Academic Library Highlights from the Medical Library Association/Special Library Association Meeting

On May 16-19, MLA and SLA held a joint meeting in Detroit entitled “Looking Backward, Forging Ahead.” Having a joint meeting was intriguing; it’s been decades since I’ve thought so much about taxonomies and controlled vocabularies beyond the National Library of Medicine’s medical subject headings and Embase’s Emtree.

Some presentations of interest to academic libraries:

• “Changing Internal Budget Models: An Opportunity to Reconnect with Library Users,” presented by Clare Keating and Derek Wilmott from the University of Toledo.
• “Patron and Librarian Perspectives of a Long-standing Health Science Liaison Librarian Program,” presented by Hannah Norton, University of Florida-Gainesville, Health Science Center Libraries.
• “Forging Ahead After the Shake-ups” by Sheila Green and Stephanie Fulton, Texas A&M University Medical Sciences Library (As you might know, Texas A&M eliminated faculty status for their librarians in 2022.)
• “Improving LibGuides at a Health Sciences Library Using Feedback from Focus Groups and User Experience Testing,” presented by Lydia Howes and Elizabeth Frakes, Eccles Library, University of Utah.

There were also presentations on gamification of instruction (which is on my learn-more to-do list): Rachel Whitney, MUSC Library, presented on her use of games to teach literature searching in a pharmacy program; and Julia Esparza, LSUHS Library, presented on their use of a virtual escape room to teach and assess epidemiological and biostatistical knowledge in med students.

Craig Robertson, Ph.D., gave the annual Leiter lecture based on his book, The Filing Cabinet: A Vertical History of Information. A fascinating look at a tool that is so ubiquitous that we don’t think about it (unless we are trying to rid our library of the ones we no longer need).

There were also a number of sessions on the role of libraries and librarians regarding the NIH data management and sharing requirements, as well as management of systematic review services. For more information, the official conference program (PDF and online) is available here: https://www.mlanet.org/mla23 You will have access to abstracts and author information if you want additional information on any of the presentations.

–Jolene Miller, University of Toledo