This seemed to be the buzz around many of the academic medical librarians this year at MLA. I have been interested in it and how it will impact my hospital (heavy research hospital) and how the library can help. Unfortunately, I never seemed to be at the right place at the right time to learn more about while I was in Chicago.

Never fear, it is available online. So if you missed it like I did, or if you went but need to refresh, check out https://webmeeting.nih.gov/p29108561/. If after watching the video you have more questions you might want to check out the Public Access Homepage, Submission Tutorials, FAQ on Public Access Policy and NIHMS, and the NIHMS Help Desk.

Many libraries have already added info pages on the NIH Manuscription Submission System. If you haven't done that yet you might check out the following web pages to see how these libraries have handled this. Note: This just a small list of libraries, there a lot of places that have done this.

• Revised NIH Public Access Policy - Bernard Becker Medical Library Washington University
• The National Institutes of Health Manuscript Submission Policy (.ppt) - Weill Cornell Medical Library
• Publishers' Policies on the NIH Public Access Policy - Edward G Miner Library University of Rochester Medical Center
• Learn More about the NIH Public Access Policy Implementation - Penn State College of Medicine Library
• NIH Public Access Policy: Manuscript Submission - Mulford Health Science Library University of Toledo

Labels: Access, MLA2008, NIH, NIHPublicAccess, Public

If you attended the 2008 annual meeting in Chicago, you should be getting an email with a link to a survey looking for feedback about the meeting. Please remember to fill your survey out, it takes about 10 minutes to complete and it is very important to help make future meetings more responsive to member's needs.

I filled mine out, it was quick and easy. No secret, I voted for St. Louis, MO to be one of the host cities. Cross my fingers. :)

Labels: MLA2008

I noticed the green effect the most during the poster session. In previous years, presenters would have their business card along with a handout (usually a PDF of their poster) for people to pick up. Every year I would usually create my hit list of posters that I really wanted to see and then I would make it a point to see those posters and try to talk with the presenter. Sometimes the presenter would be so busy talking to others (a good thing) that I would just take the handout and scoot off to the next poster on my list. I would then usually end up emailing the busy presenter a week or two later with my questions. However, this year I was off my game. There was no handout to pick up. Ack! Thankfully I improvised. I picked up the person's card (if it was on the table) quickly jotted the poster number down and a key word. I also happened to have my old digital camera on me and took pictures of some of the posters as well.

What is nice about the poster session being more green, is that more people seemed to have put their posters online. This makes it possible for people who did not attend MLA to virtually attend the poster sessions, read the information, and then contact the presenter via email. It also allows those of us who had to scurry to the next poster or who couldn't attend the poster session to view it at our convenience and at a more leisurely pace.

So, here are the links to Poster Session 1 and Poster Session 2. Melissa and David both reminded me that the links to the poster should be below the abstract if the presenter submitted it. Also don't forget to check out David's videos of Poster Session 1 and Poster Session 2.

Labels: MLA2008

I have to applaud the LAC and all the people behind finding MLA Bloggers to help cover the conference. You all did a great job. Unfortunately, we as an organization still have a long way to go. Despite having Official MLA Bloggers, the first webcast of a plenary session, MLA twitter feed, and what appears (to my eyes) more laptop toting and iPhone clicking people milling about, there was very little social networking (blogging, twittering, or texting) going on. The reason, there was no freaking network on which to be social.


Me and my fellow laptop toters were using laptops almost as divining rods to search for that elusive Internet access. There was no Internet access available in the conference rooms. The MLA wifi router gave out a very weak signal that allowed us to access wifi within a few hundred feet of the MLA LAC booth. Somebody had mentioned to me that I didn't need wifi access I just needed an aircard. Of course that means I would have needed a cell phone signal for the aircard to work. The conference rooms were underground therefore there were no cell phone signals. On the first day of the conference it was actually quite humorous to watch almost everyone stare at their cell phones and do the cell phone dance/contortion to try and find a signal. Although I didn't see anybody go to the lengths this gentleman did, there were many a librarian running up the escalators popping their heads above ground like gophers with cell phones checking voice mail and messages. Two positive things came out of it, I didn't go over my texting plan this meeting and I found out folks with Verizon were able to get some reception as one person lent me a Verizon aircard.

