Kate Corcoran : Use this area to enter your comments about this second version of the draft strategic plan. Thanks for your input!
Karen Albert : Much of the document sounds fine, but I see a major problem with the constant reference to MLA constituents as "health information professionals." As others before me have indicated, this term includes non-librarian, non-MLA groups, such as medical records people, and IT people working in healthcare computing environments. This plan should clearly refer to the MLA community, even if we have to revert to the term "health sciences librarians or professionals working with knowledge-based information (JCAHO's terminology). I'm not sure what would be the best approach to this, but I am not in favor of continuing to use the "health information professional" term unless it is further clarified or defined, even though MLA does use AHIP (which I think is also confusing and misleading).
carolyn paul : Concerning the Vision statement "MLA believes that quality information is essential for improved health." I think this is a leap beyond what our role in health care is. It skips the step that emphasizes our role. Because this is MLA's vision, I would focus on our role and would change 'improved health' to 'improved health care decision-making'.
carolyn paul : Also, under Vision: The phrase "proven positive influence on the quality of health in the world" needs to be followed up with a bullet under the 'Advocacy' or 'Creating and Communicating our Knowledge' section which seeks improved funding of librarians' research and innovative projects. Current grants offered by government and private sources are too few and too small to accomplish this vision.
Nadine Ellero : Under MLA's Vision, I would like to see an emphasis on the impact that MLA can and will have on both "librarianship talents" and "the cause of improved health and healthcare for our world." I propose an ammendment to the Vision statement such as: MLA believes that quality information is essential for improved health. MLA aspires to be the association of the most visible, valued, and trusted health information experts [here begins revised section]"whose mission is to discover and promote quality health information to our primary clienteles and society/world at large." In section on goals, I encourage adding specific statements describing "discover" (that which includes tried and true collection development activities) and for "promotion" (that which includes cataloging, indexing, teaching, displaying on web pages, text-encoding, etc. activities). Thanks for the opportunity to place our comments!!