Tag Archives: Spotlight Program Series

CMLE, Training

Training Tips: CMLE has material for you!

We are very interested in helping all our members (and other library people!) get the training they need to be ready to serve their communities. Working in libraries means constant change, new services coming along all the time. Staying on top of it all is tough!

CMLE will work to provide training in areas helpful to our community members. Some of that is in person, and it is fun to connect with each other as we work through ideas. Other material is on our website. We provide online training material for all types of libraries, including:

  • Linking Our Libraries podcast: training on all kinds of topics library people need, with a focus on leadership skills in different situations (subscribe, or stream from our site; read all the info on our site)
  • Reading With Libraries podcast: reader’s advisory material, with a new genre discussed each week; book recommendations, links to resources, and guest hosts to share ideas all combine to make this a fun and useful book group podcast (subscribe, or stream from our site; read all the info on our site)
  • Book Bouquets: a weekly series of books grouped around a specific topic; provided for people’s own TBR list, or to set up displays in their libraries; flyers included each week
  • Spotlight Program series: weekly series of programs that can be put on in any library, usually at low (or no) cost, and with little prep time
  • Read Across Minnesota series: a weekly book shared from a Minnesota author, or set in Minnesota; comes with a Google map to show locations of each book

What other topics would be helpful to you, as you work in your library?? We are here to find training ideas for you – either provided in-house, or we will help to track down some other training opportunities for you!

Books

Spotlight Program: The Gift of Reading

Birthday candles

At CMLE, we so enjoy all our different types of libraries, archives, and other members! Seeing all the work you are doing is so inspiring; and we want to return the favor by helping you to find some of the great programming going on around the profession.

Each week we will share an interesting program we find. It may inspire you to do exactly the same thing; or to try something related; or just to try out some different programming ideas.

Programs that help you to connect with your community, build your collection, and provide a way for people to share positive feelings, all in one program? What a great thing to try in your library! This very interesting program was shared on the Programming Librarian website, by  Annie Ruefle, Lower School Librarian, Columbus School for Girls, Columbus, Ohio.

“Birthdays are a big deal for just about every kid in America — anticipating the day, hoping for presents, making a wish and blowing out the candles. Why not prolong the excitement of the special day by inviting your students or patrons to celebrate a birthday with the library?

A book donation program can make a child’s birthday celebration more meaningful and long-lasting. Hosting a Birthday Book Program encourages the donation of a new book in honor of a child’s birthday, creating a memorable way to celebrate a birthday, a boost to collection development, and most importantly, a way to connect a child to the library in a significant way.

The preparation

Purchase and fully process an assortment of high-interest books. Choose books that are sure to be popular with your students: books on dinosaurs, pets, animals, jokes, etc. Include fiction and nonfiction, picture books and chapter books. Over the years I’ve learned that students prefer titles that are familiar, so include books that are currently popular or classics that might need an updated copy in the library (“Harry Potter,” “A Light in the Attic,” “Little House on the Prairie,” “Charlie and the Chocolate Factory”).

Once you’ve collected the donatable titles, create a place to hold these new-but-not-yet-circulating books. Decorate a sturdy box with birthday wrapping paper. These books won’t circulate until they are selected as a birthday book, but should be ready and waiting for a child ready to celebrate a birthday.

The invitation

Develop a system for inviting children, faculty or other patrons to purchase birthday books. You might send an email once a month to the school community reminding families of the library’s Birthday Book Program, or you could create a form letter that can be sent out to anyone celebrating a birthday that month. (This is a great task for parent volunteers.)

The initial investment in books and a few craft supplies can reap big rewards — like a child’s connection to his or her school library

Be careful to explain the cost of the Birthday Book Program. Perhaps you want to charge a standard price of $10 to $20 for a book; $10 might not cover the entire price of a hardback book, but it certainly offsets some of the cost acquiring new titles. Explain that the proceeds are used to increase the library collection.

The selection

Once the birthday book invitations are distributed, expect a handful of students to come to the library each month, eager to browse through the “birthday box” and find the perfect book to select as a donation to the library.

