Tag Archives: School media center

Check it Out:, Guest Blogger, School Media Specialist

TA Flatland Extended Mini Grant Report

This is a guest post from TA Flatland, Media Generalist at Salk Middle School. Read more about our Extended Mini Grant Program. This program is only available during the FY21 school year.

My plan for the CMLE mini grant was to increase the number of nonfiction books that are specifically related to the History Day topics students are interested in and to increase the number of nonfiction books that address and teach current political and social issues, as we have had multiple students requesting these types of materials.

We’ve seen an increase in the number of students asking for books dealing with specific topics including LGBTQ+ issues, Black Lives Matter and Civil Rights. It also became apparent in the last three years that our current collection of history books, specifically the 1950s to the present, are severely lacking or outdated in our nonfiction collection.

When I learned about the CMLE mini grant program, I immediately put in an application in the hopes that we could improve this selection of books in our media center. I was very hopeful that the funding that we would receive from the CMLE mini grant would allow our students to find engaging materials that related to the topics that they had shown high interest in.

Once I received word that I had been approved for the mini grant I consulted with our history teachers, as well as students to determine what books would be of interest and would circulate well. We created a wishlist on Mackin and spent a lot of time creating a list of books that were not only age-appropriate, but highly engaging for our students to learn from.

Once I had the list from Mackin, I started making edits. I also showed the list to our English and Science staff as we often have cross curricular activities and assignments. Another source that we consulted was the Minnesota Historical Society to ensure that we were getting materials that were useful for our Minnesota studies class.

After consulting multiple content areas and students, we were able to find 67 books that met the criteria for this grant and would benefit our students.

The titles we were able to purchase with this grant will have long-term benefits for our school, from research for Science Fair projects to the History Day project and individual interest and learning.

Now that the materials have arrived in our Media Center we are excited to promote these materials for  students to check out and use even before the end of this school year. We are also hoping to be able to highlight and cross-promote these new books with our History Day projects and mini-History Day projects that are completed in 6th grade Minnesota Studies Class.

One of the highlights of being a magnet program is that we have the highest rate of diversity in our school district. This makes it a top priority for us to ensure that we have materials and books in our media center that show windows and mirrors to students of all cultures.

We are proud of the collection that we were able to create using this mini grant. We have already had students show their excitement after seeing these materials in our media center. They were glad to see more books that deal with social and political issues that are relevant in today’s society.

Check it Out:, Guest Blogger

Wanda Erickson Extended Mini Grant Report

This is a guest post from Wanda Erickson, Media Specialist at Upsala Area Schools. Read more about our Extended Mini Grant Program. This program is only available during the FY21 school year.

Since receiving news of the grant approval, I have been hard at work getting titles ordered and specifications set with ABDO.  Chad Swiggum has been an excellent partner, thorough and efficient.  The order was placed, waiting ensued, and finally the books CAME!

 Third Grade students helped to unpack the books.  They were thrilled with the appearance and the content of the titles. 

 As I selected titles, I decided on subjects that supported geography and culture.  I also wanted titles that attracted students in primary grades.  In the grant application, I mentioned I firmly support database usage.  However, we know that younger students take a longer time to develop proficiency in the use of databases.  They tend to look at the videos, have the text read to them, and enjoy rather than research.  With a print title, they still enjoy, but the opportunity to read and research seems greater.  There is less to distract.  

 Well, the books are here!  I have cleaned up the integration into our local Destiny catalog, labeled spines with colored AR labels, and am ready to introduce them to students for checkout.  I will also weed those old titles I mentioned in the application and put them either into classrooms or on the free book table. 

Our elementary school, in cooperation with the district’s community education program, offers summer reading.  The new titles will be ready for students to use all summer.  Along with databases, too.

From the reactions of Third Grade alone, I suspect these titles will circulate well. 

CMLE has been around since I started teaching (1977 I began, CMLE in 1979).  Thank you again for supporting libraries and students for 42 years.  

Check it Out:, School Media Specialist

Annie Allen Extended Mini Grant Report

This is a guest post from Annie Allen, Media Specialist at Rogers Middle School. Read more about our Extended Mini Grant Program or fill out one of our applications. This program is only available during the FY21 school year.

I was awarded an $800 CMLE Extended Mini Grant to purchase ebooks for our middle school students. Getting books into the hands of our students has been a challenge during Distance Learning. Students and parents are not able to easily pick up print books at the school, so expanding our ebook collection was a priority. With a limited budget, ebooks have not been something I’ve really been able to expand access to. This mini grant allowed me to purchase 108 new ebooks for our students!

Of these, 81 of the titles ordered were able to be shared across our secondary schools through MackinVIA, the platform we use for our digital content. This means that not only are these books impacting access for my 700 students here at Rogers Middle School, but thousands of students across our district! All of the titles purchased are perpetual ownership, which means our students will be able to enjoy access forever!

