MLA Day Two

SUNDAY


attended Sunday Sunrise Seminar with ISI about their quantitative measurement products - analytical info
Keynote speaker Daniel H. Pink, author of A Whole New Mind was entertaining and thought provoking
Evening cruise sponsored by Ebsco; had chance to talk to Brian Alpert, founder of Dynamed
Sunday exhibits were open as well as multiple programs and workshops - NEJM technology showcase featured new platform for ejournal with coverage back to 1990 (from 1993) plus availability of archives. Journal will still not make powerpoint slides available to institutions as part of subscription (only to individual subscribers)


MONDAY

Attended Sunrise Seminar with Cochrane, sponsored by Wiley,led by Carol Lefevre (British), Senior Information Specialist who gave excellent update. Presentation will be available to participants.
For information on their new editorial policy, go to www.editorial-unit.cochrane.org
For Cochrane podcasts, go to www.cochranejournalclub.com
For the newest information for Cochrane for Librarians, they have revised the original chapter on searching Cochrane and it can be found at http://www.cochrane-handbook.org.
There is also a Cochrane Library users group listserv at http://lists.cochrane.org/mailman/listinfo/

Carol Lefevre has recent articles on searching Cochrane in Evidence Based Library Info Practice and in Journal of Clinical Epidemiology.

PLENARY SESSION; The Janet Doe Lecture, presented by Ana Cleveland, Regents Professor and Director of Health Informatics and Houston Programs, Dept of Library and Information Sciences, College of Information, University of North Texas, Denton, was excellent, inspirational, and sometimes depressing, too. She sees future "librarians" coming from disciplines other than library science degrees. She began the talk with a discussion of how we should not use the term "professional librarians" (there are NOT professional lawyers or professional doctors) but should live up to health educational standards and comform more to AMA than ALA.

She talked a lot about collaborative research initiatives and centers of specialization such as bioinformatics and biomedical sciences and referred to a recent paper in Academic Medicine. Her quote was "Health is essential and crucial in the lives of people; quality information is needed for quality health care; and health sciences librarianship/informatics has the resources to contribute to the well being of the people."

Her personal philosophy of the profession was that we need to develop partnerships, more joint appointments, academic units, health care integration, research/resources; critical thinking and managing change.

LUNCH AND LEARN SPRINGER SESSION:

(full presentation available on a flash drive or can get a copy from Springer)


I attended a session sponored by Springer about their latest products, including pieces of their web sites that are free to all, whether or not you buy their packages. These include www.springerimages.com (out of 2 million images, 50,000 + are free) www.authormapper.com is free and pulls metadata from Springer publications and from Biomedcentral; beta.Springerlink.com has a "look inside" the Ebook reader; and we also have the opportunity to offer any of our students or faculty something called "MY COPY" which is a print on demand service for any Ebooks that we subscribe to via Springer. For the price of $24.95 including shipping and handling, they can purchase a gray scale copy of any of these books (or download free pdfs of any individual chapters) and we can brand them with the library.

AFTERNOON: Translational Science sessions; Exhibits: Quertle - free search engine (www.quertle.info demo)

(I have code and program for videos and web sites for entire meeting and will try to look over topics that might be of interest to specific people when I get extra time - it will probably be JULY :) )