Prepare an individualized bookplate with the donor’s name and relevant information. Invite families to send in a school photo that can accompany the bookplate. Check scrapbook stores for birthday candle stickers; attach a birthday candle sticker to the spine of a book to identify it as a birthday book.

Circulate!

Allow the student to be the first patron to check out the book, making sure the donor understands the birthday book is a gift to the library and will be added to the collection for others to read and enjoy.

Long after the birthday candles are blown out and the wrapping paper is thrown away, the birthday books will remain in the library collection as a gift that keeps on giving. Many children will be able to read the birthday books — and view the donor information on the bookplates — for years to come.

And that’s the real gift of the birthday book program — sharing the gift of reading with the community.”

Programs

Spotlight Program: Human Battleship

Battleship clipart

At CMLE, we so enjoy all our different types of libraries, archives, and other members! Seeing all the work you are doing is so inspiring; and we want to return the favor by helping you to find some of the great programming going on around the profession.

Each week we will share an interesting program we find. It may inspire you to do exactly the same thing; or to try something related; or just to try out some different programming ideas.

This extremely-cool-sounding program is shared by Jenn Carson, MSLIS, CYT, CCYT Library Director of LP Fisher Public Library, Woodstock, N.B., Canada. Find this, and more great programs, on the Programming Librarian blog!

“The L.P. Fisher Public Library is well-known in our community (Woodstock, N.B., Canada) for our board game programs, like Connect Four Tournaments, Family Game Nights or our (competitive!) Chess Club. As a strong promoter of physical literacy, I’m always thinking of ways to incorporate more movement into our programs (beyond fine motor skills, of course!). So I came up with a life-size version of Battleship we could play with our whole bodies, inspired by a version my eldest son played in gym class.

I tried this first at the local Jiu Jitsu gym where I help lead the kids’ training sessions. It was a hit, so I knew it would work at the library. We ran the program over the March break and had more than 15 people show up. This is a nice low-cost program; the only thing you really need is a ball and some existing tables from your library.

The space

You’re going to need a large room (a gym is ideal!) or a large lawn of grass away from traffic. The room or lawn needs to be divided in the middle by a barrier. The barrier needs to be tall enough to create an obstacle the participants can’t see over — but not so high they can’t throw a ball over it.

Indoors, I’ve used folding tables or crash mats (both turned on their sides). Outdoors you could string up a volleyball or badminton net close to the ground (though you’d need to find a way to make it not transparent). A large horizontal banner or length of stretchy fabric would also work, as long as you had a way to secure it on either end.

The ball

Then you need to find a ball (or if you want to play like these brave humans, many balls) that won’t hurt when it lands on someone.

Thin, squishy plastic is the best. A balloon is too lightweight, a soccer or basketball is too heavy. I used a giant bouncing ball about three feet in diameter — the kind that kids can sit on and bounce around. A dodgeball or beach ball would also work.

Remember, the smaller the ball, the harder the game is going to be and the longer it will take (depending on how many “ships” you have). Depending on the space, the equipment you have available, and the time you have to prepare, you can make this as simple or as complicated as you’d like.

The game

Divide your group into two teams, one team on each side of the barrier. Everyone lies on the ground, arms planted to their sides, just like the ships in the game. The only time they are permitted to move is when it is their turn to throw the ball.

You will act as referee and ball-chaser and will remain standing. The teams take turns throwing the ball across the barrier and trying to hit a “ship” (person) on the other side. Here’s the challenge — they have to throw the ball from their position on the floor. This is really hard work — it takes a whole lot of strong tummy muscles and concentration to throw that ball with any accuracy! No doubt, this will create a lot of giggling as the ball will fly off in many unintended directions, since throwing from a horizontal position uses the vestibular system and our sense of proprioception. Sometimes a player will think they are throwing a ball over the barrier only to find they have thrown it straight up in the air and now it is landing on their own face!

