Time to say farewell for this year...this is the last entry for Conference Call 2007. One person does not a conference blog make. Your intrepid blog editor would like to thank everyone who contributed blog content, blog entry ideas, photos, and technical support. Thank you all!
SEE YOU NEXT YEAR!
Earlier this month Jill Hurst-Wahl wrote about the conference uses for social networking tools in the SLA-IT blog. Well, I don't know if anyone used Twitter to communicate during the 2007 Joint Meeting, but we certainly used the other tools she mentioned. I think that using a pre-arranged tag for conference photos on Flickr worked wonderfully. One thing that we should have done was to tag all blog entries about the conference with that tag as well. Then we would have been able to easily identify blog entries by other bloggers about the conference with a Technorati search for example. Note to self: remember this in 2008!
So as far as I can tell, here are the posts by other bloggers about the 2007 Joint Meeting in Omaha:
http://president.mlanet.org/mfunk/2007/10/speechless-in-omaha/
http://tscott.typepad.com/tsp/2007/10/midwest-midcont.html
http://tscott.typepad.com/tsp/2007/10/conference-blog.html
http://tscott.typepad.com/tsp/2007/10/it-started-in-o.html
http://tscott.typepad.com/tsp/2007/10/making-music-me.html
http://tametheweb.com/2007/10/great_example_of_conference_bl.html
http://kraftylibrarian.com/2007/10/mark-funk-visits-conference-call-2007.html
I particularly enjoyed the "crossover" posts with T. Scott and our MLA Pres. Thank you both!
Now here is where your intrepid blog editor must confess...the last two mentions were "solicited" because what good is a blog with no readers? These popular bloggers have an interest in the uses of social media, are widely read, and could direct interested readers to this blog. Thank you Krafty and Michael!
Since a lot of the entries in this blog are about food, I thought I would share with you where your intrepid blog editor ate while in Omaha:
The food was great...but the company was the best! I enjoy my conference friends!
I always look forward the the MLA Update. This year the update presentation was particularly memorable in that MLA President Mark Funk developed laryngitis during the conference. He has written about the experience in his official MLA blog, Only Connect. It could have been a worst nightmare scenario, but it turned out to be quite fun! Since he was unable to speak, he asked the three MLA Board members present, Margaret Bandy, T. Scott Plutchak, and Linda Walton, to deliver the voice-over for the scripted presentation while he handled the slide show technicalities.
By now, those of you who are MLA members will have seen this year's Presidential Priorities in the April MLA News. This year, it is all about connecting. The update presentation focused on "Connecting to Ourselves" and "Connecting to Others."
MLA is working on using "2.0" approaches to communication within the association. There is the new MLANET website with its RSS news feeds and blogs, including the aforementioned Only Connect. I monitor the feed from the Task Force on Social Networking Software blog. MLA is providing plenty of opportunities for us to converse about relevant issues...so participate in the conversation!
Some other internal MLA notes:
Numerous of MLA's other current initiatives were presented...everything from the collaboration on Magnet Program Recognition to work on behalf of the EPA libraries and with the Joint Commission. The presentation also covered MLA's marketing and medical library career recruitment initiatives. This last is so, so important. As was noted, we ARE a graying profession. (As the saying goes, I resemble that remark!) Bringing talented, creative new librarians into the profession is a job for all of us.
And of course, the presentation ended with the pitch to attend the upcoming MLA meeting. 2008 will be in Chicago with the theme "Connections: Bridging the Gaps." Katherine Chew was the lucky winner of the $100 off MLA conference registration contest.
And which paper presentations did your intrepid blog editor attend? As I look back at my notes, I am surprised to see that all of the papers I attended were presented by academic librarians, not hospital librarians. Hmmm. The thing that appealed to me about all of them was that they are all about providing services to our patrons/users/customers at their point of need. Follow the links to the presentation slides on the official 2007 Joint Meeting website!
