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Proposal to Increase Membership Dues

The Midwest Chapter/MLA Executive Board is proposing a dues increase from $30 to $40 for Midwest Chapter/MLA membership. The dues increase will be up for a vote by the chapter membership at the Annual Business Meeting to be held at the 2019 Annual Meeting in Milwaukee, Wisconsin on Monday, October 7th. If approved, Chapter membership dues will increase starting with the 2020 membership year.

The Midwest Chapter/MLA’s financial reserves were depleted several years ago due to a situation with the event registration service provider we were using. The company was engaging in unethical practices that resulted in a bankruptcy of the company*. They owed us approximately $17,000 and despite efforts to recover the funds through legal action, we remain one of the company’s creditors. Since then, the Midwest Chapter/MLA has been engaging in efforts to reestablish an adequate financial reserve. A dues increase is part of the plan to enable our organization to have an adequate financial reserve to run our normal operations as a vibrant chapter and allow us to offer awards and opportunities for professional development and networking at the annual conference

*From 2015 Annual Business Meeting Minutes in Louisville, KY
“Acteva is the registration program we were using for conferences since 2011. There was a lag in getting payments in 2012. At one point we were looking at Acteva owing the Chapter $17K and put all our legal ducks in a row in 2013. We were number 5 in line (many other organizations also suing Acteva). In June 2015, San Francisco lawyers were waiting for Acteva guy to show up in court, and he still didn’t show up in late September. We asked the lawyers would our lawsuit still be viable IF Aceteva guy turns up–still waiting to hear. Chapter has done everything we could on our end.”

Continuing Education Opportunities at Midwest Chapter/MLA 2019 Annual Meeting

As you get ready to register for the 2019 Annual Meeting in Milwaukee, don’t forget to explore the great slate of CE courses we have lined up.

Discover…scoping reviews and reliable publishing

Need to learn more about scoping reviews? Join us for Scoping Reviews: The What, Why, and How for Librarians. Discover the niche that scoping reviews fill within the world of scholarly research and the role that librarians can play in their creation. Be sure to bring your laptop for the in-class activities. Does open access publishing have you wondering what’s reliable and what’s not? Register for Questionable Versus Reliable? Navigating the Biomedical Scholarly Publishing Landscape and acquire the knowledge and resources you’ll need to make the evaluation of these journals more straightforward.

Connect…with your local community

Looking for a way to connect with your local community and support first responders, health professionals, and the public during emergencies? Or to define the role of your library as a community resource during small and large disasters? You’ll find the answers and an action plan in Libraries as a Disaster Recovery Resource: How to Make a Difference and Libraries as a Disaster Recovery Resource: Take Action. You can take either or both classes, and the classes can be applied to the MLA Disaster Information Specialization.

Collaborate…with partnerships and copyright

Want to learn strategies for building partnerships that lead to collaborative projects in academic and hospital settings? Sign up for Building Partnerships with Faculty, Clinicians, and other Stakeholders and leave with an action plan that fits you. Does everyone turn to you for copyright questions? Learn how to formulate best practices for copyright risk management and develop educations plans for your organization when you register for Copyright Skills as Risk Management Tools: The Librarian’s Role. CE courses will be held on Saturday, October 5, and offer 3 or 4 MLA CE credits. And don’t forget about our free CE class on Monday, Finding Leadership and Management Opportunities Where You Are – it’s included with your registration. For complete course and instructor information, visit the meeting website. We’re looking forward to seeing you in Milwaukee!

Discover the History of Milwaukee’s VA

We’re so excited to bring you a new program on local history for this year’s Discover Connect Collaborate conference. Janice Curnes, VA medical librarian, will give us an overview of the Milwaukee VA, an institution rich with history both local and national.

The Milwaukee VA is one of the original three “Old Soldiers Homes”. Established in 1867, Milwaukee VA is in its 152nd year of outstanding veteran care. The grounds are rich in history and show the transition of care. Also, the VA has rich history of libraries, the original Soldiers Homes had free standing libraries and librarians. Join us for our Sunday, October 6 lunch presentation: Out at the Soldiers Home : a brief history of the Northwest Branch of National Home for Disabled Volunteer Soldiers.