I usually allow the youngest of players to throw from a seated position so they don’t get discouraged. Also, feel free to modify or adapt the rules for players with disabilities.

Your job as referee is to declare any hits, make sure the “ships” aren’t moving to get away from the ball, and to run after the ball and bring it back into play when it goes out of bounds. A hit “ship” must leave the play area and wait off to the side. (They can also be recruited to help catch runaway balls.) The first team to blow all the other team’s “ships” out of the water wins.

Your patrons will have lots of fun playing this game; I recommend it for ages 6 and up. If you have enough room, invite whole families to join in. It would also be great for teens, or even adults as a fun activity during a professional development day!

After you play

Play as many games as you have time for. After our game finished we set up the tables and brought out the tabletop board game version of Battleship (we have many copies and versions, including Star Wars) and the kids had fun for another 45 minutes. If you don’t have the physical games but have access to a computer lab, there are many free online versions of the game including this one geared toward younger kids and this one for older kids or adults. The digital version is a great option for patrons on the autism spectrum (or introverts!) who may feel too uncomfortable playing one-on-one in person.

No matter how you to choose to play the game — have fun!”

 

Books, Programs

Spotlight Program: Frankenstein @ 200

RothwellMaryShelley

 

 

 

Mary Shelly

 

 

 

At CMLE, we so enjoy all our different types of libraries, archives, and other members! Seeing all the work you are doing is so inspiring; and we want to return the favor by helping you to find some of the great programming going on around the profession.

Each week we will share an interesting program we find. It may inspire you to do exactly the same thing; or to try something related; or just to try out some different programming ideas.

Books are fun – and it’s especially fun to have anniversaries of books you have enjoyed! Check out this blog article from Colleen Whittall, Teen Services Librarian, Saratoga Springs (NY) Public Library, talking about the 200th anniversary of Mary Shelly’s Frankenstein!

“Time flies! It’s been 200 years since Mary Shelley published “Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus.” The literary world is celebrating, and there are plenty of ways for you and your library to take part.

Frankengeeks (and not-so-geeks) have many opportunities to explore the gothic masterpiece this year. Nominated by PBS as one of the must-reads in the series “The Great American Read,” 2018 marks multiple readathons, symposiums and new editions, so it’s easy to get involved no matter the size or budget of your library.

Here are a few ideas for programming around this bicentennial year.

Where to start?

For starters, I would suggest checking out Frankenreads.org, organized by the Keats-Shelley Association of America and in partnership with the NEH. Their goal is to “…[encourage] people around the world to organize or participate in events celebrating the novel — especially by conducting public readathons of the entire novel on Halloween Day 2018 and in ‘Frankenweek,’ October 24-31, 2018.” Sign up online to find events or submit your own. It’s a fabulous resource for programming, collaboration and event planning.

Frankenstein 2018 is project based at Volda University College in Norway. Its goal is to “provide accessible information about the novel, its author and its remarkable afterlife. [It aims] to stimulate a wider creative and intellectual engagement with Frankenstein and its legacy throughout this bicentennial year, and to act as a place of record for that engagement.” Still under construction, the site hosts a great animated TED Talk video for those who haven’t read the book in a while and want to revisit some primary themes. It’s also just fun to watch.

The Frankencities Project is a visual art application of “Frankenstein themes to the urban form.” The site’s gallery evokes haunting dystopian futures of global cities, claiming “Shelley’s Frankenstein … may well provide a pathway to predict the character of our cities as they change over the near future.” I can see an art project such as this going over well with my library teens.

Explore the original text

In commemoration, Penguin Random House is publishing the complete 1818 text (January 2018), which “preserves the hard-hitting and politically-charged aspects of Shelley’s original writing, as well as her unflinching wit and strong female voice.”

This edition includes a new introduction and suggestions for further reading by National Book Critics Circle award-winner and Shelley expert Charlotte Gordon, literary excerpts and reviews selected by Gordon, and a chronology and essay by preeminent Shelley scholar Charles E. Robinson.

