Linking Our Libraries

We are the Central Minnesota Libraries Exchange, and our members are all types of libraries and their staff.

You can find our full show notes page right here!

Today’s episode is part of our series on Library Basics. We are working through some of the skills people need in every library. Not everyone is going to school for a Master’s degree in Library Science, and that’s fine. We want to be sure everyone has the skills to be comfortable in a library and to be successful for the community you are serving.

This week we are talking about collection development. Libraries are known for their books and the neat things we can share with our communities. But this does not mean buying just anything at all, or only the things we like. It means creating a collection of materials that meet the needs of the community - the things they want and the things that will be useful and helpful to them even if they don’t know it yet. 

This was a quick overview of the foundations of collection development. We hope you feel like you are part of the larger community! Here are a few takeaways for you:

• Write down your collection development procedure and policies. It does not have to be long and complex, just something you can refer to as needed.
• Acquisitions are usually fun. Buy widely, across all kinds of topics and interests. Be very deliberate in not just choosing things you like or know.
• Weed your collection. Don’t let it get choked out by old, junky, out of date books that need to be discarded. Keep it in good shape.

Welcome back to Season Seven of Linking Our Libraries!

You can check out our full show notes page here.

We are the Central Minnesota Libraries Exchange. Our members are libraries of all sorts: public, schools, academics, special libraries, archives, and history centers. Join us in working thorough skills library staffers can use to be more successful in their work!

This week we are talking about some of the challenges in planning to reopen a public library during a global pandemic. 

Our Guest Host this week is Ariel Kurst, from the Great River Regional Library System. 

Today we are going to talk about the reopening plans at Ariel’s library, and help you give some ideas for reopening your library building.  We have put together a bonus podcast with information about the state plan here in Minnesota for reopening schools libraries.  You can listen to it in our feed if you are subscribed to this podcast, or stream it on our website. Then walk through the official guidance with us. 

Library programs are part of the basic triad of things every library does, or should be doing: programs, materials, and services. Materials are pretty basic: books, software, toys, other nice things. Services are ever-changing in libraries, but things like computer training, library card sign up, helping people find books, and other such good things we do to work with our community members. And then programs are the third part, and both the hardest and the most fun part!

Check out our full show notes page here!

We talk about copyright pretty often, and of course this is important for libraries. People working in all types of libraries are often the ones responsible for advising the rest of their organization on how to best follow federal copyright laws.

Our show notes page is here!

And right now, we are in the unusual position of having our school and library buildings open, closed, or in a hybrid situation – with our work moving online. This presents a variety of different copyright situations we need to be considering.

And you may be hearing a variety of contradictory advice. We have been reading a lot of library voices online saying that in an emergency situation, like our current pandemic, it should be okay to use copyright material however we need to. We would be very cautious there, and would not suggest doing that. Federal law does not provide for a “there is a global pandemic happening” exception to copyright laws. So, let’s just play it safe. Let’s follow copyright laws, and let’s encourage our community members to also do it.

Welcome back to Season Seven of Linking Our Libraries!

We are the Central Minnesota Libraries Exchange. Our members are libraries of all sorts: public, schools, academics, special libraries, archives, and history centers. Join us in working thorough skills library staffers can use to be more successful in their work!

This week we are talking about some of the challenges in planning to reopen a school media center. 

Our Guest Host this week is Bethany Rogers, Media Specialist and Book Club Advisor at Rogers High School. 

Today we are going to talk about the reopening plans at Bethany’s school, and help you give some ideas for reopening your library building.  We put together a bonus podcast with information about the state plan here in Minnesota for reopening schools libraries.  You can listen to it in our feed, and walk through the official guidance with us.

Today’s episode is part of our series on Library Basics. We are working through some of the skills people need in every library. Not everyone is going to school for a Master’s degree in Library Science, and that’s fine. We want to be sure everyone has the skills to be comfortable in a library and to be successful for the community you are serving.

Find all our shownotes right here.