Stephanie Schulte from Indiana University-Purdue University Fort Wayne (Home of the Mastodons) talked about a two-pronged approach to services to nursing students. One approach is mobile reference "Librarian House Call @ the Nursing Lab." The librarian visits the Nursing Skills Lab at regularly scheduled times and answers questions right there where the students are. One really gets to know the students, establishing relationships in additon to providing assistance with CINAHL, etc. The nursing faculty was particularly enthusiastic about this approch. Based on my experience with the medical students in my hospital, Stephanie will find that the relationships forged with beginning nursing students will bring them to the library again and again as they continue their studies and need assistance.
A second part of the outreach to nursing students was the opportunity to teach nursing students in the classroom to help them prepare for a specific paper assignment. What was interesting was the method used to evaluate the effect of the instruction on the quality of the paper bibliogaphies. She compared the bibliographies from the students taught by the librarian and students taught by a nursing faculty member. The results were a bit disappointing, with no significant difference between the two types of instructor and a rather large reliance on web resources rather than scholarly journal EBP sources. So back to the drawing board, so to speak. Isn't that what evaluation is all about? How to improve the teaching to improve those bibliographies?
Sandra Phelps and Rebecca Holz from Ebling Library at University of Wisconsin-Madison (Home of the Badgers) presented their work with the Athletic Training Program which led to the development of the library's Kinesiology portal. Here again, it is all about relationships. The library staff members on the project worked closely with the athletic training curriculum coordinators to develop a deeper understanding of the needs of the AT students and the types of resources that would be useful for them, including tools and resources that have already been developed by the department. It's a win-win situation. The students gain easy access to what they need and the library's website shows increased usage.
I also attended another presentation by Ebling Library staff members Erika Sevetson, Christopher Hooper-Lane and Allan Barclay on Developing and Marketing an RSS Journal Service for Your Library . And OK, here is where I admit that I actually understood only about 75% of what I heard. There are a lot of technicalities here, but I got the point. It took a lot of work by SIX library staff members to do it, but it is a great product! An important part of the project are the teaching and promotional efforts that have been developed for the RSS feed service. The team made extensive use of 2.0 tools for project management as well. I suggest that you review their presentation slides to get all the details. I am really interested in getting my library users to use RSS feeds as a way to keep up with the journal content available through my library. The hospital pays a lot of money for those subscriptions and I would like to see them being used a lot more. I am planning on using their idea of an instructional feed reader account to use as a teaching tool.
Another presentation that I attended was by Jane Blumenthal and Nancy Allee of the Health Sciences Libraries at the University of Michigan (Home of the Wolverines). They reviewed their library's efforts to bring their library services into the 21st Century. Of interest to me, of course, was their use of some 2.0 tools in their change process. Their MLibrary "13 Things" project and staff blog are great examples of how to use these tools to keep our library services in touch with our library users.
Blog Correspondent Mary Taylor also attended these conference sessions on the topics of marketing and promotion on October 14 and shares this report:
Linda E. Bunyan
Adventures in Marketing
Linda Bunyan is the head librarian at Summa Health System in Akron, Ohio. The Corporate Communications division assigned a marketing liaison to the library. While the library staff had been involved in outreach activities, including serving on several hospital committees and the Institutional Review Board, they were not reaching the managers or attending physicians. The marketing liaison helped them by scheduling presentations by library staff to system management groups, writing articles based on librarian-provided content for the physician and employee newsletters, and arranging for orientation sessions with the nursing staff. She was unable to get the library an Intranet presence.
Linda felt that some of the efforts didn’t provide much payback. Scattershot, “broad” efforts such as newsletter articles were less effective than “deep” efforts, such as services on hospital committees, including the CME, Nursing Research, and IRB.
Elizabeth M. Smigielski
Case studies in Marketing & Promoting to Health Sciences Students: Lessons Learned, Solutions Shared
Elizabeth Smigielski discussed marketing and presented two case studies for discussion. Marketing is not the same as promotion; promotion is one part of marketing.
Marketing should be a continuous cycle:
The information you learn from your users should be used for strategic planning. If marketing is done correctly, the process can take several years. Your administration must acknowledge and support this for marketing to be successful.
She also mentioned the 4-P’s of marketing:
One practical suggestion was to involve marketing departmental staff for creative promotion ideas, after doing the analysis of your users’ needs.
