MLA '24 Continuing Education
We're excited to offer in-person MLA Continuing Education (CE) opportunities in Portland! All courses will be held in-person on Saturday, May 18, 2024.
Register for courses individually or add-on to your MLA '24 conference registration. You can always add courses later, but space is limited!
CE100 - Essential Searching Skills for the Librarians on Systematic Review Teams
1:00 - 6:00 p.m., local time
$395 MLA Members | $510 Nonmembers
If you want to be part of a systematic review team—or if you already do systematic review searches and want to hone your skills—this is the searching course for you! The course will take you through the systematic review searching process, from confirming the need for a review and identifying appropriate databases to creating search strategies and documenting and reporting searches using PRISMA-S. PubMed is the primary database used in the course.
The heart of the course is developing an extensive, effective, systematic, translatable, and replicable search strategy to address a research question. You’ll receive feedback on your search strategies during the live session and after the session via Slack.
This course is required for the Level I of the Systematic Review Searching Specialization.
Instructors:
- Carrie Price, Health Professions Librarian, Albert S. Cook Library, Towson University, Towson, MD
- David Farris, Research Services Librarian, Research Medical Library, University of Texas, MD Anderson Cancer Center–Houston
- Rachael Lebo, Clinical Services Librarian, Wegner Health Sciences Library, University of South Dakota–Sioux Falls
CE200 - Master Data Cleaning and Wrangling with OpenRefine and Python
1:00 - 5:00 p.m., local time
$295 MLA Members | $380 Nonmembers
If you begin this course with no understanding of OpenRefine or Python or if you know some Python, in just four hours you’ll leave with skills in cleaning, analyzing, and displaying data and supporting researchers in working with their data and writing DMSPs that will enable you to expand your career options and increase your value in your workplace.
Paige Scudder, an experienced Python coder and instructor for a very successful MLA virtual course on Python and data visualization will be your guide to using two powerful, open source, and user-friendly tools, OpenRefine and Python, to unlock the full potential of a dataset. You’ll learn to use OpenRefine to clean and transform messy data and to seamlessly integrate your clean data with Python to perform statistical analyses and create visualizations.
Instructor: Paige Scudder, Research and Instruction Librarian, Tufts Hirsh Health Sciences Library, Boston, MA.
CE201 - Collections Budgeting: It’s More Than Spreadsheets
1:00 - 3:00 p.m., local time
$155 MLA Members | $200 Nonmembers
If you are new to collections budgeting, you may feel overwhelmed by the challenges of the high cost of resources, the multitude of purchasing and subscription options, and the reality of never having enough funding. And, because libraries are institutional cost centers, your budget may be under increased scrutiny. You may find yourself needing to advocate not only for your budget, but also for your skills in being able to make good financial choices on behalf of your institution.
Susan Kendall, who manages the collections budget of a large university library and is the editor of Health Sciences Collection Management for the Twenty First Century, will be your guide to navigating both the financial and vitally important non-financial aspects of collections budget management.
You’ll leave the course feeling supported in your budgeting challenges and with strategies and ideas for dealing with a variety of budget situations, prepared to make a plan for advocating for your collections budget, and greater confidence in your ability to talk about your budget with key stakeholders.
Upon registering for this course, you will receive a code entitling you to a 30% discount on Susan’s edited volume, Health Sciences Collection Management for the Twenty First Century.
Instructor: Susan K. Kendall, AHIP, Head, Collections Strategies and Copyright Librarian, Michigan State University Libraries, East Lansing, MI
CE400 - The Joy of Project Management! Managing All Projects, Large and Small
1:00 - 4:00 p.m., local time
$195 MLA Members | $255 Nonmembers
The marvelous thing about project management skills is that they are extraordinarily valuable in many ways. They allow you to be more effective in your work and personal life. They demonstrate leadership skills that can lead to your promotion. And they earn you gratitude from everyone on a project you manage.
Janet Crum and Elisa Cortez, trained and experienced project management experts, will be your guides to developing a project management mindset and acquiring project management skills. You’ll learn through presentation, demonstration, discussion, and small group work in which you’ll practice with tools and techniques presented in the course to create a plan for a small project.
You’ll leave the course with know-how and confidence that will enable you to become more effective in any library role from entry level to director and in your life and able to spread the joy of project management to all you work with and for.
Instructors:
- Janet Crum, Director, Health Sciences Library, University of Arizona–Tucson
- Elisa Cortez, AHIP, Medical Education and Clinical Outreach Librarian, University of California–Riverside
