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Press Releases

What's New: April 2006

MLA Recognizes Excellence in Health Librarianship at MLA '06 in Phoenix, AZ

MLA Recognizes Excellence in Health Librarianship at MLA '06 in Phoenix, AZ

TThe Medical Library Association (MLA) is pleased to announce this year's award winners selected through the MLA professional recognition program. The award recipients, recognized for their outstanding achievements in health sciences information, will be honored at the Awards Ceremony and Luncheon on Monday, May 22, 2006, during MLA '06 in Phoenix, AZ. This year's winners are as follows:

Renee Bougard (President's Award)
Core Public Health Journals Project (Louise Darling Medal for Distinguished Achievement in Collection Development in the Health Sciences)
Anthony S. Fauci (Joseph Leiter NLM/MLA Lectureship)
Atul Gawande (John P. McGovern Award Lectureship)
Janice Kelly (President's Award)
Julie J. McGowan, AHIP, FMLA (Janet Doe Lectureship for 2006)
Midcontinental Chapter of MLA (Majors/MLA Chapter Project of the Year Award)
New York Online Access to Health (NOAH) (Thomson Scientific/Frank
Bradway Rogers Information Advancement Award)
Connie Schardt, AHIP (Lucretia W. McClure Excellence in Education Award)
Janet Schneider, AHIP (Lois Ann Colaianni Award for Excellence and Achievement in Hospital Librarianship)
Jean P. Shipman, AHIP (Ida and George Eliot Prize)
Suzanne Shultz (Murray Gottlieb Prize)
Dolores Skowronek (Rittenhouse Award)
Linda Walton (Estelle Brodman Award for the Academic Medical Librarian of the Year)
Sarah B. Watstein (Ida and George Eliot Prize)

The MLA President's Award is given to individuals whose contributions have enhanced the profession of health sciences librarianship or furthered the objectives of the association. This year's recipients, Renee Bougard, Houston Academy of Medicine-Texas Medical Center Library, National Network of Libraries of Medicine (NN/LM), South Central Region, Houston, TX, and Janice Kelly, Health Sciences and Human Services Library, University of Maryland, National Network of Libraries of Medicine (NN/LM), Southeastern/Atlantic Region, Baltimore, MD, both NN/LM regional executive directors, will receive the award for their invaluable contributions in response to the Hurricane Katrina disaster. In the aftermath of the hurricane, Bougard and Kelly responded to colleagues and libraries in need by fielding calls, serving as clearinghouses for information about damage and destruction, and provides timely reports and updates. Both directors also helped to coordinate and arrange funding to aid affected medical librarians as they prepared to rebuild their libraries and communities.

The Core Public Health Journals Project is this year's winner of the Louise Darling Medal for Distinguished Achievement in Collection Development in the Health Sciences for its valuable impact on public health collection development and collection analysis. The Louise Darling Medal recognizes accomplishment in collection development health sciences. The Core project identifies a ranked list of core public health journals that should be considered by all librarians in developing public health collections.

The Joseph Leiter NLM/MLA Lectureship was established to stimulate intellectual liaison between MLA and the National Library of Medicine (NLM). Lecturers are chosen for their ability to discuss subjects related to biomedical communications. Anthony S. Fauci, director, National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, National Institutes of Health, Bethesda, MD, will deliver this year's lecture, "Pandemic Influenza and Other Emerging Infectious Diseases: Public Health Threat and the Research Agenda." The lecture, to be presented May 10 at NLM, will provide an overview on the status of the nation's preparedness for a pandemic influenza and ability to detect and counter bioterrorism. This year's lecture is particularly poignant due to the death of Joseph Leiter on May 27, 2005.

Atul Gawande was honored with the 2006 John P. McGovern Award Lectureship and will present the lecture on Sunday, May 21, 2006, during MLA '06. Gawande is a practicing surgeon on staff at Brigham and Women's Hospital (BWH) and the Dana Farber Cancer Institute in Boston, MA. He also holds positions as assistant professor of surgery at Harvard Medical School, where he received his medical degree; as assistant professor in the Department of Health Policy and Management at the Harvard School of Public Health; and as associate director for the BWH Center for Surgery and Public Health. Gawande, an accomplished speaker, writer, and professor-regularly writes about medicine and science for The New England Journal of Medicine. The John P. McGovern Award Lectureship was established in 1983 in honor of John P. McGovern, noted physician, educator, author, and medical historian. The lectureship is awarded to significant national or international figures who will speak on a topic of importance to health sciences librarianship.

Julie J. McGowan, AHIP, FMLA, associate dean for information resources and educational technology, Indiana University School of Medicine-Indianapolis, a leader who has made many contributions in health librarianship, has been selected to present the 2006 Janet Doe Lecture. This year's lecture is titled, "Swimming with the Sharks: Perspectives on Professional Risk Taking." The Janet Doe Lecturer is an individual chosen annually by MLA for their unique perspective on the history or philosophy of medical librarianship. The Doe lectureship was established in 1966 by anonymous donation. McGowan, a Distinguished Member of the Academy of Health Information Professionals (AHIP), is a pioneer in the medical informatics field and was a founding faculty member of the nation's first school of informatics at Indiana University. Former chair of MLA's Medical Informatics Section, McGowan is an MLA Fellow, an American College of Informatics Fellow, and a National Library of Medicine Fellow in informatics. McGowan's long list of awards and accolades also includes the Medical Informatics Section/MLA Career Development Grant, the Thomson Scientific/ Frank Bradway Rogers Information Advancement Award, and the Lucretia W. McClure Excellence in Education Award.

