MLA News Selected Articles

November/December 1999

MLA Board of Directors
Moves on Important Initiatives

The MLA Board of Directors held its fall meeting in Chicago at the Summerfield Suites Hotel, September 16–18, 1999. Following is a summary of significant actions taken by the board and a list of issues currently being studied. The next MLA Board meeting will be held February 3–5, 2000, in Chicago. All meetings of the MLA Board of Directors are open to members, with the exception of executive sessions, in which matters discussed could affect personal or institutional privacy. For further information, please contact MLA Executive Director Carla J. Funk, 312.419.9094.

Significant Actions Taken by the MLA Board

Organizational Issues

• Approved exploration of instituting regular dues increases based on generally accepted economic indexes with a report back to the board at the May 2000 meeting.
• Approved a resolution honoring the Midwest Chapter on its 50th anniversary (see below).
• Approved proceeding with a study to compare medical library positions to information technology positions, examining both job content and compensation.

Publications

• Appointed T. Scott Plutchak, AHIP, Lister Hill Library, University of Alabama–Birmingham, as the next editor of the Bulletin of the Medical Library Association.
• Appointed Beverly Murphy, AHIP, Medical Center Library, Duke University Medical Center, Durham, NC, as the next editor of the MLA News.
• Appointed Valerie G. Rankow, East Setauket, NY, as the next MEDLIB-L coordinator.
• Appointed, along with AAHSL, David Morse, AHIP, Norris Medical Library, University of Southern California–Los Angeles, as editor designate for the JAMA journal review column.

Professional and Continuing Education

• Allocated $15,000 to support the Eighth International Congress on Medical Librarianship (8ICML) "100 in 2000" scholarship program for librarians from developing countries. The recipients are to be called MLA Cunningham scholars.
• Approved MLA participation with NLM in sponsoring a scholarship for a health sciences librarian as part of ALA’s Spectrum Initiative, which annually selects fifty scholars from diverse backgrounds, who each receive a $5,000 scholarship to attend graduate library school.
• Approved formation of a task force to develop a minority recruitment program.
• Agreed to sponsor an MLA exhibit at the 8ICML to be held in London, July 2000.

Governmental Relations

• Endorsed a resolution presented by the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) on "The Universality of Science and Freedom in the Conduct of Science," which reaffirms opposition to continuing government efforts to restrict communication of unclassified research among and between U.S. scientists and their international colleagues.

Topics Being Studied or Discussed by the Board

• Advertising on MLANET.
• MLANET members-only content.
• Public relations efforts to support hospital libraries and librarians.
• Benchmarking initiative.
• Board self-evaluation.

Web-Based Course Tools

Edited by Melissa L. Just

Submitted by Julia Kochi, Digital Library Operations, Library and Center for Knowledge Management, University of California–San Francisco

With greater demands on time at home and work, interest in Web-based courses has never been higher. Many of you have taken a Web-based course, but developing one can seem like a daunting task. Creating an effective Web-based course from scratch requires a number of basic ingredients: a topic that is appropriate for self-paced learning, knowledge of basic hypertext markup language (HTML) to create the pages, a sense of design to create an environment that is easy to navigate and conducive to learning, and a Web server to host the course. Creating a more advanced and interactive course requires even more skills: computer graphics interface (CGI) programming, JavaScript, advanced HTML, and additional systems such as online chat or Web-based bulletin boards.

Instead of doing all of the development themselves, many campuses and organizations have purchased commercial course Web tools to aid in developing Web-based courses. Services such as WebCT (www.webct.com), CourseInfo from Blackboard Inc. (company.blackboard.com), and TopClass from WBT Systems (www.wbtsystems.com) offer online, Web-based tools that facilitate the creation of courses. These online tools enable a nontechnical user to develop a relatively sophisticated course, incorporating features such as quizzes, online chat, and discussion boards. The tools also make keeping records, registering, and submitting assignments easy for both the instructor and the student and create a consistent look and feel for all courses developed using the service. However, these services are usually expensive and beyond the means of an individual interested in developing a Web-based course outside the confines of an institution.

Fortunately, two services are available if you are interested in developing a Web-based course but lack the funds, skills, or resources to develop one on your own. CourseInfo provides Blackboard.com (www.blackboard.com) and Nicenet provides Internet Classroom Assistant (ICA, www.nicenet.org). Both services allow you to register and create a Web-based course, and host the course on their Web server. Because the services use online forms, which allow you to input information directly or upload files, you do not need to know HTML. However, some knowledge of HTML allows you to create a more sophisticated and better designed course than without use of HTML. Blackboard.com provides additional modules that assist you with generating quizzes, grading, and managing users and allows you to moderately customize the look of your courses. Nicenet’s ICA is not as sophisticated as Blackboard.com but provides modules to run a discussion board and create a list of external links. Unfortunately, the course administration tools are primitive, and there is no capability to create online quizzes or surveys. However, because it is a less sophisticated service, it is also simpler to use.

A Continuing Education Committee task force has been created to investigate how MLA can support the creation of Web-based courses and assist instructors who would like to develop Web-based courses. If you are interested in developing a Web-based course or would like to suggest ways MLA can support these endeavors, please contact one of the task force cochairs, Julie Garrison, Medical Center Library, Duke University, Durham, NC, 919.660.1157; or Julia Kochi, Library and Center for Knowledge Management, University of California–San Francisco, 415.502.7539.