So, let’s start with the basics about the profession and the expectations involved in working in the library profession at any level and in any job.

• We Provide Information

• You are part of the profession

• ALA Code of Ethics

• So many interesting possibilities

• So many organizations - all for you!

• So much more than "just" books!

• This Is What We Are Reading

Welcome back to Season Seven of Linking Our Libraries!

We are the Central Minnesota Libraries Exchange. Our members are libraries of all sorts: public, schools, academics, special libraries, archives, and history centers. Join us in working thorough skills library staffers can use to be more successful in their work!

Check out our full shownotes page here, with all of our links and full information.

Our Guest Host this week is Beth Russell, the Digital Skills specialist at Rockford Middle School, Center for Environmental Studies.

The world has gone digital! In the last few decades, much of the information and transactions we need for everyday life has moved online. This gives us a lot of flexibility, and opens up a lot of new possibilities for us all to explore. We can all receive a lot of benefits from learning digital skills to best work with the online world - including having podcasts drop right into your phone!

And of course, there are rules to learn and procedures to follow to work well in this world. Learning them in school is so handy for kids, who will be part of the ever-changing and growing digital opportunities that will keep developing.

We are the Central Minnesota Libraries Exchange, a multitype system serving all types of libraries.

This season we are suggesting books you might enjoy for our Goodreads group: Armchair Travel to Minnesota State Parks. We give you a prompt connected to each state park, and you find a book to fulfill the challenge. You can use one of our suggestions, and you should feel free to read any book!

The Lake Louise park was founded in 1963. https://www.dnr.state.mn.us/state_par...

The Shooting Star State Trail runs through the park for bicyclists. Enjoy the symbolism by reading a book featuring astronomy. 

We give you links to each of these books on our show notes page, taking you to Amazon.com. If you click on any of them, and buy anything at all - including a nice book - Amazon will send us a small percent of the profits they made on these sales. Thank you for supporting CMLE!

This week we are sharing this bonus episode to help libraries, especially school libraries, to gather and share information about reopening as safely as possible. There is not going to be a strategy to make it all perfectly safe for everyone; but there are steps to take to make it safer for staff and patrons.

You can check out our show notes right here. All the links we discuss are here, and all the info we are sharing today, are collected here.

We are still in the early stages of this global pandemic, so our understanding of what we should do is still evolving, and will keep evolving as we get better at all of this. We are sharing the best information we are finding right now, and encourage everyone to keep paying attention to updates from good science resources.

A tip to keep in mind as we work through this: If you feel like you have to get mad about the guidance - remember that it's the virus we are all mad at. A virus is what is requiring us to wear masks, to socially isolate, and to have such disruption not just in our own lives but across the globe. It’s not an elected official, it’s not a principal or a school board. Nobody is doing this for the joy of wrecking everyone’s good time. This is the largest public health emergency in our lifetimes. And we all need to follow some guidance from health experts to get through this.

We are going to talk about a couple of main topics: First: the Minnesota's Stay Safe Plan and the Safe Learning Plan for the 2020-21 School Year for Minnesota schools. And we are going to talk about science research from the REALM project from OCLC and the IMLS - international leaders in the library profession working to help us all. And we will work in some best practices we are seeing in libraries already, to keep things safe.

We are the Central Minnesota Libraries Exchange, a multitype library system serving all types of libraries.

This season we are suggesting books you might enjoy for our Goodreads group: Armchair Travel to Minnesota State Parks. We give you a prompt connected to each state park, and you find a book to fulfill the challenge. You can use one of our suggestions, and you should feel free to read any book!

The Cuyuna Country State Recreation Area was established in 1993. 

The park was named after the homesteader living on this land, and "his St. Bernard dog, Una, his constant companion and prospecting partner." Celebrate this partnership by reading a book told by a dog's perspective, or one about dogs

We give you links to each of these books on our show notes page, taking you to Amazon.com. If you click on any of them, and buy anything at all - including a nice book - Amazon will send us a small percent of the profits they made on these sales. Thank you for supporting CMLE!