If you are typical, you may be unsure about whether you have “kept up” with your reading and awareness about the state of the nations’ libraries this year . Fear not, the American Library Association (ALA) has put together an easy to skim compilation of 2015 items that affected libraries. Everything from library tech consolidation to an account of the last library catalog card are yours in this short synopsis.
Recently, Minitex produced a picture that is indeed worth a thousand words. According to Zachariah Miller, Minitex Communications Manager, “…Minnesota’s libraries remained the cornerstone of Minnesota’s information sharing economy, as you have for over a century. And since 1971, Minitex has been proud to support you. Please review our year-in-review infographic to learn about what we accomplished in FY2015. Together, we’ll accomplish even more in the year to come.”
Whether you are just trying to understand what Minitex does, or if you are trying to understand the scope of its work, this infographic is worth your time.
CMLE staffers dust themselves off this time of year and take stock of this fiscal/academic year. Academic and K-12 library staff are doing the same, and we realize many are limping to the finish line on fumes! We also realize our public library staff are just entering their busiest season, and we wish them well in their important work of inspiring kids to love the library and keep up their reading skills!
As we take stock of the high points this year, our weekly publishing hits the top of the list, and this week, we offered a blog post that captured our 10 most popular blog posts. This was a big year for us around infrastructure, and the reveal of our new website was beyond satisfying. Our site is powered by WordPress, which allows us to easily keep our site fresh and current! Our favorite event this year hands down was our copyright event with almost 60 of you along with U of M Copyright Librarian Nancy Sims joining us at the Stearns History Museum. The item that made me feel most connected this year was the set of results we received through our needs assessment. Your voice matters very much to us as we develop future programming. Special mention also goes to our first Google Hangout meetings this winter, which had direct positive impact on GRRL’s policy around library cards for students. We hope to enlarge the circle a tiny bit and try this again next fiscal year.
Our summer CMLE to-do list is quite different from our weekly work during the academic year. Summer is an important time for administrative work including the July Library Legislative Forum, our annual audit, year-end reports to MDE, book discount agreements, internal system updates, program planning for next year, and our commitments to the MLA and ITEM Fall conferences too.
So, it might seem a bit sad, but our Weekly Review and associated blog posts will be on a short hiatus again during the summer months, but we will be back in the Fall! At that time, we will continue to scan the horizon, wrap our arms around the glut of library news and opportunity, filter and distill it down to an easy to digest format, and share it with you again starting in September. We remain committed to offering technology ideas and tips, best practices, cost savings, big picture concepts, library events, and application ideas too. We hope this little blip in service gives everyone a refreshing “breather”. Watch our website in the event that time sensitive information surfaces that we feel a need to share immediately during the summer months. Enjoy your summer with quiet moments of serenity curled up with a good book under a big shady tree. Are you taking classes or attending events this summer to sharpen your skill set? Good for you…that is another important way to take care of yourself. Summer is a great time to retool, renew and refresh. See you in the Fall!
Didn’t have time to read all of our blog posts this year? No problem, no guilt. Go to https://cmle.org/ and notice the blog post archives in the right frame of the page. Select the month you missed, and meander through this year’s posts! Many of the posts are timeless, so better late than never….
Image credit: http://tinyurl.com/mogarhq, licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 2.0
And it begins…..the lists that review what was ill conceived or simply not well received in 2012. There are 22 items on this list, and some of them made me laugh out loud! If I was asked to vote on them, I would pounce on talking about bacon, sharing unappealing Instagram pics of food (some of them look like poo), skinny jeans, drop crotch pants….oh my, almost all of them! I was just explaining yesterday how silly I feel using my iPad to take a picture too, and surprise, it is in this list. I was right, grab your phone and save your reputation! So take a moment to add a little end-of-the-year reflection and levity into your life and comment here about which ones resonate most with you! Get the full list and rationale at the Gawker blog post from 12-11-2012.
Partnering with libraries for visioning, advocating, and educating
If you are typical, you may be unsure about whether you have “kept up” with your reading and awareness about the state of the nations’ libraries this year . Fear not, the American Library Association (ALA) has put together an easy to skim compilation of 2015 items that affected libraries. Everything from library tech consolidation to an account of the last library catalog card are yours in this short synopsis. 