Elizabeth Smigielski sent along her thoughts about the discussion session:
After hearing lots of "we did it great" and sitting through lots of presentations, I opted to try a new means of engaging the audience this year, a discussion session examining mistakes our library made in marketing and promotion. A 15 minute overview was followed by 45 minute discussion using talking points to spark the talk. As presenter, I can't fairly judge, but people seemed to enjoy the exchange and format, especially discussing mistakes. Lots of people spoke up and no one left early. Several people reported enjoying the novel format. Next year, let's see more discussion sessions on the program and get away from the standard 20 minute presentations and posters.
Submitted by Heather Brown with additional contribution from Michlene Mankin.
The business meeting for the Midcontinental Chapter of the Medical Library Association was held on Monday morning, October 15. The 2006-2007 Chapter Chair, Whitney Davison-Turley presided over the first half of the meeting. She congratulated the committees and membership for keeping the organization moving forward, pointing out the increased use of Skype for committee meetings, the modification of the member database that allows for real-time updating, and the work of the Research Committee for their mentoring of members interested in turning projects into research.
Highlights of the committee reports include the following:
Annual Meeting Advisor: Rebecca Graves will now be using a wiki to post annual meeting information.
Archivist: Sue Fleming reported that all annual meeting programs and all issues of the Express are scanned and she is looking for a way to have them searchable.
Website editor: Russ Monika requested to move the website from GoDaddy.com to another host. This was approved at the executive meeting.
Honors and Awards: Darrel Willoughby reported that the Stars program yet again had a successful year and will continue next year.
Membership: Holly Henderson reported that there are currently 69 inactive members in database and the members will be contacting them to renew. The membership committee is continuing to offer free membership to library students. A drawing was also held. A free membership to MCMLA went to Barbara Grout and free membership to MLA went to Jeanne Burke.
Publications Committee: Heather Brown reported that the committee would like to enhance the style and design of the Express. She will also try out blogging at the annual meeting next year.
Research: Jeanne Le Bar reported that the committee met regularly using Skype. They offered mentorship to people who had submitted papers and posters for the meeting and supported benchmarking effort. They will award $100 each to the paper and poster for outstanding awards.
MLA Benchmarking: Roz Dudden reported that the benchmarking survey is now up at http://www.mlanet.org/resources/benchmark07/.
Credentialing: Lynne Fox recognized all new members of AHIP and those renewing. As well as those who are current members. The new AHIP liaison will be Gayle Willard.
Annual Meeting Reports: St. Louis 2006 (Jackie Hittner) was happy to report a profit for the meeting, which was deposited into the MCMLA treasury. The Omaha 2007 report is in process. Cody 2008 (Mary Henning) reports that the group has been meeting monthly by Skype and Skype Out. A free registration for the 2008 meeting was awarded to Nannette Bedrosky.
Old Business highlights:
Library Advocacy Task Force: Barb Jones note that the group has been meeting regularly. A recent online survey of the membership resulted in a 30% response. The executive committee have renewed the charge of the task force and will require a report by June 1, 2008.
Chapter Chair Report: Whitney Davison-Turley’s address encouraged members “step through the doors” into the future and to not only step through, but to allow that door to close and move into the future.
The 2007-2008 Chapter Chair, Jerry Carlson, was then inducted. He answered the charge set by Mark Funk’s priorities, MLA President, and applied them to MCMLA:
The 2008 Cody delegation the presented a fun and informative look at next year’s meeting and location. Wild West, here we come!
Blog Correspondent Mary Taylor attended these contributed paper sessions on October 14. There aren't any presenter materials posted on the conference website for these presentations, so we thought you'd be interested!
Jill Chance, International Medical Librarian, National Institute on Aging presented Basic Database Design for Libraries: A Look at the ADEAR Center Website.
Jill spoke about her experiences with updating and improving the National Institute on Aging’s Alzheimers Disease Education and Referral website, including working on the Clinical Trials database, a database of ADC newsletter articles, and the Alzheimer Disease Library database. It is important to think about what information you want users to be able to retrieve in order to set up the underlying tables properly. Librarians should provide programmers with mockups of search forms and data displays in order to facilitate database design. Many database software packages are available. This project used InMagicDB/Textworks.