The preface is particularly enlightening, as it briefly contextualizes the circumstances that brought Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin Shelley into the fray of outcasted Romantic poets that resulted in “Frankenstein” (and vampires!). Please check out this amazing infographic and feel all the things. Two hundred years later, “Frankenstein” manages to be timely as hell.

Revisit the science

The science behind “Frankenstein” is timely, too. We print prosthetics and are working on growing organs in a lab now!

As shocking and blasphemous as “Frankenstein” was when it was published, Shelley was influenced by the rudimentary biomedical discoveries of her time, including electricity. The fascination with re-animation is perpetual, and “Frankenstein” continues to make its way into the modern medical literature.

Check out Science Mag’s article on what modern technologies Shelley might have described if the book were written today.

Tie it to Halloween

“Frankenstein” is a classic year-round, but there’s nothing wrong with using the advantage of Halloween hype to bring attention to your library event(s).

Along with a Frankenreads readathon, my library is toying with the idea of putting together a library-wide Frankenstein-themed escape game in October. After attending a fabulous workshop hosted by staff from the Museum of Intrigue in Syracuse, N.Y. (who you should totally visit or hit up for a workshop), staff feels enthusiastic to take our BreakoutEDU-style escape games to the next level. We learned that adding actors, audio and other physical, tactile and experimental puzzle types can add a lot of depth to the experience.

The possibilities for passive and active programming are endless for all ages, including displays, read-a-thons, easy crafts for kids, film fests (maybe get a film student to talk about the many films), science-y talks (university professor?), etc.

And, of course, screen the films

Speaking of film fests, there’s really no reason not to have one. If you are a public library and you use Movie Licensing USA (Swank), you have licensing rights to screen over 28 “Frankenstein” films, including the classic 1931 Boris Karloff  version so many of us are seeing in our heads at this very moment!

Just for the fun of it, and if you are a theater buff, you may be able to catch a screening of the 2011 live-filmed National Theater production of “Frankenstein,” starring Benedict Cumberbatch and Johnny Lee Miller.”

Programs

Spotlight Program: Warm and Fuzzy: Hot Chocolate and Alpacas

Hot chocolate at Costa Coffee

At CMLE, we so enjoy all our different types of libraries, archives, and other members! Seeing all the work you are doing is so inspiring; and we want to return the favor by helping you to find some of the great programming going on around the profession.

Each week we will share an interesting program we find. It may inspire you to do exactly the same thing; or to try something related; or just to try out some different programming ideas.

We are big fans of the idea of Hygge! (Check out our book suggestion on The Little Book of Hygge here.) This is a very neat program by Lauren Sanchez, Adult Programs Coordinator, Groton Public Library. (You can find her entire article from the Programming Librarian here.)

“The point of the program was to warm up with hot chocolate and meet the Luina Greine Farm alpacas of Groton. The program held on Saturday, Jan. 27, from 1 to 3 p.m. This was the kick-off event for our community read of “The Little Book of Hygge: Danish Secrets to Happy Living” by Meik Wiking.

Luina Greine Farm came and set up a pen and brought two of their friendliest alpacas for free. We allowed them to set up a table with some of their products to sell. Just inside the entryway of the library we set up three slow cookers full of hot chocolate with marshmallows, peppermint and whipped cream. We had a line out the door for the hot chocolate.

If weather permitted, there was going to be sledding, but that didn’t happen because it was warm that day. The sledding would’ve topped it off, but regardless, it was such a fun day.

Extra staff had to come in with their slow cookers, and a few of my family members came to volunteer, giving out hot chocolate when it got busy.

We didn’t have the sledding activity, so we set up a craft in the children’s room because we felt like there should be a third element to the program.

This was seriously one of the easiest programs to put together, logistically speaking. Making the hot chocolate was one of the more challenging aspects.

We had 150 participants in the end. We had a lot of positive feedback; it was much loved. It made the front of the local newspaper, and people really enjoyed seeing the alpacas. Lots of people sent us photos of kids petting the alpacas.