Highlights from the 2009 MLA Annual Conference

Posted in Conferences by medbrary on May 23, 2009

Day #1 | May 17th

The Agile Librarian’s Guide to Thriving in Any Institution

Michelynn McKnight, AHIPThis session’s speaker, Michelyn McKcKnight provided 11 principles from her upcoming book based on a popular MLA CE class as follows:

Know your value to the organization
Delighting your clients
Expanding your political influence
Pleasing your boss
Impressing decision makers (never assume they know you)
Choosing an instantly credible professional image
Ensuring positive communication
Marketing, advertising and public relations
Gathering/using evidence to support decisions
Behaving ethnically
Sustain a green & growing career

PR/Marketing Program: “The Who, What, Where,When, and Why of Social and Traditional Media”

This session provided a terrific overview of the trends in the media world. How do we define social media today? This was a major focus of this presentation, with regards to looking at our own experiences. For many, there is no longer a separate personal and professional image, but rather they are one and the same.

Social Media VS. Traditional Media

You generate your own content to share with others –VS–Reporter/anchor shares your story with its audience
wider audience–VS–Target audience
people can be inaccurate; there is an implied trust–VS–Information is usually fact checked
100% online–VS–mixed media

So who is using social media? EVERYONE, but people 50+ are the fastest growing user group of social media.

Library uses include:

Share information, such as promoting a special event.
establish a “brand” for your library, i.e. nike, etc.
Network with other libraries, hospitals, medical groups.

There are a endless number of tools out there, so how do you determine which social media is right for you? Here are some examples of the tools used based on purpose:

Professional networking: LinkedIn, Facebook, My Space
Sharing Information: Twitter, YouTube, Flickr
Gathering Information: CiteULike, RSS, Ning

The best advise the the presenter offered was to not jump into social media without setting a purpose or goal. The more you think visually, the more successful you will be.

Day #2 | May 18th

Top Technical Trends III: Technology Fusion

P5180570 This is a returning session and one of my personal favorites from last year’s conference in Chicago. It was great to see returning panelist discuss their top technology picks for this year’s conference.

Up first was Michelle Kraft, AHIP, Senior Medical Librarian, Alumni Library, Cleveland Clinic, Cleveland, OH with the Flip Camera.

Bob Johnson followed with the second trend: Cloud Computing, which allows you to use web-based software on the internet.

Software as Service–Gmail, GoogleDocs, etc.
Hardware as Service–purchase server space inexpensively from Amazon and other vendors
Platform as Service

Gabriel Rios continuied with the third trend, Twitter. Not to be confused as an email platform or strategy, but rather, a microblogging service–or more simply put–a chat room.

The fourth top technology trend is Mobile Technology, which is on the rise. The iPhone is dominating the smart phone market, but the iTouch shouldn’t be overlooked for its ability to be integrated into a program because it lacks a phone plan, but still has all of the application features. Some issues need to be examined however including the fact that there are not mobile versions of all websites and the iPhone/iTouch don’t use Flash. Moreover, how do we build applications related to library use?

Last was Eric Schnell, who presented via YouTube on Library Labs, which allow libraries to test resources to see what works. You can view his presentation here:

Day #3 | May 19th

Open Forum: Social Networking

The Social Networking Open Forum provided a lot if useful information with regards to the direction in which the Committee is moving.

Great news: Committee has been approved to continue for 2 more years.

Bad news: The web-based classes on Web 2.0 will no longer be offered–the previous sessions are archived on the MLA website for anyone interested in completing the classes (for no credit).

Of interest, the group’s future plans include phasing out Web 2.0 and focusing on tools such as Moodle, for continuing education and YouTube for streaming media. With the use of these tools, there was recognition of some the issues associated, including the challenges that hospital librarians face with access to these tools.

Participants provided good suggestions including:

The development of a actionable reasons to use these items list (to convince administrators)

NLM Update

NLM has a number of milestone occasions upcoming, including the 20th Anniversary of NCBI and the 175th Anniversary of NLM in 2011. The NLM updates where proivided as follows:

DIMRC (Disaster Information Management Research Center) NLM is involved in federal disaster preparedness for a number or reasons including to maintain access to information and provide integrated access, develop partnerships, and sustain information technology networks. Additional information is available online at http://www.disasterinfo.nlm.nih.gov and http://www.nnlm.gov/ep. Of interest is the emerging role of the Disaster Infromation Specialist.

Emergency Access Initiative–will provide temporary full-text articles for free, which would be accessible through PubMed. There are over 300 publishers involved.

Production Highlights FY09–This includes the additiona of 71,000 new citations to MEDLINE, redesign of MedlinePlus, new PubMed screens and the addition of 1947 print citations to MEDLINE.

For additional information on the MLA09 Conference, please refer to the MLA Official Blog and Wiki at http://www.mlanet.org/am/am2009/.

McKnight will highlight principles from
the forthocming Libraries Unlimited book based on the
popular MLA continuing education course, “Proving
Your Worth: Convincing Non-Librarian Decision Makers
the Value of Your Essential Services.”