MLA teams with Majors Scientific Books to sponsor the Majors/MLA Chapter Project of the Year Award, which recognizes chapter excellence, innovation, and contribution to the profession of health sciences librarianship. For their innovative project on membership recruitment for librarians at both the chapter and national level, The Midcontinental Chapter of MLA will receive the 2006 award. The project, "Making New Friends While Keeping the Old: Membership and Recruitment Retention," explored proactive initiatives that were executed by various members and committees in the chapter to recruit new members and recognize current members' professionalism and leadership.

One of the nation's first consumer health Internet resources, NOAH: New York Online Access to Health, and its editors will be recognized with this year's Thomson Scientific/Frank Bradway Rogers Information Advancement Award. The award honors outstanding contributions in the use of technology to deliver health sciences information, in the science of information, or in the facilitation of the delivery of information. In addition to being among the first to provide reliable, understandable health information to the public, NOAH is also one of the first consumer health Websites to provide online health information for the growing Hispanic population and is the first consumer site to add direct links to translations in other languages of the English language documents on its site. One of its editors, MLA member Patricia E. Gallagher, AHIP, senior librarian, New York Academy of Medicine, will accept the award on behalf of the many editors involved in creating and building the project.

The Lucretia W. McClure Excellence in Education Award acknowledges an outstanding educator in the field of health sciences librarianship and informatics who demonstrates leadership in education or skills in teaching, curriculum development, mentoring, or research. Connie Schardt, AHIP, Medical Center Library, Duke University, Durham, NC, is such an educator and will receive the 2006 award for her leadership in the field of evidence-based medicine (EBM). Currently education coordinator for the Duke University Medical School Library, Schardt aided in the development of an EBM curriculum for the Duke University Medical School with her vast knowledge of EBM. Schardt has taught numerous courses on the subject and coauthored the book Finding the Evidence in Evidence-based Pediatrics and Child Health. Recently elected to the MLA Board, Schardt has also served as chair of both the Mid-Atlantic Chapter of MLA and the MLA Pacific Northwest Chapter.

The Lois Ann Colaianni Award for Excellence and Achievement in Hospital Librarianship recognizes an individual who has made lasting and outstanding contributions to the profession in hospital librarianship. For her work throughout her twenty-seven years with the Department of Veterans' Affairs, Janet Schneider, AHIP, is the recipient of this year's award. A pioneer in consumer health information services, Schneider has created many consumer health programs and services benefiting veterans, nurses, and veterans administration employees at veteran's hospitals throughout the nation. At the James A. Haley Veterans' Hospital in Tampa, FL, where she is patient education librarian, Schneider expanded the recreational library services and resources into a Patient Education Resource Center for the hospital which became one of the foremost patient health education centers in the Department of Veterans Affairs.

The Ida and George Eliot Prize recognizes a work published in the preceding calendar year that has been judged most effective in furthering medical librarianship. Jean P. Shipman, AHIP, Tompkins-McCaw Library for the Health Sciences, Virginia Commonwealth University-Richmond, and, Sarah B. Watstein, Charles E. Young Research Library, University of California-Los Angeles are this year's recipients for their editorial work on "Emerging Roles of Health Sciences Librarians," a special two-edition Reference Services Review publication that promotes the medical librarianship profession. Shipman, MLA's 2005/06 president-elect, has long served the association as one of its most revered leaders. She served as a member of the MLA Board of Directors (1999-2002) and while there, served as board secretary. She has also served on task forces involving recruitment and promoting the profession, including MLA's Task Force to Plan Recruitment for the Twenty-first Century Workforce and the MLA Informationist Conference Task Force.

The Murray Gottlieb Prize honors the best unpublished essay on the history of medicine and the allied sciences written by a health sciences librarian. Suzanne Shultz, Library, York Hospital, York, PA will receive this year's award for her paper, "The Kappa Lambda Society of Hippocrates: A Reconsideration in the Context of Its Time." The paper contributes to the history of medicine and adds to the small amount of existing research on the Kappa Lambda secret society.

Dolores Skowronek, School of Library and Information Science, University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee will receive this year's Rittenhouse Award. Sponsored by Rittenhouse Book Distributors, the award is presented for the best unpublished paper on medical librarianship written by a student in an American Library Association (ALA)-accredited school of library sciences or an intern in health sciences librarianship. Skowronek was selected for her paper, "An Ultrasound Digital Library for Anesthesiologists," which presents the argument for involving of health sciences librarians in developing Web-based resources for faculty and students.

Linda Walton, Galter Health Sciences Library, Northwestern University, Chicago, IL, will be presented with the 2006 Estelle Brodman Award for the Academic Medical Librarian of the Year, which recognizes an academic medical librarian at mid-career who demonstrates significant achievement, potential for leadership, and continuing excellence. Walton's contributions to MLA and to the profession have been farreaching. A leader in consumer health information, she has helped to set policy for several hospital libraries and has authored numerous posters on providing health information to the public. She is also an accomplished author who has written many articles for the Journal of the Medical Library Association (JMLA) as well as Medical Reference Services Quarterly. Walton, an incoming MLA Board member, is past chair of the MLA Grants and Scholarship Committee (1996-97) and of MLA's Collection Development Section (2002-03). She also received the National Library of Medicine/Association of Academic Health Sciences Leadership Fellowship in 2002/03.

MLA, a nonprofit, educational organization, comprises health sciences information professionals with more than 4,500 members worldwide. Through its programs and services, MLA provides lifelong educational opportunities, supports a knowledgebase of health information research, and works with a global network of partners to promote the importance of quality information for improved health to the health care community and the public.

For more information, please contact Lisa C. Fried, mlapd2@mlahq.org, 312.419.9094 x28.