MIDCONTINENTAL CHAPTER OF THE MEDICAL LIBRARY ASSOCIATION Annual Report May 2008 to April 2009 – Submitted by Jeanne Le Ber, Chapter Chair
MLA Goal – 1. Recruitment, Membership, and Leadership in the Profession
MCMLA currently has 188 members from our 7 state region and 5 from outside of our region: • 44 – Colorado • 23 – Kansas • 54 – Missouri • 32 – Nebraska • 6 – South Dakota • 19 – Utah • 5 – Wyoming • 5 - other
The MCMLA Membership Committee offers free memberships to students attending an accredited library school for up to two years. This past year we had 5 students who took advantage of this free membership offer.
Membership has a regular column in the MCMLA Express where new, renewing or old-time members are highlighted (13 members featured this past year).
The executive committee is concerned about declining membership and has authorized a Business Plan Task Force that will, among other things, investigate membership as it applies to the chapter budget and how we can attract more members to mitigate the affect on our overall chapter budget.
MCMLA Honors and Awards Committee recognized two MCMLA members for their outstanding contributions to the chapter:
• Sarah Beck Kirby – Barbara McDowell Award for Excellence in Hospital Librarianship • Brenda Pfannenstiel – Outstanding Achievement Award
We continued the tradition of recognizing MCMLA Stars; this year 21 members were awarded Stars. MLA Goal – 2. Life Long Learning
The MCMLA Education Team is taking the lead in ensuring that chapter members are provided opportunities to stay current with new technologies, resources and trends.
The Education Committee assisted the 2008 Cody, Wyoming meeting planners in developing a list of CE classes for the Open Spaces, Frontier Places annual meeting. A needs assessment was conducted in February 2008 using Survey Monkey; all chapter members were invited to provide input. Five continuing education classes were provided as a result of the survey:
1. Gateway and Clinical Trials.gov (3 MLA CE credits) 2. PubMed Searching (8 MLA CE credits)
3. Introduction to Study Design and Critical Appraisal (4 MLA CE credits) 4. Introductions to Blogs and Wikis (4 MLA CE credits)
5. Creating Influence: Getting What You Want (6 MLA CE credits)
In addition, the Education Committee surveyed chapter members in November 2008 about their educational needs in order to provide input for the 2009 Breckenridge, Colorado meeting planners (High Altitudes, New Attitudes). And the Education Committee is developing a web page that links to professional development opportunities in our 7 states. (See http://www.mcmla.org/educate/educate2.html).
In addition, the NN/LM MidContinental Region offers numerous opportunities for online training. Many of our chapter members take advantage of the online classes and tutorials, technology classes, Breezing Along with the RML and Spotlight! On NLM Resources. (See:http://nnlm.gov/mcr/technology/ and http://nnlm.gov/mcr/education) MLA Goal – 3. Advocacy
The MCMLA Library Advocacy Task Force (LATF), now in its third year, continues to lead the effort to ensure that hospital and academic administrators recognize the value that libraries contribute to the broader institutions. Betsy Kelly and Barb Jones from the NN/LM MCR have given 46 workshops and 3 video conferences within our chapter on Measuring Your Impact: Using Evaluation for Library Advocacy. The purpose of the workshop is to help librarians use the tools that will help them demonstrate the value of their library service. Participants learn how to plan an evaluation, create a logic model, collect, analyze and report data and assess their evaluation process. The workshop was offered to participants outside our region as well, reaching a total of 350+ people across regions. (6
MLA CE credits) The LATF developed the marketing and promotion contest for MCMLA 2008. Three entries were received and each was given an award. The MCMLA Library Advocacy Task Force has asked to be made a
standing committee. This requires a vote of our members and will be put before the members at the 2009 meeting. MLA Goal – 4. Creating and Communicating our Knowledge
MCMLA has a number of communication methods for reaching out to members.
• MCMLA Express (published four times per year); newly redesigned, updated, and using assistant editors to distribute the workload; published in PDF on our website (Heather Brown, editor)
• The MCMLA website (http://www.mcmla.org)
• The MCMLA Listserv; includes RML notices and announcements • Program Planner Wiki
• Annual conference planner wiki (access by password) • Monthly Executive/Committee meetings via Skype/SkypeOut • Use Flickr to post chapter photographs
The Research Committee encourages members to do research by offering a cash award for the best research poster and best research paper. The 2008 winners were:
• Cindy Schmidt, Lisa Killam-Worrall for their poster Using Clicker to Show Students That They are Facing Some Unexplored Territory
• Kate Anderson for her paper The Dog and Pony Show: Developing and Growing a Clinical Library Service In addition, Susan Sanders published her research paper Communication Methods in a Journal Club for Medical Librarians in the February 2009 issue of the Express. Her paper explored various methods for hosting journal clubs. MLA Goal -- 5. Building a Network of Partners
Go Local Kansas went live on January 29, 2009. This project is a partnership between libraries across the state of Kansas including the University of Kansas Medical Center, Kansas State Library, Kansas public libraries, Kansas Regent Institution Libraries. The chapter currently has four active Go Local sites (KA, NE, WY and UT).
Stormont-Vail HealthCare and the Topeka & Shawnee County Public Library participated in the MLA/NLM Health Information Literacy Research Project. A paper presentation on this project was made at the Chapter’s 2008 annual meeting in Cody, Wyoming. The project created professional interaction between the hospital and the public library. The Wyoming NN/LM MCR liaison is working on the Wyoming Symposium with a theme of involving librarians – both medical and public librarians – in partnership with community organizations in disaster preparedness
Taking care of business
• The Bylaws Committee worked to revised chapter bylaws; these revisions were presented, voted on and accepted by the members at the 2008 Cody meeting.
• The Policy and Procedures Manual has been updated.
• The Executive Committee established a Business Plan Task Force (BPTF) with the charge to write a business plan for MCMLA. The vision is to ensure that the chapter has enough funds to support its programming, administrative and communication functions. The BPTF has specific tasks and meets regularly and reports back to the Executive Committee.
• The current chair has asked all chapter committees to evaluate their charge, structure, membership and tasks and report back by September 2009.
• The Executive Committee is investigating the use of advertising in our communication tools.
• Our 2009-2010 elections were successfully held and we elected one member (Margaret Bandy) for the MLA Nominating Committee slate.
MCMLA officers for 2009-2010 will be: Past Chair: Jeanne Le Ber
Chair: Claire Hamasu Chair-elect: Sarah Kirby
Recording Secretary: Michlene Mankin
