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Vote for Your MLA Leaders

Candidate Responses: President-Elect Candidate Forum

The Nominating Committee asked each candidate for a response to these questions:

1. What should MLA do as an organization to advocate for the profession and to anticipate and meet the needs of its current and future members?

Candidate responses:

2. What experience and skills would you bring to the MLA presidency?

Candidate responses:

Candidate "stump speech" videos (download):

To top of page Laurie L. Thompson, AHIP, response to question #1:

As advocates for the profession, we must be able to articulate the value of what we do every day. We help make lives better, for health care workers, for administrators, for patients, for the public, for every constituent that we serve. Each of us has a story to tell about our value. A database search for a physician helps her do her job more efficiently and ultimately helps her patients or her research. Providing that important statistic for an administrator’s report saves him time and may help obtain funding for a new program or service. Parents who receive an article about their child’s illness will make more informed decisions about the care of their child. Assistance with a successful research grant proposal or service on an institutional review board helps bring funding to the institution for research that will lead to better health care. One story alone will not do the job; however, our collective stories can help quantify our value and prove our worth.

Communication is a major key to anticipating and meeting member needs. By asking questions of its members and listening carefully to the answers, the organization will continue to grow and remain strong. Leaders at all levels must encourage active participation and provide opportunities for new leaders to emerge. Staying current with the latest research and monitoring trends in the profession are also important tasks for the organization as it looks and moves forward. To ensure that MLA has future members, the association must continue to build its relationships with library and information schools, helping to contribute to their educational and research efforts.

Our stories are powerful. We must tell them with facts and figures, research and human interest. Our collective voice is strong. Let it be heard.

To top of page Laurie L. Thompson, AHIP, response to question #2:

I have been fortunate to have spent most of my thirty-year career as a librarian in medical libraries. I've worked at the National Library of Medicine, for both public and private universities with their own hospitals, and for a private, corporate medical library. I've worked in both technical and public services and have spent the last eleven years as a library director. I've participated in four different MLA chapters and several sections, and I've served on a variety of MLA committees. My current service on the MLA Board of Directors has given me deeper insight into the workings of the organization.

I would bring many years of leadership to the MLA presidency. In addition to directing libraries, I have led other library organizations, including the South Central Academic Medical Library (SCAMeL) consortium and the Central New York Library Resources Council. I am on the Board of Advisors of the University of North Texas College of Information. I have also served on the executive boards of nonlibrary volunteer organizations in a variety of positions.

One of my strengths is listening. Every decision requires hearing all sides of the issue and gathering as much information as possible. I value collaboration. Teamwork nearly always produces a better product or service. I believe in the social responsibility of libraries and of MLA. We make lives better, and that’s a powerful mission to promote.

The Medical Library Association has been my professional home for thirty years. I have gained wonderful experience and learned much through my membership and participation. I welcome the opportunity to serve MLA as its president and to reciprocate for the value I have received from the organization and my friends and colleagues.

To top of page Gerald (Jerry) Perry, AHIP, response to question #1:

I believe it's time to reengineer and reimagine our association. MLA has been successful in advocating to external constituencies on behalf of "us"—health information professionals and by extension the people we serve. We have improved greatly at communicating cohesively with allied organizations such as the Association of Academic Health Sciences Libraries (AAHSL). Recent statements on journal publishing ethics and the global economic crisis are terrific examples. Organizationally, MLA has a comprehensive infrastructure for advocating on behalf of the members within the association.

However, as we consider the unprecedented economic, technological, and social challenges we face, I believe what has served us well will simply not be enough. I live that evidence when I talk with my university's faculty about scholarly communications, when I sit down with hospital librarians in Denver and we discuss an increasingly ambiguous future, and when I talk with the brilliant new librarians I hope to recruit.

We need to figure out how to simplify our messages and democratically engage the energy of "us." I would look to technology and our creativity to lead the way. We must not sacrifice our critical relationships with peer and allied organizations, and we must continue to speak loudly and in unison on behalf of our values. But we must also look for efficiencies and focus our efforts and messages on what is core.

As an association, MLA needs to make it easier to be a contributing member. We need to rethink our meetings, leveraging technology so that more of us can participate. We need to figure out how to simplify engagement in MLA so that members will continue to renew and so that we can grow. And, we need to invest efforts in enabling each member to be a spokesperson for the profession. The results—a reimagined association better positioned to advocate for our future.

To top of page Gerald (Jerry) Perry, AHIP, response to question #2:

Over the course of a career launched in the mid-'80s and that has led me from Buffalo to Chicago to Tucson and now to Denver, I've had the good fortune to work for and with some of our profession’s most exceptional leaders. Through service to MLA and by dint of the National Library of Medicine (NLM)/AAHSL Leadership Fellows Program, I've been mentored by yet more. I've learned a lot along the way.

Among those many lessons is recognition of the joy and reward to be found in embracing the complexity of the problems that we face. I am fundamentally an optimist, and I don't shy from difficult situations, people, or issues. I direct a complex organization and have been deeply engaged in issues ranging from governance, accreditation, and budgeting to capacity building, strategic planning, and faculty and donor relations. My leadership approach is to borrow from the theoretical frameworks of appreciative inquiry, coleadership, and emotional intelligence, but framed in the pragmatic here and now. I talk to folks, figure out what’s important, and then I try to find opportunities for mutual success. I would approach the MLA presidency in the same spirit.

I am energetic, enthusiastic, and hopeful. I am a people person, and I thrive on diversity. I am also a reasonable risk taker. Back in the 1990s, I helped launch MLA's Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgendered Health Science Librarians Special Interest Group (SIG). I have never experienced personal or professional push-back from that experience. I know the risk was worth it, and I am proud of MLA for supporting me. The SIG and the sections I belong to have been my MLA homes, and I know that every MLA member has her or his own association homes. The association is part of our identity, and as president I would see my role as your champion and promoter.

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