Katherine Schilling and Kimberly Cage, School of Library and Information Science, Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis presented the paper Information Seeking Behaviors of Young Breast Cancer Survivors Experiencing Late Effects of Chemotherapy.
Young breast cancer survivors (variously defined as age 45 or 50 at time of diagnosis) are a growing and underserved population. There is little research done on problems of long-term survivors in general and young breast cancer survivors (YBCS) in particular.
The interdisciplinary team, made of people from Indiana University and Purdue, studied ways to improve communication between breast cancer survivors and their providers. Earlier studies have shown that cancer patients give clues about emotional distress, but are rarely direct about their needs. Other studies have shown that even with training, doctors don’t pick up on emotional clues. The team decided to focus on coaching patients to communicate their emotions and fears of recurrence with their doctors because doctors haven’t responded to training. Their study included breast cancer survivors less than 45 years old at diagnosis at any stage who were 3-8 years post-diagnosis, cancer free, and without metastasis who had an oncology check up in the near future.
The control group (n=60) had no pre-visit coaching, but received pre- and post-visit surveys. The intervention group (n=60) were mailed a “prompt sheet” to take with them to the checkup. They received a phone call from a researcher to provide coaching on how to talk with their provider, to complete a pre-visit survey, and to assist with filling out the prompt sheet. The patients in the intervention group took the prompt sheet with them to their oncology check-up and talked with their doctors about their fears. Telephone follow-up calls to patients and physicians were made at one week and two months post-visit, and surveys were completed.
They found that YBCS got most of their information from peer support groups. They do not use MedlinePlus. They like audiovisual materials, so libraries may want to collect AV materials. They are not just looking for health information. Life insurance, fertility, and parenting concerns are also major issues. Survivorship issues are under-represented in information resources. Literacy is a problem. Many web resources are at a college or high school level, Information is not evidence-based, not focused on breast cancer, and not focused on young survivors. There are access/digital divide problems.
Health sciences librarians should conduct research in interdisciplinary teams, train patient educators to promote reliable resources, and collaborate with public libraries in providing information. YBCS want personalized resources, and librarians can develop, test and market interactive, patient-focused, and patient-driven products. The IUPUI team is developing a “user-driven” web portal for YBCS. A suggestion was made from the audience that NLM develop a PubMed search filter for YBCS issues and late effects of chemotherapy.
After the MLA and NLM Update Breakfast, the membership of the Midwest Chapter met for their annual business meeting in the morning on Monday, October 15. For the past forever years, we've met over lunch. This was a nice change of pace!
There were the usual reports and parlimentary stuff, of course. The new organizational structure was discussed; the new standing committee charges are posted here. We got another look at the re-designed chapter website. Your intrepid blog editor REALLY likes how the conference blog posts display over there on the right. Be sure to look it over and send comments to the webmaster!
A highlight was the long-awaited announcement of the 2007 Distinguished Librarian of the Year Award. And the winner is...Peggy Richwine, Outreach Services Director at Indiana University School of Medicine Libraries! We were unable to bestow the award at the McGoogan Library reception (because Peggy wasn't there!) and had to wait a couple of days for the secret to be revealed. Congratulations Peggy!
There were two freebie drawings. Doreen Roberts won the free MLA membership drawing. And Donna Barbour-Talley won the free registration to the 2008 conference in Michigan. We all had to laugh about THAT!
The meeting ended with a presentation by the Michigan Medical Players on "Severe Information Deficit Syndrome" which can only be cured by attending the Midwest MLA / MHSLA 2008 Conference "Vital Signs: Keeping You and Your Library Vibrant and Healthy." The keynote speaker will be FISH! Philosopher Deena Ebbert. See YOU there!
Before I report on our Keynote speaker Dale Lea, some thoughts about conference blogging...
Today, I snagged T. Scott's post about conference blogging in my Bloglines feeds. Thanks for the kind mention! I had planned to do some "live" blogging from the conference in Omaha, but discarded the notion immediately. I'm old enough that I ended up taking notes on (gasp!) paper. Simply transcribing my scratchy notes didn't seem so interesting. What I've been trying to share with you is not just the information that I learned, but some assessment of its significance to a practicing librarian. This is what going to a conference is all about. I also have reports submitted by other Communications Committee members to post. So it is taking a few weeks to "cover" a conference that lasted only several days. I hope you don't mind!
