ConnectMidwest

Today I attended the Breezing Along with the RML session Developing and Marketing an RSS Journal Service for Your Library. Is "attended" is the correct verb? Participated? I've never used that online presentation software before and it seemed to work fairly well. We could simultaneously see the presenters, their PowerPoint presentation or internet screen, comments and questions from the participants. I couldn't read the smallest print on the presentation slides on my screen, however. Having to use the phone for the audio portion of the session seems so awkward to me.

I saw the presentation in Omaha and wanted to listen again so that I could get more details. Taking one of their ideas, I'm setting up a demonstration feed reader account to show to some of my library users. Right now I'm setting it up with the table of contents feeds from the the library's surgery journals. I'm amazed to find that the Elsevier journals do not seem to have a table of contents feed. Am I missing something here? I might just have to set up a feed from PubMed for those journals. Anyone out there have a better idea?

Last week, your intrepid blog editor exhibited for the Midwest Chapter at the Kent State University School of Library and Information Science Library Careers Night.

I was joined at the Midwest Chapter table by two of my fellow medical librarians from the Cleveland Clinic Alumni Library, Gretchen Hallerberg and Barb Anderson. We had a great time talking to students about careers in medical librarianship. (AND we got a free dinner!) The Midwest Chapter offers FREE student memberships, so I handed out quite a few membership applications. I'll be interested to see how many students join the chapter. I talked a lot about our Annual Meeting Scholarships. Since I am a Kent State alumna myself, I would love to have a Kent State student attend the Midwest MLA / MHSLA 2008 Conference. I told everyone who visited our table what a great value our annual conferences are, with two days crammed with quality programming, great special events, and so many opportunities for networking. The $500 scholarship easily will cover the cost of the conference and two nights at the conference hotel.

One nice thing about being in Kent for the evening was being able to visit with my son who is a KSU sophomore. It was nice to have some help tearing down the exhibit! And collegian son was able to snag some of those free OCLC pens from George across the aisle.