You have decided to not pay for wifi in the hotel but you would like to know where a few free wifi hot spots might be when the conference Internet Cafe is full or not available.

Well here is a list that might be helpful. Please note: I am not from Chicago, I don't know all of the ins and outs of the free wifi locations so please feel free to supplement it with more locations or let me know if I have anything wrong.

Near the Hyatt:

• Cafe Descarts as well, 327 N. Michigan Ave.
• Cosi (sandwich place) in the Illinois Center Food Ct. 233 N. Michigan Needs SSID
• Park Millenium 222 N. Stetson
• Dunkin Donuts 303 E. Wacker
• Cosi Rush & Grand 55 E. Grand Ave. *Confirmed by eagledawg on MLA2008 Twitter
• Argo Tea 16 W. Randolph
• Caribou Coffee 20 N. Michigan Ave.
• Panera Bread 300 E. Ontario

This is what I found doing a little searching on the Internet, so if your real life experiences differ please comment so others can benefit from your wisdom/travails.

Labels: MLA2008

So you weren't able to go to MLA in Chicago this year. Well you are in luck MLA is brining a plenary session to you. On Wednesday, May 21, 2008, from 9 to 12 noon (Central Time), the plenary session on "Web 2.0 Tools for Librarians: Description, Demonstration, Discussion, and Debate" will take place at the MLA annual meeting in Chicago. This will be the first plenary session ever to be made available via a live Video Webcast. MLA members not at the meeting will be able to watch the Webcast and participate in it by submitting questions to a panel of Web 2.0 experts.

For more information go to http://www.mlanet.org/am/am2008/events/plenary_webcast.html

Labels: MLA2008, web2.0, webcast

It is getting hectic these last few days before we leave for MLA and it won't slow down once we are in Chicago. For those of you who might be interested, Elsevier will be presenting (Sunday 3:55 and Monday 4:15) the results of a study on library return on investment at the MLA in Chicago. Entitled "University Investment in Libraries: What's the Payback? A Case Study at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign ," it offers a model on ROI based on data from the UIUC.

The White Paper for this study can be found at this URL:
http://libraryconnect.elsevier.com/whitepapers/0108/lcwp0101.pdf

It is available for you to read ahead of the presentation. Anybody who is unable to attend the presentation due to scheduling conflicts or not at MLA, might also want to read the paper as well.

Are you going to MLA? Have you been before and are willing to share some of your knowledge and tips to first time attendees? If so consider being a mentor.

There are 10-12 new MLA members or first time meeting attendees that do not have mentors. Please consider volunteering as a mentor. It is not a huge time commitment. In fact, the average Colleague Connection pair met 2.4 times at the previous two annual meetings.

Colleague Connection matches up returning, more experienced conference attendees, with new members or first time attendees. Its purpose is to welcome new attendees and help them feel comfortable at the meeting. It introduces them to someone who can help make this large meeting seem more personal and less overwhelming and who will be a familiar face amid a sea of strangers. For instance, the experienced member can help the first time attendee negotiate through the maze of choices offered in the program by suggesting sessions they might find useful.

Please sign up at: http://libweb.lib.buffalo.edu/hsl/cc2008.asp or contact Stefanie Warlick directly at warlicse (atsign) jmu (dott) edu.

Once assigned, each pair of colleagues exchanges local contact information and works out its own meeting schedule. Initial contacts made through Colleague Connection can lead to lifelong friendships with your peers and grow your professional network.
For more information, see the article in the April 2008 issue of MLA
News: http://www.mlanet.org/members/mla_news/2008/apr_08/mla08_colleague.html

This morning I was speaking on the phone with a fellow librarian who mentioned that she wasn't able to get her hospital to pay for the annual Meeting despite the fact that they will pay for her MLA and AHIP dues. I mentioned to her that she should look at and apply for some of the MLA scholarships that are available to attend meetings and continuing education. I realize it is too late to look for scholarships for this year's annual meeting, but there is time for the future meetings. MLA is going to a lot of neat cities.

There is the "Continuing Education Awards"MLA members may submit applications for these awards of $100 to $500 to develop their knowledge of the theoretical, administrative, or technical aspects of librarianship. More than one continuing education (CE) award may be offered in a year and may be used either for MLA courses or for other CE activities.
Note in 1999 it wasn't awarded. I guess that year everybody had money to attend a CE course.

There is the "EBSCO/MLA Annual Meeting Grant"This scholarship is sponsored by EBSCO Information Services and enables MLA members to attend the association's annual meeting. Each year awards of up to $1,000 for travel and conference-related expenses will be given to four librarians who would otherwise be unable to attend the meeting. Applicants must be currently employed as health sciences librarians and have between two and five years' experience in a health sciences library.