And now back to our regularly scheduled blog posting...
Dale Lea is a health educator with the Nathonal Human Genome Research Institute. She opened her presentation by sharing with us how the experience of her mother's Alzheimers Disease led to her career in genetics. And she had a lot of information to share with us. Her two sets of presentation slides are posted on the official conference website: Current and Future Genome Research and Prepare for Personalized Medicine. No wonder I have five whole pages of notes that I took on the pad inside my handy red conference portfolio!
As health sciences librarians, we are all aware of the tremendous amount of information that has been generated as a result of the Human Genome Project and other genetic research projects. But one thing seems to be true: Genomics may be generating more questions than answers.
These days we're not really talking about genetics, the understanding of single genes, but about genomics, the understanding of the impact of an individual's entire genome on health and disease. Her slide 17 shows the three levels of "what's next" in genomics research:
This last level is the challenging part of genomics research and its application, the ethical, legal and social issues like privacy, discrimination, psychological impact, equitable access to healthcare, and informed decision-making by healthcare providers and healthcare consumers. Slides 11-16 of Prepare for Personalized Medicine are really thought-provoking. Especially look at the "Seeds for Thought." Remember I said that genomics is producing more questions than answers!
The first step for all of us to prepare for this era of "personalized medicine" is to know our family health histories. We all know that common diseases "run in families." Ms. Lea showed us the Surgeon General's Family History Initiative. She brought along copies of the print version of the "My Family Health Portrait." Luckily it is available online because somehow I didn't end up with a copy. It is available in five not-English languages and there is a web version as well as downloadable software that you can keep on your own computer. I'm going to follow the Surgeon General's suggestion from last year to use the family Thanksgiving gathering as an opportunity to interview my mother to fill out one of these histories for my son.
Looks like our MLA Pres has slowed down just enough to post his best photos from the 2007 Joint Meeting on his Flickr account. Just search the mcmla2007 tag and display the most recent ones to see these new photos. I sure wish that I had one of these Omaha shirts!
Looks like most all of the presentations and posters can be found on the official 2007 Joint Meeting website now. Your blog staff is diligently working on their stories about the conference, but in the meantime, check out the website. And keep watching this blog and its RSS feeds for more stories...we're not done yet!
Our after lunch speaker on Monday, October 15 was Dr. Joann Schaefer. She's the Director of the Nebraska DHHS Division of Public Health and Chief Medical Officer. She too has graciously shared her PowerPoint slides with us here on the official 2007 Joint Meeting website. Her opening cartoon is great:
She shared with us the work that is done by the Public Health division and how the department is structured to do that work. And she talked about what "Public Health" is really all about. It is about discovering what can be changed to improve health and disease outcomes. Small things can make big differences. Public Health data help us to see where to put scarce resources to work.
However, most of her presentation to us came from her heart. Dr. Schaefer wanted us to know that her job is about more than just statistics. As a physician in the public arena, she uses her speaking opportunities as an opportunity to advocate on an issue of great personal significance. She shared her personal story with us, as she has with many other groups. Her story is about her dear friend who was a victim of domestic violence. She shared with us the shocking statistics: 31% of women are physically or sexually asaulted over their lifetime; 8% of pregnant women report violence during pregnancy. She told us about the cycle of domestic violence and the signs of physical and verbal abuse to look for in our friends. She wants us to learn from her experience of not heeding these signs so that other women can be helped to escape that vicious cycle. Her story is heart-breaking and one that happens too often. Your blog editor has volunteered for the local domestic violence shelter, answering crisis line calls and taking intake histories and knows this truth. It is a difficult story to hear, but an important one.
OK this is a silly little blog post. But this was definitely a topic of conversation at the conference. The light fixtures at the Omaha Hilton were quite interesting. The ballroom chandliers are strips of colored glass in browns and golds. I overheard one conference attendee comment that they resembled paramecia! But they were really great looking paramecia!
In my house, I have just the place for one of these stained glass sconces!
