This month’s featured trainer, Jessica Barnes, has spent her career working in and for Indiana public libraries. After receiving her MSLIS from the University of Illinois in 2004, she worked in and managed reference, circulation, teen, and technical services departments in three northern Indiana public libraries. As the northern Indiana regional coordinator for the Indiana …Read more »

MCLS is pleased to announce a new partnership with Altarama Information Systems. Since 2001, libraries have used Altarama’s family of modules and services to better manage increasingly complex reference request services. Across the globe, libraries of all types and sizes use these open, scalable, and affordable tools to manage reference requests and to measure results. …Read more »

The MCLS Nominating Committee seeks nominations from the membership for the following openings on the MCLS Board of Directors: Special Library Representative (Indiana) Academic Library Representative (Indiana) K12 Library Representative (Michigan) At-Large Library Representative (Michigan) Research Library Representative (Michigan) Each seat has a three-year term, beginning January 1, 2018 and expiring December 31, 2020. The …Read more »

Our lives are full of customer service experiences. Almost every time we leave home, there will be an opportunity for someone to provide us with a pleasant or unpleasant service experience. In the last couple of weeks, I seem to have hit a spate of less than satisfactory interactions with companies who provide me with …Read more »

This turned out to be quite a different column than the one I thought I was writing. Lately, I’ve been thinking about linked data a lot, and I thought I’d opine a bit about the history and development of linked data, with an update on a couple cool linked data projects in Michigan and Indiana. …Read more »

 This month’s featured trainer, Mahasin Martinson, currently works in the IT Department at the Indianapolis Public Library. Originally from Lansing, Michigan, Mahasin bridges our two membership states, and has been a lifelong patron of libraries. She has volunteered and worked in public libraries for over 15 years. In May 2016, Mahasin completed her master’s degree …Read more »

Libraries Read: 1 Book Libraries Read: 1 Book is an annual “library community read” project focusing on professional development. Library staff from all types of libraries are encouraged to participate by voting on which book should be selected, then participate in the discussion, whether online or in-person. For the third year in a row, MCLS …Read more »

Last month, I wrote about the necessity of being future-oriented as we work to keep libraries strong, vibrant, community hubs. I talked about the ways that MCLS is responding to input from our community – you, our members in Indiana and Michigan – and some of the changes we are making in response to the …Read more »

Vicki Bloom is a new instructor for MCLS, and will be teaching this month’s featured workshop, Purposeful reference: Developing connections and outcomes through research consultations. Some fun facts about Vicki: She has worked in libraries in four different states, including medical, special, public, and academic libraries. During her first week as a medical librarian, she …Read more »

Wayne Gretzky’s father famously admonished his son to “skate to where the puck is going, not where it has been.” That aphorism has been repeated a gazillion times. It was used to run a tech company (Steve Jobs) and to manage an investment portfolio (Warren Buffet). As much as the tech industry or stock investors, …Read more »