Candidate Responses

Board of Directors

The Nominating Committee asked each candidate for a response to this question:

Candidate Responses

• Faith A. Meakin, AHIP
• Judith G. Robinson
• helen-ann brown, AHIP
• Dixie A. Jones, AHIP
• Ysabel Bertolucci, AHIP

Faith A. Meakin, AHIP Director and Lecturer, Health Science Center Libraries, University of Florida–Gainesville, 1994–

Response to Nominating Committee Question

MLA, its leadership and members, has crafted a thoughtful strategic vision and plan that will direct the association's activities through the next several years.

The need to find and retain quality librarians and leadership for libraries is a core concern of all library associations and my special area of interest. As an MLA Board member, I would focus on expanding the programs that MLA already has in place to promote recognition of our field and to develop effective advocacy strategies.

It is important for us to distinguish what makes health sciences librarians unique. Library schools and employers should be looking for creativity, initiative, flexibility, and leadership in the new applicants for our profession. The brightest and the best of these should be identified and actively courted into health sciences librarianship. Recent surveys of library school graduates show that internships and on-the-job training are the preferred methods of acquiring experience. However, promising students lacked confidence that they could succeed in health sciences librarianship, because they came from nonscience backgrounds. Restructuring the library workforce is vital to meeting the ongoing needs of the profession in the midst of dramatic change. Librarians are repositioning, even recreating, their libraries in response to their vision of the future. The librarians that come from other fields bring new skills and competencies that we can use as we recreate our libraries. I would like to pursue with MLA and NLM the possibility of having more internships in medical librarianship similar to those of the 1960s.

I love being a medical librarian. As an MLA Board member, I want to develop programs that help others discover the excitement of this dynamic and fascinating career. Whether for new students or new or established professionals, MLA should provide the tools for the individual and the profession to succeed brilliantly.

Judith G. Robinson Assistant Dean for Library and Learning Resources, Edward E. Bricknell Medical Sciences Library, Eastern Virginia Medical School–Norfolk, 1995–

Response to Nominating Committee Question

I began my career as a medical librarian in the early 1980s in the middle of an economic recession. Library budgets were frozen or cut. Librarians faced hiring and salary freezes. Several hospital libraries in my area closed or were consolidated. The emergence of personal computers and "end user" searching products advertised directly to physicians had health sciences librarians wondering about our future. Sound familiar?

The cyclical nature of the economy guarantees change and transformation in the workplace and professions. Downturns in the economy allow us to review, prioritize, and build new alliances and to learn new methodologies for accomplishing goals. As Charles Darwin said, "It is not the strongest of the species that survive, nor the most intelligent, but the one most responsive to change."

Our collective strength as MLA members can help us survive and thrive. The new MLA strategic plan directs us to five key areas for action: membership issues, lifelong learning, advocacy, knowledge creation/communication, and expanding our network of partners. In order to achieve progress in these areas, MLA must continue its efforts at creating an agile, results-oriented association. We need to be able to identify challenges, possible solutions, and best practices quickly and communicate them throughout the membership.

As an MLA Board member, I would focus on how communication and communication technologies can help us accomplish our goals. Whether we are providing continuing education programs via Web-based distance education programs; accomplishing the work of chapters, sections, or task forces via collaborative software; or holding online forums on specific breaking issues, communication technologies can help us provide more support for more members than ever before.

Organized for constant change and building on past success, MLA and its members can adapt and thrive.

helen-ann brown, AHIP Information Services Librarian, Weill Cornell Medical Library, Weill Medical College of Cornell University, New York, NY, 1991–

