could be to our small rural Charter School. Our Library team consists of an advisor, two parent volunteers and seven students. We serve a student body of 110, so having a fully functioning library has been a goal of ours for some time now.

Deciding how to best use the $300.00 gave us an opportunity to discuss ways to use the funds in the most beneficial way. Our consideration was two-fold: One, filling gaps in our library book kits. And two, the environment. We have decided to use the money to subscribe to a program called PaperbackSwap.com.

This site allows us to purchase books to fill out our library book kits, and also to share books that we no longer need.
How this works: 1. We list books we no longer need so that we can swap them for ones we do. 2. Once the book is requested we send it to the recipient for the cost of Media Mail. 3. In return, we gain points to have the book we need sent to us free of charge.

It is a win for us, a win for those who receive our books, and a win for the environment, keeping unused books out of landfills. It is a win all around.

The grant will be used to fund the Media Mail fees as we fill our kits. The first titles we will request will be some of Shakespeare’s plays along with Of Mice and Men ​and ​Animal Farm. Some contemporary selections will be Hunger Games ​ and ​Out of the Dust.

Once again, thank you so much for this grant. One of our “take-a-ways” is: when multiple organizations work together and pool resources, a small win becomes a bigger win.

Tammie, Vicky, Janis, Yuli, Sam, Belle, Bayley, Zane, Matt and Drew