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Professional Development

Find a Mentor

Whether you are new to the profession, in mid-career, or exploring the profession, MLA can help you meet your career goals. One way is by connecting you with an experienced heath sciences information professional to offer advice help you stay on track.

MLA members can search the mentoring/expertise directory to find a mentor by searching the mentoring/expertise directory

If you are not an MLA member, let us connect you with an initial mentor or expert. Contact Tomi Gunn at MLA headquarters to start.

Mentoring and Expertise Areas

The following are mentoring options available for search/selection in the mentoring/expertise directory:

  • Academy member and willing to serve as mentor to provisional members of the academy
  • Willing to mentor a colleague seeking expertise.
  • Willing to mentor new members of MLA or the profession.
  • Willing to mentor those interested in changing specialties within medical librarianship.
  • Willing to mentor those interested in changing their career to medical librarianship.
  • Willing to mentor those needing help with resumes, cover letters, job interviews.
  • Willing to mentor those wanting assistance with research projects.
  • Willing to speak about medical librarianship at career fairs, conferences, schools.
  • Willing to do an informational interview about the profession or aspects of medical librarianship.
  • Willing to host library school students for full- or half-day visits to medical library.

The following are the various expertise areas available for search or selection in the mentoring/expertise directory (click on expertise area for details):

  • accreditation (CARF, SoH, DPW, Joint Commission, Magnet)
  • fund-raising, working with donors
  • grant writing
  • library management (budgets, staffing, planning, etc.)
  • library space planning, construction, renovation
  • marketing, promotion, outreach
  • quality improvement, process improvement, reporting
  • vendor relationships, negotiations, contracts
  • experienced in handling press/journalist inquiries
  • international connections
  • meeting planning
  • membership services, recruitment, retention
  • unit websites and communities
  • volunteer roles
  • course development, traditional
  • course development, web-based
  • curriculum design
  • instructional technologies>/li>
  • self-directed learning
  • teaching & instruction
  • career development
  • copyright and intellectual property
  • health information literacy
  • international library relations
  • job searches, interviewing, resume development
  • leadership
  • papers and presentations
  • patient safety, patient engagement
  • publishing, authorship
  • social media tools and best practices
  • bibliographic/citation management software
  • circulation management
  • digital reference services
  • end-user training
  • expert searching
  • interlibrary loan (ILL), DOCLINE
  • reference
  • bibliometrics
  • content analysis
  • curation of research data
  • qualitative research
  • research design and methodology
  • research grant writing, including MLA grants & scholarships
  • statistical methods
  • support for clinical, translational, and biomedical research
  • survey research
  • systematic reviews
  • academic, medical school libraries
  • allied health
  • archives and special collections
  • cancer
  • chiropractic
  • clinical, informationist, embedded librarians
  • consumer health
  • corporate libraries
  • dental
  • federal (military, VA, etc.)
  • health associations
  • healthcare informatics
  • history of the health sciences
  • hospital
  • learning resource centers (LRCs), computer labs
  • mental health
  • nursing
  • pharmacy, drug
  • public health
  • solo or one-person librarianship
  • veterinary
  • acquisitions
  • collection development
  • electronic resource management
  • indexing, cataloging, metadata
  • library systems administration
  • resource identification and selection
  • serials management
  • digitization, digital repositories
  • emerging technologies
  • Integrated library systems, federated search, discovery tools
  • mobile technology and devices
  • user interface design, usability studies, and testing
  • website design, development, management

Have ideas for additional expertise areas or mentoring categories? Contact Kate Corcoran at MLA headquarters.