Response to Nominating Committee Question

The new MLA strategic plan lays out an energetic, enthusiastic method for advocating our core values, building our community, encouraging lifelong learning, creating a knowledgebase, and forming global networks. As a member of the MLA Board of Directors, I can comfortably embrace this plan and bring practical, tried experience with expanding "what if" curiosity to carry it forward. Pat Thibodeau, AHIP, MLA president, calls on us to speak up in a "collective voice" to the public and health care community everywhere. I am on pitch and can carry the tune. MLA needs building blocks of recruitment, recognition, and retention to anchor our community. My MLA committee work at the national, section, and chapter level and experience as a facilitator and master's in the dynamics of organization carry me to the MLA Board ready to feel safe and have loads of fun thinking out of the box to resolidify our anchors as well as expand and rearrange the boundaries of our community. MLA encourages lifelong learning. I always have questions that need answers. I bring a real adult learner to the MLA Board as it considers new in-person and long-distance methods to keep our members up-to-the-minute. Our knowledge-base must be founded on solid evidence-based research. Colleagues and I have received MLA recognition for our research. MLA must allow safe, invigorating travel on an expanding global network. MLANET is a grand on-ramp to the information superhighway. MEDLIB-L offers such an expeditious way to reach many quickly. I have joined the new professionals list with much interest. I experienced the grand potential of the mentoring database by answering questions from an aspiring medical librarian. Multi-chapter meetings should be encouraged to bring lots of opportunity for networking. Being on the MLA Board has been a longtime ambition. I would be honored to serve.

Dixie A. Jones, AHIP Section Chief, Medical Library, Overton Brooks VA Medical Center, Shreveport, LA, 2003–

Response to Nominating Committee Question

If we are to accomplish the association vision of improving health through quality information, we must convince health care providers and consumers that librarians are indeed the professionals most suited to the selection and delivery of reliable health care information. The latest scientific evidence drives quality health care; it is our role to make this information accessible and to ensure its currency and validity. Our success in this endeavor is dependent on education for two entities: health sciences librarians and the public. (1) MLA must work with library schools at the beginning of the learning process to promote basic competencies and must encourage librarians' lifelong learning through a variety of continuing education media, the Academy of Health Information Professionals, and publications. The organization must also continue efforts to teach librarians how to promote our expertise. (2) MLA must continue direct public relations efforts to members of the public, including both health care professionals and consumers, to educate them about what we do and why our services are essential to quality health care.

In a time of dwindling resources, how fortunate we are that MLA is a dependable resource for us! We can work together within the organization to see that it offers the kind of support members need to succeed professionally, whether that support is in the form of educational offerings, career planning, legislative advocacy, useful Web information, partnering with other organizations for the strength that comes in numbers, public relations, advocacy in the publishing world, networking, or publishing opportunities. As an MLA Board member, I can bring to bear my experience (in different types and sizes of health sciences libraries and at different levels of the organization) to make decisions and take actions that will guide the association as the premier resource, advocate, and support system for health sciences librarians.

Ysabel Bertolucci, AHIP Health Sciences Librarian, Health Sciences Library, Kaiser Permanente Medical Center, Oakland, CA, 1987–

Response to Nominating Committee Question

Advocacy is the key to the advancement of health sciences librarianship. A strong association visible in the information arena will encourage those with interest in librarianship, focus discussion on health information issues, and retain the bright minds that will mold the future of the profession. Given the limited resources of the association, we need to make an information advocate of every member. That advocacy is the most important skill we can learn. Many of my colleagues say that MLA should do something about every issue—I believe, however, that it is we as individual members who should work together with MLA on issues of importance. For inspiration, I look to my nurse colleagues. Through their very strong American Nurses Association, they have been able to change the public and the administrative perception of the nursing profession. We are a profession smaller in number but definitely not lesser in value! We add to quality health care. We need to be advocates for health information who know the issues and articulate them in every forum. We must take responsibility for our profession. The association can help us with strategies and can help us to become more visible in our communities as we explain how our profession contributes to the quality of health care. This visible advocacy will help to recruit those wishing to follow an information career as well as assist in determining a higher worth for the profession and a sense of personal worth that will retain those new librarians. MLA needs to use its resources to the greatest advantage—I see advocacy as the foundation for enhancement of our perceived worth. I value my profession and would like to serve on the MLA Board of Directors to recruit professionals into the field to expand the direction of information careers.