Medical Library Association | Public Policy : News Room

Press Releases

October 2007

MLA Establishes Virginia L. and William K. Beatty Service Award
2007/08 MLA Spectrum Scholars Selected

MLA Establishes Virginia L. and William K. Beatty Service Award

An association is only as strong as its volunteers members who give their support toward advancing its mission and goals. The Medical Library Association (MLA) is pleased to announce the establishment of the Virginia L. and William K. Beatty MLA Volunteer Service Award, to recognize medical librarians who have demonstrated outstanding service to MLA and the health sciences library profession. Recipients will be MLA members who, for at least ten years, have made exceptional contributions toward furthering the mission, goals and objectives of the association.

This annual award is named in honor of Virginia L. and William K. Beatty, long-time, dedicated MLA volunteers and strong advocates of the medical librarianship profession. Each recipient will receive a certificate recognizing their outstanding service and a $1,000 check. The first Virginia L. and William K. Beatty MLA Volunteer Service Award will be presented at the MLA annual meeting in Chicago, May 16-21, 2008.

Virginia and William Beatty were both active in the local Philadelphia MLA in 1954, where they, under the leadership of Liz Bready, started working on Vital Notes on Medical Periodicals, a volunteer job they continued until 1976. In the 1960's and 1970's, they consulted on developing programs and planning seventeen medical libraries in the US and Canada. From 1979 to 1986, as MLA co-archivists they prepared the MLA Archives for deposit in the National Library of Medicine (NLM).

In 1952, Virginia Lewis, one of the early MLA scholarship recipients, married William Beatty. After a year working for the Atomic Energy Commission at DuPont, she founded the Medical Literature Service (later Medical Documentation Service), that provided library services for money (a new idea at that time) in the College of Physicians in Philadelphia. In 1955 she encouraged her husband to take Tom Fleming's course in Medical Librarianship and also become eligible for MLA Grade 1 Certification.

William Beatty was Medical Librarian from 1962-1974 and Professor of Medical Bibliography at Northwestern University from 1962 until his death in 2002. He was an active member of the American Library Association (ALA) and Special Libraries Association (SLA) in addition to MLA. He wrote over 175 articles and book chapters and more than 2,000 book reviews. He consulted on many projects. From 1965 to 1987 Bill worked with the National Library of Medicine on Selection of Materials for MEDLARS and Index Medicus. He was consultant for History/Biography and Etymology (1982-1989) for the 25th edition of Stedman's Medical Dictionary and consultant for History/Biography for their 26th edition. In 1982 he was a member of the faculty for a workshop, "Selective Information systems for Medical Libraries in the People's Republic of China," held in Beijing and sponsored by the Peoples Republic of China, the China Medical Board, and the Rockefeller Foundation.

Mr. Beatty was active at every level of MLA. For thirty years he contributed the "Winnowings" and "Journal Notes" columns to the Bulletin of the Medical Library Association (BMLA) (now Journal of the Medical Library Association). For his efforts on behalf of the association, MLA honored Mr. Beatty several times including MLA's Ida and George Eliot Prize in 1973 and an MLA Fellowship in 1997.

MLA is proud to offer this award that honors the Beattys' service and looks forward to presenting this award to recognize the association's outstanding volunteers.

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.

2007/08 MLA Spectrum Scholars Selected

Since 2001, MLA has proudly worked with the National Library of Medicine (NLM) to encourage diversity in health sciences librarianship by annually sponsoring two American Library Association (ALA) Spectrum Initiative Scholarship winners. Each Spectrum scholar receives $6,500-funds pledged jointly by MLA and NLM. . Funding for the Spectrum scholarships is provided by a grant from the National Network of Libraries of Medicine South Central Region (NN/LM SCR) under NLM contract N01-LM-3515 located at the Houston Academy of Medicine-Texas Medical Center Library.

This year's Spectrum scholars are Seung-Hae (Diana) Bang and Natalie Pulley. Both Spectrum winners will enjoy free MLA membership throughout the scholarship year and obtain career advice from health sciences information professionals through MLA's mentoring program. MLA member Tom Flemming, AHIP, Health Sciences Library, McMaster University, Hamilton, ON, Canada, will serve as a mentor for Bang, and Sandra G. Franklin, AHIP, Health Sciences Center Library, Emory University, Atlanta, GA, will serve as Pulley's mentor. For more information about the program, visit the MLANET Mentoring site. Spectrum Scholars will also attend the ninth Spectrum Leadership Institute in Anaheim, CA, in June 2008.

Seung-Hae (Diana) Bang, MLIS student, University of Western Ontario-Toronto, Canada, looks forward to applying her reference skills in her new career as a health sciences librarian. While an undergraduate at York University, where she majored in psychology and minored in biology, Bang enhanced what she learned in the classroom by volunteering in several departments at St. Michael's Hospital in Toronto, such as the ultrasound, nursing, and nephrology departments. With her science background and the experience she gained at the hospital, Bang was motivated to pursue a master's degree in library and information science at University of Western Ontario.

Bang looks forward to taking a course in consumer health information sources and services, which she feels will aid her in her duty to provide quality health sciences information to the patrons of her library.

Natalie Pulley, MLIS student, University of South Carolina-Columbia, comes to the library sciences profession after working in the psychology and counseling field. With a bachelor of science degree in psychology from Augusta State University, Pulley set her sites on becoming a counselor. After graduation while working at a drug and alcohol facility for teenage boys, Pulley enrolled in Augusta State's Special Education Master's Degree Program. However, after varied teaching experiences led her to a temporary stint at the Augusta Public Library, Pulley discovered her love of libraries. The temporary position soon turned into a permanent one, with Pulley eventually being promoted to a management position at the library while attending her first semester as a library and information science student at the University of South Carolina. Pulley, who has completed her first year in the master's program and her first class in the health sciences librarianship, looks forward to the many opportunities available in the health sciences information profession.

African American, Hispanic, Asian, Native American, or Native Hawaiian/Other Pacific Islander prospective library school students attending ALA-accredited library schools with less than twelve credit hours are welcome to apply for the Spectrum Initiative Scholarship. For more information, visit the MLANET Grants and Scholarships page, contact the ALA Spectrum Program at 800.545.2433 x4276, or email spectrum@ala.org.

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