Audio stress management tools

 

soothing sounds provide solace

This month we are working through a variety of strategies  to help build your resilience to stress, and to manage your workplace stress levels. Your sense of sound is a powerful one; and with some thoughtful strategies, you can use that to help reduce the stress you feel at work.

We have looked at using ambient noise as a strategy for helping you to be more focused and effective at work. Building on that now gives you some tools to specifically feel more relaxed as you listen. Everyone has different preferences, so what makes you feel calm might irritate other people in your office. So use headphones if you need to keep things quiet, but try to build in some time to listen to soothing sounds when things start to build up at work

One tool you might enjoy is the website Noisli. “Noisli is here to make you more focused and boost your productivity. A background noise generator that helps you drown out annoying noises and that lets you create your perfect environment for working and relaxing. You can mix different sounds and create your perfect sound environment tailored to your personal need and taste.” I enjoy mixing in ocean waves, crackling fire, and just a hint of wind. Noisli can be used on your computer, or with an app on your phone. You can also enjoy the changing colors on the background, if you are watching the site.

Libraries improving Wikipedia: Are you in??

information is cool – and better when it’s accurate!

Library people: We all know our patrons use Wikipedia. We use Wikipedia. It’s a pretty awesome tool! But it can be better!! We are passing on some information about strategies you can use to help Wikipedia to be better and more accurate.

Try it for yourself! Set up a Wikipedia event in your library! Use this as a starting point to make our of our frequently-used resources to be stronger!

Call for book chapter proposals: Academic Library Orientations

share your ideas!

Does your academic library do some neat orientation work? Have you spent time thinking about how to best address your patrons’ information needs? Is your orientation educational AND fun??

Share it with your professional colleagues!

 

Let’s read together in January!

so many books, so little time!

As we close out an interesting 2016, CMLE is moving ahead with our book groups! If you have time over your holiday celebrations, you might check out our latest additions to our book groups. As always, this is a low-key opportunity to read books; so read and join in the comments, read the discussion questions, or just read the book and think thoughts to yourself and chat with your colleagues about the latest picks. Whatever works best for you is fine! (We are library people; we just like to read!)

For the CMLE Professional selection, in January we are going with How to Win Friends and Influence People. It seemed like a good choice for January, when many of us are working on our New Year’s resolutions, and thinking about ways to improve our work lives. Dale Carnegie’s book is a classic, and can help to jump-start all of us in making new relationships. At CMLE Headquarters, building relationships around our system, and across the profession, is our main goal! So let’s all make this a part of our daily work.

Of course, we also have a “for fun” book selection in the Enjoying Books group. This month we are going with The Ice Queen by Alice Hoffman. As always, our book pick has a librarian as the main character. We are moving through different genres each month, and in this literary fiction book you have the chance to look at all kinds of imagery of fire and ice. Have you read any of her other books? It would be interesting to see what kinds of themes and symbolism carry over across her many novels!

Enjoy your holiday! Enjoy your reading! And come back to us in January – ready to do some great library work!!

Information Literacy is International!

Sharing ideas is fun!

 

As library people, we spend a lot of time thinking about Information Literacy. It is our role to  help members of our communities to  learn about the information they need – not just to train them to look things up. Our jobs in this area are increasing as we see the numbers of people who can not identify fake news from real news. And of course, this is a much larger and broader topic – impacting things we do all the time.

Library people around the world are also working on this issue, and working to connect information with their communities served. If you would like an opportunity to go talk with some of your international colleagues, submit a proposal to the Fifth European Conference on Information Literacy. It will be held from 18-21 September 2017 in Saint-Malo France.

Although I have not been to this conference, I have talked with people who went in past years and really enjoyed it! I have worked as a reviewer of the proposals, and they sound interesting – useful in all kinds of libraries.

Even if you are not able to attend this conference, or not this year at least (it moves to different locations across Europe each year!); it is good to know that the issues we are looking at in our libraries are the same issues library people everywhere work with in their libraries. You may keep your eyes on the presenters, to see what kinds of topics they discuss to get strategy ideas for yourself. And these are people you could contact to see ask questions about their ideas and their programs!

If you are interested in submitting a proposal, but not sure where to start – contact us here at CMLE Headquarters. We can help you put your ideas into words, and into a format that shows off the work you are doing!

Read about the conference, and the many different topics they will be discussing, after the break! Don’t be bashful about reaching out to your colleagues across the profession – we are all here to help each other, and to make our libraries better!