I recently returned from the Annual Meeting of the Medical Library Association in Washington, DC. This is a grand gathering of more than 2,000 health sciences librarians from large and small settings across the United States and beyond. I attended my first MLA meeting in Cleveland in 1975, and I’ve missed only two meetings since then. It’s an opportunity to “re-charge my professional batteries,” learn about emerging trends and technology, connect with colleagues, and see what’s going on in comparable library settings. While I used to lug home notebooks full of ideas for new projects, now my to-do list is electronic.
I was very proud of the many HSLS librarians (listed elsewhere in this issue) who presented papers and posters, and participated in panel presentations and committee meetings. Our informatics trainee, Katrina Kurtz, won the award for best student presentation!
As a member of the Joint Legislative Task Force of MLA and AAHSL (Association of Academic Health Sciences Librarians), I spent an afternoon on Capitol Hill advocating for support of the National Library of Medicine and NIH. Among others, I visited the offices of Allyson Schwartz (D-PA-13), who is co-chair of the Congressional Academic Medicine Caucus, and our own Representative Mike Doyle (D-PA-14).
I am especially pleased that Representative Doyle recently introduced the Federal Research Public Access Act (H.R. 5037). Similar to the NIH Public Access Policy, this bill, known as FRPAA, would require federal agencies with annual extramural research budgets of $100 million or more to provide the public with online access to research manuscripts stemming from funded research no later than six months after publication in a peer-reviewed journal. This bill was also introduced in the Senate as S.1373. While FRPAA has a long way to go before it becomes law, it is certainly a positive step toward promoting openness, transparency, and accessibility of publicly funded research results.
HSLS Librarians were active participants in the Medical Library Association’s Annual Meeting held in Washington, D.C. from May 21-26, 2010.
During the week of April 26, 2010, HSLS hosted MaShana Davis, a first year National Library of Medicine (NLM) Associate Fellow. The Associate Fellow program “is designed to provide a broad foundation in health sciences information services, and to prepare librarians for future leadership roles in health sciences libraries and in health services research.”
HSLS has a large number of rare books about dental health and oral surgery. The books described below, along with other rare gems, are currently on display in the Falk Library lobby and Rare Books Room.
The wonderful and tiny 1843 and 1844 volumes of Dr. Hitchcock’s Teeth Almanac are miniature almanacs. These are normally housed in the Rare Books Room, though at 2 x 3.5 inches, they may easily be overlooked among the surrounding books. Take note of our smallest treasures as well as the rest of the rare dental medicine books in the exhibit.
On April 19-21, 2010, HSLS offered another session of its popular Systematic Review Workshop: The Nuts and Bolts for Librarians. The focus of this intensive 2.5 day workshop is on literature search techniques for completing a successful systematic review. The first day examined why systematic reviews are done and how they contribute to the evidence base; publication bias and how a well-done literature search can overcome it; and, the librarian as collaborator and key player in the development of the systematic review’s literature search methodology. Day two examined which databases and grey literature resources to search as well as how to harvest literature search vocabulary. The last day looked at handsearching, project management and search delivery, and PRISMA (Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses) guidelines.
HSLS will offer this course again in July 2010 for librarians and informaticians from the National Institutes of Health and other Department of Health and Human Services facilities. Another session is planned for November 2010.
PubMed Central
The American Library Association has declared April 13, 2010 as National Library Workers Day so we can recognize the valuable contributions of our many employees who—together with faculty librarians—maintain our services and resources. HSLS has staff in all departments, some of whom deal directly with our users and others who work behind the scenes.
