Director’s Reflections... Medical Library Association Annual Meeting
As I am writing this in late May, I have just returned from the annual meeting of the Medical Library Association (MLA) in Philadelphia. Founded in 1898, MLA is an organization of more than 1,100 institutions and 3,600 individual members in the health sciences information field, committed to educating health information professionals, supporting health information research, promoting access to the world's health sciences information, and working to ensure that the best health information is available to all.
I attended my first MLA meeting in Cleveland in 1975 shortly after I started my first job, and have only missed one meeting since then. I've watched friends and colleagues grow a little older and a little grayer, and we’ve swapped stories about our evolving careers and our growing families through the years. Each time I’ve returned from a meeting, I've been invigorated and enthusiastic about new projects and possibilities. The advent of technology has transformed librarianship and information science over the past thirty years, and MLA programming has tracked every trend.
The theme of this meeting was "Information Revolution: Change is in the Air." Medical libraries and librarians continue to experience turbulent times. While there are great opportunities to develop new products and services, ongoing changes in technology, user populations, staffing, vendor relations, scholarly publishing, the health care system and our physical surroundings are both exhilarating and stressful. Eight HSLS librarians attended the Philadelphia meeting, taking advantage of opportunities for continuing education, sharing expertise and best practices, presenting papers and posters, touring the exhibit hall, attending vendor-sponsored sessions to learn about new products, and networking with colleagues from across the country and around the world.
An ongoing MLA concern is how to provide support and guidance to young professionals. As program chair of the MLA Leadership and Management Section this year, I organized the first-ever MLA "speed mentoring" session, patterned after "speed dating" events where men and women are rotated to meet each other over a series of brief “dates.” The speed mentoring session began with a presentation by a Philadelphia-based career coach offering suggestions on how to overcome common stumbling blocks faced by job seekers. The second half of the session matched pre-registered participants with senior managers in academic health sciences libraries for a series of ten-minute mentoring sessions for job hunting advice and tips on how to improve their resumes. Feedback from the mentoring pairs was enthusiastic.
Just as "change is in the air" at MLA, change is a fact of life at HSLS as well. We have new resources, new services, new classes and workshops, and new staff members. Visit our Web site and our libraries often to keep up with new developments!
--Barbara Epstein
bepstein@pitt.edu
