Minnesota’s statewide interlibrary loan service is the envy of the nation, and we’ve never needed it more than we did in 2020. The list below contains just a small sample of the items that brought joy to Minitex staff over the past year. Each item is available via MNLINK (mnlink.org), Minnesota’s online interlibrary loan portal. Minitex salutes the countless libraries and library workers who made interlibrary loan possible despite 2020’s many challenges.
Tim McCluske, manager of the MN Library Access Center since its opening in 2000, will retire on January 15th, 2021. Thank you, Tim, for your many years of service to the Minnesota library community!
Minitex announces a new webinar series designed around the project-based work the happens in all libraries. This series will introduce library staff to the concept of what a project is and the basics of project management in a library environment.
The two Gale databases available in ELM, Gale in Context: Middle School and Gale in Context: High School, offer a search tool called Topic Finder. "This tool takes the titles, subjects, and approximately the first 100 words from a subset of your top results and feeds them into an algorithm. Keywords shown in the graphics are those found most often in the text with your search term." The results in the above image represent those terms found most often in the results for "space race."
Just as books are important to children, so too is diversity in children's books. Reading books about different cultures, religions, backgrounds, and people can help to instill love and inspire acceptance. This can happen anytime. During playtime, before bed, or anytime in between, a diverse book can be a great way to start the conversation and create a new way of thinking without children even realizing it.
Check out this list of library professional development opportunities taking place in January that are available through Level Up!