Historically, ebook circulation has been low at my middle school. Our students really prefer print books, but with Distance Learning ebooks became some of the only books easily accessible for students. With most of our access being those from the EbooksMN collection, I wanted to purchase some additional titles with strong middle school appeal, specifically fiction novels.

I purchased the new ebooks in late December, and they were ready and available for students when they returned from winter break. I heavily promoted the new books the first two weeks back to school, posting on Schoology, creating featured book content in MackinVIA, and sending out a video for our ELA teachers to show to students. These efforts paid off!

Last year during the same time frame (Jan 1-Jan 31, 2020) there were only 38 total logins to MackinVIA and 0 views and 0 checkouts of ebooks. This year between January 1 and January 31, 2021 there were 1,972 logins to MackinVIA, 1,080 ebook views and 12 ebook checkouts! January 2021 ebook usage exceeded TOTAL usage of ebooks from March 2020-June 2020 when we moved to Distance Learning for the first time (109 ebook views, 2 checkouts)! February has seen continued usage due to I Love to Read Month promotional activities (again featuring the new ebooks) and a virtual book tasting with 6th grade ELA classes. Through February 23rd, there have been 555 views of ebooks and 12 checkouts. This is encouraging since more than 90% of our students are now back in-person 4 days per week. 

Having the additional ebooks for our students will be a game changer for the rest of this school year and into the future. Our students who have remained in Distance Learning will continue to have easy access to our expanded ebook collection in addition to those attending school in-person. The titles purchased are newly published, old favorites, or titles in our book club collection which means they will have broad appeal for a while. I am excited to use our ebook collection for a summer reading promotion since our students will have continued access over the summer months!

CMLE, Guest Blogger

Michelle Buettner Extended Mini Grant Report

1 Comment

This is a guest post from Michelle Buettner, librarian at St. John’s Area School in Foley, MN. Read more about our Extended Mini Grant Program or fill out one of our applications. This program is only available during the FY21 school year.

St. John’s Area School is a small rural school community in Foley, MN. The school has 74 students in Kindergarten through Grade 6, along with 14 faculty and staff.

St. John’s Area School is very thankful to the CMLE Minigrant Program. Without the Minigrant, I would not have been able to replace more than 150 books that were damaged in our school library.

In the middle of October 2020, a second floor pump valve broke on our school’s boiler system. This breakage caused gallons and gallons of a water/oil mixture to leak through the ceiling down into the library, soaking and damaging several shelves of books, and worst of all, closing down the school library for about three weeks to clean up the mess. The students were very disappointed to have the library closed for that long.

Once the library was opened back up, they were sad that many of their favorite books were no longer available because they were damaged. I talked to the students about which books and series they would like to see replaced and added in our library.

Thanks to the CMLE Minigrant Program, and generous donations by several families and individuals in our school and community, I was able to replace every book that was damaged. I was also able fulfill many of the students’ requests and purchase books to complete several series.  Many of the new books that were ordered came in just before Christmas and during Christmas break. The students were not able to see the new books until the middle of January due to Christmas break and two weeks of distance learning (due to COVID-19 health concerns).

Once the children returned, each class came to the library that first week back and the students were very excited when they saw all the new books waiting for them to check out!

Thank you CMLE!

Michelle Buettner
Librarian
St. John’s Area School

School Media Specialist

What do newbie school media center people need to know?

2 Comments
McMillen High School Library

CMLE has over 200 member libraries, and we know they are all doing great work!! (Really! We’ve visited a bunch of them to admire it, and it’s always so cool!!)

A big part of our mission is to support our members. We want to get as much of the administrative/policy/back-stage kinds of things done for them as a group as possible. Library staffers are best utilized spending most of their time with their community (face to face or online), not working on the tedious stuff. We can’t take away all of that (sorry!), but we want to see what we can do as a system to make it easier for our library people to get away from that and spend more time with patrons.

One thing we are working on is a “Hello! Welcome to Your New Job In A School Media Center!” handbook. (The name is, obviously, still a work in progress. Send suggestions!)

We have some ideas, and have been gathering thoughts from school library people – but we want to know what YOU know! What do you do each day? What kinds of things do you wish you knew your first day, week, month? What suggestions do you have to pass on to your colleagues in school libraries??

Please feel free to send this request (appeal for help!) to any school library people you know! The more ideas we get, the better our end product will be.

(And yes: we are talking about CMLE members, because they are our primary mission – but anything we produce will be available for any school library person to use! We are strong believers in the idea that libraries are all stronger when we work together!!)

Leave a comment below! Email us at admin @ cmle.org! Tweet to us at @CMLELibs! Call us at 320-257-1933!

We would really love to hear from you – no matter what you do in any type of school library! The more info we get now, the better we are able to help!!

Thanks!!