I am not alone in my frustrations. While I think MLA had one of its most "connected" meetings, it really could have been so much more with just a little planning and some wireless access.
It still felt as if MLA treated wifi access as an after thought. Have you ever gone to an ALA? For the past two years (2006 and 2007) free wifi was included. I realize MLA has made deals with the hotel room rates and conference room usage rates years in advance, but let's start thinking of ways to make wifi available. Why have we not investigated having a vendor sponsor free wifi for the meeting? I would gladly give up my meeting bag for free wifi. Why can't we have a few more routers (or stronger ones) strategically placed through out the conference hall so that we can get wifi within the actual meeting rooms? Why is it that while the presenters and speakers are talking about social networking tools, the participants within that same meeting room can't use the very tools the they are talking about?

We have come a long way since my first conference blogging experience in 2006, and with a little planning and creativity we can go even further.

Labels: MLA2008, Social Software, web2.0

Today I was drawn to the papers and presentations on library value and return on investment (ROI). This is the way administration and your bosses think. I personally think librarians have too long relied on the "touchy, feely" intrinsic value of libraries rather than the cold hard cash value of libraries. In other words I think we as a profession are still stuck trying to prove that we are needed to our administrators with anecdotal stories of our worth and that it is important to have a library because, "we have always had a library." I don't think it is a medical librarian thing, I think ALL librarians typically have fallen prey to this thinking and justification process. Perhaps it is because we are not taught business principles in librarianship, or many of our library students typically come from arts and science degree backgrounds not business degrees. Perhaps it goes a little deeper than that, maybe we have been so used to providing "free" services to all who seek it, that we have gotten accustomed to doing so and the very idea of attaching value and dollar figures to our products and services seems counter to our culture. (I tend to think this theory is particularly true within public libraries.)


Regardless of how we got this way, the fact is we did. We just can't seem (or want) to put a dollar amount on the services and resources we provide our users. In the case of medical libraries this is a great disservice because our hospital administrator do put a dollar amount on us and unfortunately it is usually how much are we costing the library. How much money are they "throwing out the window" to buy some books when everything is free or at least cheaper on the Internet.


So that is why I was drawn to the Bridging the Gap paper presentation as well as the paper "A Calculator for Measuring the Impact of Health Sciences Libraries and Librarians."
Full Abstract: http://tinyurl.com/6yble3

Librarian have usually have relied on circulation statistics, gate counts, reference questions and anecdotal evidence as support for budget requests or to fight budget cutbacks. The librarian created three calculators; one that can calculate the value of the library (collections, resources, services), a second that calculates the cost/benefit ratio (CBA, a number familiar with finance professionals), and a third that calculates the return on investment (ROI).

These are very helpful calculators. Personally, I think every hospital librarian should be making use of these resources to help justify budget increases and try to prevent budget cutbacks.

Labels: MLA2008, ROI

There were a lot of great posters and there is no way I could write about all of them, but two stuck out in my mind.

Weed it and They Will Come: The Nitty Gritty of Assessing, Weeding, and Rebuilding a Physical Book Collection. See the full abstract: http://tinyurl.com/5txvqt

As we started talking, I found it interesting that they discovered that the process of weeding was handled differently by different generations of librarians. The librarian speaking with me told me that she sometimes found it hard to weed the books, but the younger staff appeared eager get rid of the old to make room for the new. The library began to increase their electronic book collection and in order to preserve serendipitous shelf browsing discovery, the librarians decided to add dummy books on the shelves for each electronic title.

Developing an RSS Current Awareness Service.
See the full abstract: http://tinyurl.com/5e7mkk

I loved how these librarians created their own service that captured over 1900 journal feeds which are available now on the library's web site and are bundled so that users can locate feeds alphabetically or by subject and can preview the table of contents. I completely applaud these librarians initiative, but I still think this is a needed service that can be easily done by a company like Serials Solutions or Ebsco and I don't know why they haven't added it to their A-Z service.

Labels: MLA2008

I have to admit I wondered how on earth Mark Funk could surpass his Inaugural Address from last year. He didn't surpass his speech in 2008, he gave the perfect continuation of what his Inaugural Address started. To put it another way, it was almost like his Inaugural Address was the season ending cliff hanger to your favorite television program, and his Presidential Address this year was the much anticipated season premier.