We are not talking Tom Cruise here but Rivkah Sass, Director of the Omaha Public Library. Her presentation was entitled "Survival and Risk Taking in Libraries." And she ought to know...you need only look at the library's 2005-2006 Annual Report (warning very large file) to see that she is willing to take a few risks to promote the library! It was interesting that right at the beginning of her talk she noted that she doesn't really think of herself as a risk taker although she has a reputation for this.
One thing that I enjoyed in her presentation were the "inspirational" quotes that she used in her slides. The best ones were on the first and last slides:
Yes, her public library experience has some significant differences from my hospital library experience. But her advice rang true for all libraries.
She wonders if librarians are in a sense risk averse. Sometimes we worry about trifles. (I know this; I used to work in cataloging.) Libraries are changing so fast that we must take risks. "Our jobs don't come with a manual."
One of her major emphases was to "Make it easier, make it better." We need to risk thinking like our customers. The library needs to be easy to use with friendly staff who don't make the customers feel stupid. (Have you seen this week's thread in Unshelved about self-serve check-out?) We need to provide convenience everywhere.
She summarized her suggestions for further action with these bullet points:
Taking this to heart, my resolution for today is to quit complaining about how the medical students are lazy and rely too much on a certain not really evidence-based overpriced resource and don't do literature searches the way I think they should and think of ways to help them find the best quality information in a way that fits in with their harried existence!
Yesterday "mcmlapubcom" added 44 more photos tagged mcmla2007. Lots of fun shots in there so check them out! I am liking the black and white Secret Agent photos the best...
There is a nice photo of Fred Lee, but unfortunately one cannot really see that Yin and Yang pin.
If you have any photos, please share them!
I'm going to begin at the end. The conference ended with a presentation by Fred Lee. A quick glance around the ballroom confirmed that most of the conference attendees had stayed until the very end and it was worth it! Mr. Lee is a dynamic, engaging speaker. You can learn about his book If Disney Ran Your Hospital here on his consulting firm website. The 90 minutes he shared with us were a much abbreviated version of his usual multi-day presentation. I've worked more than a dozen years in a hospital, so I was particularly interested in what he had to share.
Mr. Lee has graciously shared his presentation slides and they are posted on the official Joint Meeting website. I apologize that I didn't get a photograph of Mr. Lee to share with you here. I have to admit to a bit of photographer fatigue by then. And since I am Facilities Chair for the 2009 Midwest Chapter conference (October 3-6 in Columbus), I left right after the presentation to attend the Meeting Planners Wrap-Up. Anyway, I wish you could see the Mickey Mouse Yin and Yang lapel pin that he was wearing!
I hear a lot about patient satisfaction even way down in the library in the basement. And truthfully, I only see patients when they are wandering around lost on their way to the cafeteria. (I walk with them all the way across the building sometimes to make sure they get there...the hallways are pretty confusing!) So I was thinking that Dr. Lee's ideas might be only interesting in some sort of intellectual sense. And indeed, his focus was entirely on clinical experiences. But as I was listening to his presentation, I couldn't help but think about how the approach he advocates would improve library services if I put a little more "theater" into my library service.
His point is that satisfaction really isn't what brings more business and improves profits. LOYALTY is what brings repeat business. I wrote this down in my notes with quotation marks around: "Satisfied patients have no story to tell." They had a forgettable experience; they got just what they expected, competent medical care. He claims that patient satisfaction has no correlation with financial performance. What you really want is a patient with a positive story to tell, a PROMOTER. Great perceptions, not just great outcomes increase market share. The feeling of caring that patients experience is what they remember and talk about with others.
So healthcare is not a service industry, but an experience industry. This is where theater comes in. You must engage the "guest" to create a memorable experience. Your promoters use emotion words like compassion, kindness, and comfort when describing their care. Courtesy and competence are not enough.
I think that given current economic realities in the medical library world, having promoters rather than merely satisfied customers would be a good thing. I've used the phrase "helping you find the information you need to do your job" as a tagline in library promotion for a number of years. Being personally interested in what your library patrons do in the organization and caring about how they can do their job better can create library promoters. Sounds good to me!