History of CCLM


Early in 2004, Susan Wakefield, then Campus Librarian
at the Minnesota School of Business in Plymouth,
decided that there should be some sort of professional
organization for librarians working in the career
college setting.  She called together as many of these
librarians in the area as she could, and hosted the
inaugural meeting of what came to be known as the
Minnesota Career College Association Libraries (MCCAL)
on 16 March 2004.

MCCAL began meeting bi-monthly, with members volunteering to host at their libraries as host institution schedules allowed. From the first meeting, the idea of a web site, list serv, and/or discussion board for keeping in touch between meetings was seen as a good one, but did not come to fruition until May 2005. During the July 2004 meeting, committees were developed to advance some of the organization's objectives, from developing a mission statement to introducing ourselves to the library community at the Minnesota Library Association (MLA) annual meeting in 2005.


The group's nominal affiliation with the Minnesota Career College Association (MCCA) placed some unforeseen limits on MCCAL. Most notably, some librarians who were interested in joining were perforce excluded because their institutions were not members of MCCA itself. Further, MCCAL's ambitions for some pages within the MCCA website were dependent upon successful communication and cooperation with the webmaster of that organization. Although MCCAL had received marvelous support from its parent institutions, the aforementioned limitations became burdensome enough that during the May 2005 meeting, MCCAL voted to break any remaining formal or quasi-formal ties with MCCA and rename itself the Career College Libraries of Minnesota (CCLM). In its current incarnation, CCLM hopes to reach out to more "fringe" librarians and become more of a professional organization in its own right. As we are currently comprised only of Twin Cities area members, we hope to expand statewide and someday even to initiate a national organization for career college librarians.