The deadline for the Hospital Library Section (HLS) Travel Award Grant is February 16, 2009!

If you are a member of the HLS and planning or considering going to the MLA meeting in Hawaii you should really take advantage of this opportunity. According to a recent email on the HLS-list the committee has received very few applicants.
The committee will provide 4 grants of $500 to winners. Grants will be awarded to HLS members based on the benefit to the section and financial need.

For more information and criteria go to: the http://hls.mlanet.org/ HLS web site and see Travel Award announcement: http://hls.mlanet.org/HLStravelgrant09.doc.



Personally, I think this is a great opportunity for any HLS member who is thinking about going to MLA. In previous blog posts I have lamented about the lack of funding for regular mid career librarians who have gone to at least one annual meeting. Until recently there just weren't a lot of grants out there to help fund those sort of medical librarians. With the economy and with the meeting located outside of the continental U.S. various MLA sections are really trying to provide many opportunities for librarians to get travel grants. I don't know whether other sections have had a lot of applicants, but I think it is sad that a section with 1043 members (statistics from HLS 2007-2008 Annual Report) has few applicants for the travel grant. One would hope this is because a lot of the members' institutions are paying for it. However, from the stories I have heard among various colleagues (academic, hospital, special, etc.) institutions are cutting back on travel not funding more of it.

There are still those librarians out there howling about how expensive it is to attend MLA (regardless of where it is held). Yet where are these people when there are more grants available?! I am extremely fortunate that my institution decided to fund my trip. Had they not done so or only funded it partially I would be applying for every travel grant I qualified for.

Not everybody can go every year nor afford to go every year but out of 1000+ members you would expect you would have a consistently large group of people wanting to go and wanting to get funding. We all have financial obligations but we also have a professional responsibilities and obligation to stay up to date and expand relevant skills in today's economy. MLA and its sections can help us achieve those professional responsibilities, but the individual must make a commitment too.

Labels: Annual Meeting, ContinuingEducation, Hawaii, Hospital Libraries, MLA