Jan has been the medical librarian at the Clement J. Zablocki VA Medical Center for 29 years. In addition to her duties as medical librarian, Jan has charge of overseeing the medical center archives which are housed in the library and various historic displays throughout the medical center. The rich history of caring for veterans at one of the first Old Soldiers Homes appeals to Jan who has a BA in history.

Over the years, the Library Service was instrumental in creating the Historic Milwaukee VA walking tour and the internal history website. The Library service has worked with the Department of Veterans Affairs (Veterans Health Administration)  historian, National Trust for Historic Preservation and The National Park Service documenting the rich history of the Milwaukee VA. The Milwaukee VA celebrated 150 year of caring for veterans in 2017.

Janice Curnes, MLS

Registration is Open

Photo credit: Visit Milwaukee

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

We are pleased to announce that the 2019 Midwest Chapter/MLA Annual Meeting is open for registration! Discover, Connect, and Collaborate in Milwaukee this fall.

If you are coming to the conference, consider submitting a paper or poster to share with colleagues. Papers and posters that were submitted to and/or presented at the 2019 Medical Library Association annual meeting in Chicago are welcome.

Submit your abstract online. The deadline for submission is July 26, 2019.

We are looking forward to seeing you this fall!

New this year – free CE opportunity on Monday afternoon

Are you looking for opportunities to show off your leadership skills? Curious about servant leadership? Then join us on Monday afternoon for a free  – yes, free! – continuing education class. Stewart Brower, Director of the Schusterman Library at the University of Oklahoma-Tulsa, will present a two-hour CE course, Finding Leadership and Management Opportunities Where you Are, on Monday, October 7, at 2 pm. The class is included with your full registration, so be sure to schedule your journey home for late afternoon or early evening – you won’t want to miss this opportunity!

Librarians who wish to advance in their careers are often told to show that they can lead, but they aren’t always given the opportunity to do so. In this course, attendees will be given the opportunity to assess their own leadership skills. This self-assessment, utilizing the Four Frames of Leadership proposed by Bolman and Deal, will allow attendees to better know their own strengths and weaknesses as potential leaders. Discussion about the daily activities of librarians will help uncover leadership and management opportunities in the workplace, and participants will document areas of their work where leadership might be demonstrated. The class will then transition into an examination of Greenleaf’s Servant Leadership model and Spears’ ten characteristics of servant leaders. Finally, a series of real-world case studies will be presented and discussed, to help participants learn how to apply servant leadership to their own work lives. At the end of the class, attendees who are present and want to receive MLA credit will receive a code to redeem on MEDLIB-ED.

Thank you to  WHSLA, Wisconsin Health Science Library Association, for sponsoring this CE opportunity. 

Call for Papers & Posters

The 2019 Midwest Chapter/MLA Annual Meeting planning committee is now accepting abstracts for poster and paper presentations.

Call for Posters and Papers. Midwest Chapter MLA Annual Meeting. Milwaukee, WI Oct. 4-7 2019

Submit your poster and paper and paper abstracts so that others can discover and learn about your innovative programs and research findings. Presenting at a conference is a great way to connect with your colleagues. Your presentation may lead to opportunities to collaborate with your colleagues in the Midwest.

Papers and posters that were submitted to and/or presented at the 2019 Medical Library Association annual meeting in Chicago are welcome.

Submit your abstract online. The deadline for submission is June 30, 2019.

Registration for Midwest Chapter/MLA 2019 is open.

Planning for the Future!

We are looking forward to seeing you this October in Milwaukee at the Midwest Chapter/MLA, WHSLA, and SWHSL 2019 Annual Meeting! But did you know that we’re hard at work planning our 2020 and 2021 meetings?

Our 2020 meeting will be held in Bloomington, Indiana on October 3-5 at the Monroe Convention Center. Our co-hosts will be the Indiana Health Sciences Librarians Association. Mark your calendars now!

