2022 Grant, Scholarship, and Fellowship Winners

Each year MLA recognizes practicing health science information professionals for their many accomplishments and contributions to the profession and the association. The following MLA members and students were honored during the Awards and Recognition Celebration in June this year. As part of the session, many recipients acknowledged their grants and shared what their MLA membership means to them.

To listen to the many meaningful and personal stories shared in celebration, access the Awards and Recognition Celebration recording ( PW is j3N52^n# ) and see additional information on Grants and Scholarships, which are now accepting applications.

The Ysabel Bertolucci MLA Annual Conference Grant recognizes Ysabel Bertolucci’s exemplary career as a member of the Medical Library Association and her many contributions to its sections, chapters, and board. Endowed in 2014, the Bertolucci Grant recognizes a health sciences librarian involved in nursing, allied health, consumer health, or international librarianship. This year’s recipient Michelle Lieggi, AHIP, used the grant to attend the conference in New Orleans to reconnect and network in person with her valued peers. By attending MLA ’22, Michelle gained new knowledge and insights into the practice of nursing librarianship, which she plans to apply to her organization.

EBSCO Information Services generously donated to the MLA Scholarship Endowment Fund in 1993 to provide support that enables MLA members to attend the association’s annual conference. 2022 EBSCO Conference Grant recipients: 

MLA’22 helped Kelsa Bartley continue to build on the professional and leadership experiences she gained since becoming an MLA member. These experiences have been extremely helpful in getting Kelsa promoted to her current position as Education and Outreach Librarian.		Participating in the MLA conference for the first time allowed Becca Billings to network and develop new relationships with national colleagues. This experience provided exposure to more knowledge and perspectives on systematic reviews, new research tools, and health sciences services.
Attending the MLA conference provided Valerie Lookingbill, MLA Research Training Institute (RTI) fellow, a platform to introduce her research and invaluable opportunities to engage with experienced health science librarians		This grant enabled early career medical librarian Tenley Sablatzky to attend MLA ’22, where she was able to learn and network with experienced MLA members and expand her knowledge of health information and librarianship.

The Continuing Education Grant supports continuing education to develop applicants’ knowledge of the theoretical, administrative, or technical aspects of librarianship. Shannon Compton is this year’s recipient. This grant will fund Shannon’s attendance at the Critical Appraisal Institute for Librarians, which will support her career objectives of teaching critical appraisal of scientific publications, especially with regard to biostatistical data to students.

The Hospital Library Professional Development Grant provides librarians working in hospitals or clinical settings with the support needed for educational or research activities. This year two grants were awarded. 

Margaret Easbey will use her grant to participate in courses that will reinforce the major responsibilities of her work in a hospital library, including collection development, critical conversation skills, expert searching, and evidence-based practice.

Mikki Smith will use her grant to develop expertise in the area of evidence-based practice and research so that she can be a resource and collaborator as the sole librarian in her hospital system.

The MLA Scholarships are awarded to students enrolled in or entering an American Library Association-accredited library school who show excellence in scholarship and potential for accomplishment in health sciences librarianship. MLA congratulates its three recipients this year—welcome to the profession! 

Kristen Burroughs was awarded the MLA Scholarship. She has researched the field of health sciences librarianship, reached out to several health sciences librarians to conduct informational interviews, and thoughtfully articulated contributions she would like to make as a health sciences librarian to address systemic inequities in healthcare and health sciences education and research
Jasmine Goodman is awarded the MLA Scholarship for Underrepresented Students. Jasmine is committed to working in an academic hospital setting and promoting and providing access to diverse and inclusive perspectives in the health sciences literature to optimize health decision-making and health outcomes. In her previous Master of Planning degree program, she pursued a concentration in Health and Social Planning, with a particular interest in the social determinants of health. She has also pursued opportunities to develop skills important to health sciences librarianship that include volunteering as a research assistant with the Faculty of Health Sciences at Ontario Tech University, during which she conducted literature searches on various health-related topics

MLA is pleased to announce the first recipient of the New Scholarship. This scholarship was established as a result of the additional funds available through the MLA Scholarship endowment. Katie Dillon is committed to pursuing a career in health sciences librarianship, including pursuing an NLM Associate Fellowship to gain more experience and knowledge in the field. Her general sciences background, in combination with courses promoting written communication and skills in data management, all speak to her strong potential for accomplishment in health sciences librarianship.

The purpose of the Cunningham Memorial International Fellowship is to assist in the education and training of health science librarians from countries outside the United States and Canada. This year’s recipient is Khutsafalo Kadimo, a librarian at the University of Botswana Faculty of Medicine who will visit academic libraries that will enable him to further his skills to improve the information literacy of his university community through online training, formalizing the systematic reviews process in the faculty, and improving the collection and analysis of research output for the medical school. Khutsafalo will travel to the U.S. in 2023 to participate in the fellowship

The Donald A.B. Lindberg Research Fellowship funds research linking the information services provided by librarians to improved health care and is awarded to a qualified health professional, researcher, educator, administrator, or librarian. The 2022 Lindberg Fellowship is awarded to Jonathan Eldredge, AHIP, FMLA. Jonathan plans to publish a practical, open-access guide for practicing evidence-based practice for health sciences librarians and other health information professionals by conducting a comprehensive inventory of the application of EBP in the library and informatics literatures. The goal of the book is to improve decision-making by health sciences librarians that affect health care access and delivery, biomedical research, health professions education, public health, and consumer health.

The MLA Research, Development, and Demonstration Project Grant supports projects that will promote excellence in the field of health sciences, librarianship and information sciences. Joey Nicholson’s proposal, “Feasibility and Utility of Librarians Assessing EBM Behaviors via a Video-Observed OSCE,” seeks to provide an Objective Structured Clinical Examination (OSCE) assessment tool, rubric, and feasibility evidence to demonstrate the role of librarians in formative assessment of evidence-based medicine (EBM) behaviors of medical students. This project advances the roles of librarians in medical education and presents an opportunity to advance the profession and understanding of the role of librarians in the medical school curriculum.

The Garfield Research Fellowship provides support for research projects related to discoverability in information science. This year’s grant is awarded to Paije Wilson and Vojtech Huser. Their project plans to examine the U.S. federally funded Covid-19 clinical trial records in ClinicalTrials.gov, specifically trials that contain at least 200 participants, to evaluate the number of records that have functional links to publications, full datasets, and protocols and the number of records whose publications and full datasets link back to the ClinicalTrials.gov record, and, in the case of publications, their inclusion of NCT numbers in their publication record.