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News | Executive Director | Training | Special Offers | MeL
The MCLS Board wants to hear from you!The MCLS Board of Directors will “takeover” the MCLS Twitter account for a night because they want to hear from you! Join MCLS Board Indiana School Library representative Rain Smith and MCLS’s Pam Seabolt on Wednesday, April 20 at 6pm Eastern (5pm Central) for a Twitter Chat and share your aspirations and needs to help us better understand how we might serve you more effectively. Members from all types of libraries in Indiana and Michigan are encouraged to join us.
Use the Hashtag: #MCLSOLChat22
New to Twitter? Check out the instructions here.
MCLS Annual Spring eResources Meeting will be held on Friday, April 22Join your colleagues and MCLS staff at this spring’s Annual eResources Meeting! Set for Friday, April 22, 9am-3pm Eastern (8am-2pm Central), the event will be virtual and will include opportunities to interact with colleagues and to learn about new resources and services available through MCLS.
Representatives from the American Chemical Society, Elsevier, and Oxford University Press will be on hand to share information about their upcoming three-year eJournal renewals. Cara Cadena of Grand Valley State University will discuss the recently launched Overdrive for Michigan Academics (OMiA) group; Mark Szidik, Chief Information Officer at MCLS, will outline a video storage space project in development; and Chrystal Pickell Vandervest, MCLS Group Purchasing Coordinator, will detail plans for the establishment of an MCLS Agreements Group. Come to learn, to share, and to connect! Lunch will be served through all participants receiving a restaurant gift card (selections made at registration).
Register today! For more information, contact Stephanie Davis, Manager of Group Purchasing, at daviss@mcls.org.
Now’s your chance to influence our license terms and negotiations with vendorsA lifetime ago (2018), we welcomed MCLS’s very own Jan Davidson to our Annual eResources Meeting to facilitate a conversation with collection development library staff about the future of purchasing at MCLS.
Y’all were loud and clear! You wanted to identify dealbreakers in licenses to use in negotiations and just say no! You wanted non-disclosure and confidentiality clauses removed. And, you wanted less secrecy with pricing. We heard you and we’ve worked to incorporate these provisions into our agreements. But, there is still work to do!
We invite you to continue talking about these and other important license issues, including open access concerns, as part of our first ever License Agreements Committee.
We are pleased to announce that Lissa Krull, Library Strategist, and Jan Davidson, Project Manager & Consulting Facilitator, members of the MCLS Engagement, Consulting, and Training team, have both been certified as Appreciative Inquiry Facilitators by the Center for Appreciative Inquiry. Appreciative Inquiry (AI) is a method to help organizations ignite change through asking generative questions and identifying their strengths to co-create their best future. Far from a "Pollyanna" unwillingness to acknowledge struggle, it is rather a strengths-based approach that reframes obstacles as opportunities. It can be used to help libraries with strategic planning, change initiatives, and many other organizational topics, such as internal communication, customer service, teamwork, collaboration, and workplace satisfaction.
Congratulations, Lissa and Jan!
MCLS now has three certified Appreciative Inquiry Facilitators, with an additional staff member working toward certification. If your library is seeking to create change through positive, strengths-based dialogues, contact us at engagement@mcls.org to see how the Appreciative Inquiry method can work for you.
Is it OA or OER? And, what’s in it for me?I’m sure you know all about OA and OER. But, it can be hard to put the words together to talk about it with others (or even find the time to do this). And, it’s important to be able to easily explain the difference between the two.
Not only that, but Faculty and students want to know what’s in it for them! Without their support, open won’t be adopted campus-wide.
As you know, the cost of traditional journals outpace budget increases and rarely take into account budget decreases. Libraries are forced to cancel eJournal subscriptions which limit the access their students and faculty have to these resources (and the included knowledge). This slows progress in the scientific and scholarly communities and reduces the impact.
Read more>>
We are pleased to announce that Noble County Public Library in Albion, IN, Elk Rapids District Library in Elk Rapids, MI, Roseville Public Library in Roseville, MI, and Monticello-Union Township Public Library in Monticello, IN have all selected Midwest Collaborative for Library Services (MCLS) to provide consulting services for strategic planning this spring and summer. This past month, the Indiana Library Federation (ILF) contracted with MCLS to provide full-day meeting facilitation for their Board as part of their strategic planning process.
We are also excited that after a long pause due to COVID, we have officially kicked off our work with Manistee County Library in Manistee, MI to facilitate the creation of their new strategic plan.
Is your library interested in learning more about our consulting services? Visit our webpage to read more or contact us to request a quote.
If you’re a marketing professional who dreams of being part of an innovative, growth-minded organization, this position is just the one for you! MCLS is looking for a creative, highly-motivated, and experienced candidate to establish, carry out, and continually improve our digital and print marketing and communication strategy.
The ideal candidate is a resident of Indiana or Michigan and able to work remotely with up to 20% travel. The starting annual salary is $60,000-$80,000 depending on qualifications and experience. We also offer excellent health, retirement, and other benefits.
For more details about the duties and qualifications for this position and to learn more about MCLS as an organization, see our full job ad. To apply, email a cover letter, portfolio, and resume to us at jobs@mcls.org.
We’ll begin reviewing applications on Monday, April 25. We hope to hear from you!
For more information or to see all upcoming workshops, visit our workshop and event registration page. If you have any questions, please contact us at training@mcls.org.
The experience of getting to full text is often one of confusing menus, clicking through different pages, and sometimes arriving at broken links. For users, this results in incomplete research, frustration, and wasted time. For libraries, it means dealing with technical support issues and responding to unnecessary ILL requests. There ought to be a better way. With LibKey from Third Iron, there is!
Join Third Iron co-founder and CEO Kendall Bartsch on April 12, 2022 at 11am Eastern (10am Central) to learn how LibKey services are transforming libraries and taking the pain out of full-text access by delivering fast, reliable, and informed linking from any point of discovery. Registration is free but attendance is limited, so reserve your place today.
Discounted pricing for LibKey is available to MCLS members. For a quote, contact MCLS Group Purchasing at services@mcls.org or (800) 530-9019 ext 401.
Looking for alternate ways to engage users with stories and other enjoyable content? Consider Stories in the Cloud. Using innovative technology, Stories in the Cloud provides libraries with a custom, private label Dial-A-Story service. Libraries receive a dedicated local number users call to hear children’s stories, jokes and riddles, music and songs, full-length titles as well as library news and information. No internet or data plans are needed, and the service works with any phone type. This affordable product contains pre-recorded story options and also allows libraries to record their own stories and content.
MCLS members receive a 20% discount and a special welcome package which includes a studio-quality microphone to record stories and 500 printed cards to market the service.
To request a quote or learn more, contact MCLS Group Purchasing at services@mcls.org or (800) 530-9019 ext 401.
2021 saw the 15 millionth MeLCat request fulfillment! The title, The quiet Americans: four CIA spies at the dawn of the Cold War -- a tragedy in three acts, was requested by a West Bloomfield Township Public Library patron and filled by Rochester Hills Public Library. The most filled titles of 2021 were:
Many patrons around the state were sitting down to watch Anne of Green Gables and Yellowstone, as they led the way for the most popular DVDs loaned out in MeLCat last year.
MeLCat is a statewide multi-type library resource sharing program. MeL was made possible in part by the Institute of Museum and Library Services. Additional funding is provided by the State of Michigan and the Library of Michigan Foundation.