Midwest Chapter Annual Meetings Committee members are working with our neighbors the Midcontinental Chapter/MLA on a joint meeting in 2021. Our tentative plan is to meet in early October in Kansas City. Stay tuned for details!

Have any questions about upcoming Midwest Chapter/MLA Annual Meetings? Ask Annual Meetings Committee Chair Clare Leibfarth!

Social determinants of health – a preview of our Monday panel discussion

A recent quick search for “social determinants of health” in PubMed yielded over 6700 results, 80% published within the last 5 years. From reducing tobacco-related health disparities to understanding outcomes for patients with Type II diabetes, researchers and clinicians are paying more attention to social, economic, and geographic factors that influence our health.

How are social determinants of health defined? A 2019 Journal of the American College of Radiology article 1 writes about them this way:

“The social determinants of health have garnered particular attention more recently, centering on the premise that patients’ zip codes may be a better predictor of their life expectancy than their genetic code. This is based on longstanding research that demonstrates the impact that low socioeconomic status, food and housing instability, transportation difficulties, violence, racism, limited educational opportunities, and an unhealthy environment—among others—has on quality and quantity of life. These factors undoubtedly impact a patient’s ability to prioritize, access, afford, or complete imaging services, whether preventive, diagnostic, or therapeutic.”

Our 2019 conference panel, Social Determinants of Health: From the Patient to the Community and Beyond, brings together three different perspectives on this emerging health care focus. Dr. Nancy Smuckler, a professor at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, will share her research on the effects of poverty on individual health. Biostatistician Kayla Heslin, a researcher at the Center for Urban Population Health, will highlight her work on zip code and community health research and assessment. Finally, Associate Researcher Kate Konkle, from the University of Wisconsin-Madison will highlight their work with the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation’s County Health Rankings & Roadmaps.

The panel discussion will be held Monday, October 7 from 9:00-10:30 am in the Regency Ballroom.

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Brenda Fay, Advocate Aurora Health Library Network 2019 Conference co-chair

1. Betancourt JR, Tan-McGrory A, Flores E, Lopez D. Racial and Ethnic Disparities in Radiology: A Call to Action. Journal of the American College of Radiology : JACR. 2019;16(4 Pt B):547-553.

MLA Chapter Council Special Election

We are conducting a special election to elect our Representatives to the MLA Chapter Council. Those elected will take office in May 2019. Only Midwest Chapter/MLA members who are also MLA members are eligible to vote in this special election.

Please vote at:
https://umich.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/SV_8vNIgw4J6dn7xzL

The ballot will remain open through Monday, April 22nd.

We will hold our regular election later this summer. If you are interested in becoming a candidate for an elected office, please contact Karen Hanus, Chair of the Nominations and Elections Committee.

Discover Milwaukee: Explore the Harley-Davidson Museum

“Why would I visit a place dedicated to Harley-Davidson motorcycles? I don’t even like motorcycles!”

Exploring Milwaukee won’t be complete without a sojourn to the iconic museum. More than just an excursion of sentiment for motorcycle fans, the Harley Davidson Museum is an experience in American history.

Photo Credit: Harley Davidson Museum Website

Walking through the park-like 20 acres in downtown Milwaukee, the Harley Davidson Museum is filled with classic, even legendary, machines, including the Harley owned by Elvis and the oldest
known Harley Davidson Motorcycle in existence (Serial #1). As a visitor, you’ll see an unparalleled collection of motorcycles and memorabilia like a private archive that offers tours. There are layers of advertisements from different eras for the graphic design geeks. And truly, the highlight for many is the Experience Gallery, where visitors can choose from a diverse collection of bikes to touch, admire, and pose for photos on.

The campus, in addition to the rich cultural experience of the museum, also includes a café, restaurant, and retail store, as well as a manicured outdoor space.

The Sunday evening social event for our Midwest MLA Chapter Conference will be dinner and exploration of the museum. Extra tickets are available for purchase to bring along a guest for dinner. All dinner attendees will receive an additional complimentary ticket to the Harley Davidson Museum to return and investigate at their leisure.