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Stephanie Friree Ford, McLean Hospital
Thank you to MAHSLIN for providing an opportunity to attend the 2024 MLA Annual Meeting this year! With MAHSLIN providing an opportunity to supplement my budget for this trip to Portland for MLA, we truly are “Stronger Together.” Providing funding our community needs for travel is invaluable.
Being a solo librarian, I have little interaction with other colleagues throughout my workday. MLA (and MAHSLIN and NAHSL) helps me to stay connected. I try to get to every conference or event that I can to keep connections going. This conference gave me the opportunity to use a conference for networking and communication with other librarians. This is my 12th year as a librarian, and I was pleasantly surprised noticing how many people I knew at the conference. I spoke with colleagues that I have worked on projects in the past that work across the country from me, and some I want to work on future projects with. I presented a poster, New England Salary Survey 2023, with six other librarians from six different institutions across New England. One of those is now working as a nurse but keeping one toe in the water with us. Because the connections run deep, because we truly are Stronger Together no matter where our library careers take us. This team of seven of us have worked together before and it is easy for us knowing how to work best with one another. We are “Stronger Together.” None of us could do it alone and we all add unique perspectives and input into the work. The poster was a success, with many attendees stopping by to learn about the project and one commenting that they loved the presentation of the poster and how visually appealing it was.
There were two themes that ran strong for me at this conference: AI and Systematic reviews. Systematic reviews are one of my favorite projects to collaborate on and I attend as many educational sessions as I can to continue learning about them. It’s a confidence builder to see the similarities in how others develop their searches, how they collaborate with SR teams at their institutions, and learn about their processes. I attempt to take everything I learn and bring it all together to create best practices for myself. AI is mindblowing. It seems as if I know nothing about it because of the speed with which it has grown! One session intertwining AI and Systematic reviews and how AI can be used in the search generation process was particularly interesting.
I left this conference more energized than any in the past 10 years. Feelings of joy at the connections I’ve developed were the primary memory. We learn as much as possible, we attend what we can, we soak it all in. But most importantly we make connections and develop relationships. The theme this year was on target. We are definitely Stronger Together!
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