There are the "Hospital Libraries Section/MLA Professional Development Grants"This award, sponsored by the Hospital Libraries Section, provides librarians working in hospital and similar clinical settings with the support needed for educational or research activities. This award was established in 1996, and is given twice each year. Application deadlines are August 1 and February 1.
Note in 2002 it wasn't awarded. I guess hospital librarians must have had an abundance of professional development money that year.

Just doing a brief cursory search through the Chapter websites I found at least 8 chapters that have professional development, continuing education, or meeting attendance awards.

There are a lot of outside funding opportunities available to new medical librarians or first time conference attendees. Not as much for mid career librarians who have been to a conference before. This might be one area to develop. I know that I was very lucky at my previous job because my hospital paid for my attendance at the annual meetings. If they didn't, I would have been out of luck for any award where the criteria stated that I would have had to be a first time meeting attendee. Perhaps I am wrong, but I think there are some 15-20 year career hospital librarians out there who would like to go to an annual meeting more than once in their entire career.

I decided to sit down and figure out my schedule of what I plan on doing and seeing while at MLA. I futzed around for an hour with the Online Event Planner and I just couldn't get it to remember the right events (despite clicking on the add them to my itinerary button). So I am going old school. I printed out (sorry I know we are supposed to go green) the PDF of the schedule from the Preliminary Program and wrote in the sessions I wanted to attend.

As I looked at the various sessions, I noticed there were several things that I am interested in attending. Unfortunately I can't attend everything due to prior commitments and/or two programs of interest scheduled at the same time. Thankfully there will be other MLA Bloggers attending and writing about their programs, so hopefully I will be able keep informed.

One event I plan to attend is the Bearded Pigs. They will be playing Sunday night, May 18, from 8:00 to 11:00 in Crystal C of the Hyatt and thankfully I have no other conflicting plans. If you are new to MLA or just haven't heard of the Bearded Pigs, they are musically talented medical librarians who put on a great gig at the annual meeting.

If you are up for a little rock and roll and meeting some people, you should check them out. Here is the information.

Sunday night, May 18, from 8:00 to 11:00 in Crystal C of the Hyatt
Cash bar.
You can show your support and buy a Bearded Pig button $2 each prior to the event and $3 each after. If you see one of the pigs prior to the event ask for one.
All are welcome to the "Informal professional networking event with rock band and cash bar." Any proceeds remaining are donated to the MLA Scholarship Fund

Labels: MLA2008

If you were ever curious as to how medical librarianship might work virtually in Second Life, you might want to check out the final project report from the Alliance Library System. The project, "Providing Consumer Health Outreach and Library Programs to Virtual World Residents in Second Life," provided outreach to virtual medical communities, health training and information for residents of Second Life, links to consumer health resources, one-on-one support to residents, and part-time staffing for HealthInfo Island.

You might also be interested in an April 2008 article "Real World 101 in Second Life: A Discussion with Carol Perryman/Carolina Keats" UNYOC/MLA Newsletter p8-12.

It is May Ovid is making Circulation: Arrhythmia and Electrophysiology available as their resource of the month.

Circulation: Arrhythmia and Electrophysiology is designed to meet the growing demand for tightly focused information in areas at the cutting edge of cardiology. It will include outstanding investigations of a more focused nature that have been selected through the same rigorous review process, subject to the same high standards, as articles in Circulation.

You can Try it now at Ovid

On a personal note...
Is it just me or has Ovid started sticking more of its journals as free resources of the month rather than its databases? I would like to see a database or perhaps a journal collection listed as Ovid's resource of the month rather than one little journal. I usually try and follow and post each month on Ovid's free resource, but I think if they are going to get into the habit of listing only one journal as a resource then I am not going to post about it. What used to be a nice opportunity to freely use and learn about a database, has kind of lost its usefulness for me.

A few months have gone by and we have been able to look at and use Ovid's new interface for some time. In previous posts, I created a list of people who posted their own online documentation or training videos. For the most part these were people who focused on Ovid Advanced. Now there are some people and libraries out their who have chosen to use Ovid Basic and I thought it might be a good idea to list a few of them.

Some guides and information on Ovid Basic:
Librarians' RX - How to Use OvidSP’s Basic Search
St. John's Libraries - How Does Basic Search Work?
University of Ulster Library -OvidSP a Basic User Guide
CABI.org - Simple Searching CABI Abstracts Using OvidSP
University of Salford - OvidSP
Himmelfarb Library Blog -Natural Language Searching in MEDLINE (and more) on OvidSP

Hopefully this might be helpful for people in libraries that have decided to go with OvidSP Basic.