MLA President 2001–2002

Carol G. Jenkins, AHIP
Interim Report #1

Since taking office as MLA President in May 2001 in Orlando, I've had a busy summer. I attended the ASAE executives' seminar with Carla Funk and Linda Watson in June in Washington, DC. This seminar gave us some insight into how to move the association's strategic planning and governance processes toward a 21st century "knowledge based" model. This model focuses Board attention on clarifying the vision and identifying major opportunities and mega-issues for association action. It suggests a way to organize Board agendas to make strategic issues the top priority. At the fall Board meeting we began to use some of these guidelines to shape a new MLA plan for the future.

In August, I attended the IFLA 2001 Council and General Conference in Boston, along with many other U.S. medical librarians. This was my first IFLA meeting, and one I thoroughly enjoyed. MLA's involvement in IFLA underscores the importance of working with other librarians worldwide on issues of mutual interest, such as freedom of information access and copyright protection, new modes of scholarly communication and the uses of technology to improve information access. One major theme of this meeting was knowledge management. Some very interesting models for knowledge management systems and services were presented by colleagues abroad.

Also in August, the report of the team investigating the death of a research study participant at Johns Hopkins University was issued. In its report, this team claimed that an inadequate literature search had been performed as part of the application and this was not discovered during the IRB proposal review process. As a result of this unfortunate occurrence, many institutions are now reviewing their IRB processes in this area; and there is renewed attention to the expert role that medical librarians can play to help both researchers and IRB members perform and evaluate comprehensive literature searches.

MLA issued a press release in which we promote the valuable expert searcher role professional health sciences librarians can play and suggest MLA's willingness to participate in developing standards or guidelines to help avoid such accidents in the future. This press release was picked up by an editorial in the Lancet and in several other publications. The MLA Board approved appointment of a new task force on expert searching, which will recommend actions to promote the importance of expert searching, and a plan for achieving them, including the development of guidelines leading to best searching practices in health care and biomedical research settings. This task force is chaired by Ruth Holst.

I attended the Pacific Northwest MLA Chapter meeting in Salishan, OR, September 9-13, 2001. This meeting coincided with the tragic terrorist attacks on US citizens in New York and Washington, DC. Most attendees still managed to attend the meeting, though it was understandably subdued. There were about 70 attendees. MLA was also represented with its exhibit by Beverly Bradley. The meeting offered some stimulating speakers. Roy Tennant from the California Digital Library encouraged us to develop a practical perspective in technology management for the future; Jan Stafl, MD, presented a fascinating perspective on holistic medicine; and a consumer health librarian panel shared insights on their approaches to providing access to health information to the public.

I presented the MLA update during breakfast. Several people commented positively on the range of good things MLA is doing, especially the expert searching press release and consumer health efforts with the Pew Internet and American Life Project. Members also responded to my request for "practical magic" ideas for recruiting new professionals into the field, and using technology to expand our services.

All in all, a very exciting first quarter! In my next update, I will be reporting on the Mid-Atlantic MLA Chapter meeting in Ocean City, MD, the Tri-Chapter meeting in New Orleans, and the NPC 2002 site visit to Dallas.