He briefly refreshed our memories with a flash back of his speech from last year and then delivered another truly inspiring address about his presidential year. Mark's "Connections: Bridging the Gaps," spoke about using and integrating technology within MLA and medical librarianship to bridge the gaps and make connections to members in the organization. He also pressed upon the idea that we should not just do things because, "That is the way we've always done it before."

Mark's speech reminded me to try and think outside of the box and look at things from a different perspective. Stop automatically accepting dogmatic approaches to things, and begin to reevaluate other methods. Who knows maybe the new way of doing things is better, it could also be worse. But if it is worse at least I tried something new learned from that experience and I can go back to the previously established method.

The McGovern Lecture just naturally seemed to build on the enthusiasm I felt from Mark's address. Andrew Zolli, a foresight and global trends consultant analyzes critical trends of culture, technology and global society. He gave a very humorous and dynamic speech regarding the changing demographics and how that affects the changing world and society. By knowing and learning about your group's (country, state, city, or institution) demographics you will be better prepared to plan and prepare for the changes due to the demographic shift.

Labels: MLA2008

Earlier today I met with the nice folks at Unbound Medicine. I have discovered that I must have been living in a cave these last few years, because I was totally unaware of that Unbound Medicine more than just providing textbooks to wireless devices. Unbound's

uCentral is Unbound Medicine’s custom point of need solution for institutions. It provides institutions with a powerful and flexible platform for delivering knowledge to the point of need and communicating with mobile users. uCentral delivers knowledge where it’s needed—online over the Web, downloaded to a personal digital assistant (PDA), or wirelessly via a smartphone, BlackBerry, iPhone or other wireless device. Did you catch the part where it also delivers information over the Web. It is much more than just a product for wireless products. Admittedly if you have a wireless product, it that much cooler of a resource.

uCentral allows institutions to provide enterprise wide web access to clinical titles with OpenURL, LinkOut support, and RSS feeds which enhance your journal collection access and usage. Their LinkOut support is also a nice method for librarians to provide an easy full text table of contents services. The LinkOut links are preserved within their TOC list so users do not have remember or worry about how the institution subscribes to the journal.

They are able to provide the TOC service by using PubMed. So the journals that are listed are ones that are only indexed within PubMed and results are as if you are doing your own PubMed TOC search. However, they have packaged it in a little friendlier and easier way that also preserves the institution's full text LinkOut link. But it is important to remember if the journal is not indexed within PubMed or it has limited indexing, the TOC won't be available. I still have yet to find a true TOC service that will provide the table of contents to all STM journals (regardless of its PubMed indexing) and also preserves the institution's full text links.

All in all I would have to say that I was pretty impressed with their product and it might be something to consider for providing electronic access to clinical books.

Labels: MLA2008

I flew into Chicago yesterday. I got checked in and despite some confusion between the hotel staff and I about Internet access, I am up and blogging. Whoo hoo.

This morning I had the opportunity to take an interesting MLA Continuing Education class, Gaining Leadership Skills Without Formally Supervising People taught by Natalie Kay Reed.

This class focused on learning various leadership skills without formally supervising people. In other works you don't have to be a manager or a supervisor and we learned that leadership is not mutually exclusive to management. Just because you are a manager doesn't necessary mean that you are a leader. Just because you are a leader within a group doesn't mean that you are the supervisor or manager either.

Leadership focuses on achieving goals to make a change. Management focuses on control, organization, and order.

Within the class we learned that various organizations MLA, SLA, Management, etc. all have their core leadership skills. They are all very similar, but have their own slant tailored to the organization.

In the class we learned about the various leadership skills and discussed our experiences with leaders who used these skills. After the discussion we looked at the skills and wrote down which skills were important to us. Then we discussed our spheres of influence, in other words our personal and professional encounters in our daily lives. For example: my personal spheres of influence include my family, my swim team, school PTA, friends, etc. My professional spheres could be my job at the library, my state association, committee work, hospital work groups, etc. Then we looked at the leadership skills that we thought were important to us and began to look at we would use them within our spheres. We then created action plans as to how we could better develop our skills and continue learning and developing our leadership skills.

It was a very interesting class and I think the best part of it was listening to other participants thoughts and discussing the qualities and skills of leaders. It has inspired me to develop a few of these skills and grow a little bit more professionally and personally.

Labels: ContinuingEducation, Leadership, MLA2008

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

Labels: MLA2008