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Heather Kemp: MLA’s Doings in the Big “D” - The 2023 Medical Library Association Conference in Detroit, Michigan

Reflections on the MLA Annual Meeting by MLA Annual Meeting Scholarship Winner Heather Kemp

13 June 2023

Hello Friends – 

My name is Heather Kemp, one of the 2023 NAHSL MLA Annual Meeting Scholarship recipients.  MLA held their Annual Meeting (jointly with SLA-Special Libraries Association) from May 16-19 in Detroit, Michigan.  It was also the beginning of MLA’s “anniversary year”; the organization is 125 years old in 2023.  

My colleague, Tim Kenny and I presented the poster, “Improving PubMed for the Novice at the Expense of the Expert: Surveying Librarians 3 Years post-New Pub Med”.   This was a new opportunity for me, as this was my first time attending an MLA Conference.  We received informative and positive feedback, and were pleasantly reassured that many of our fellow librarians shared the same viewpoints that our poster raised. 

Being able to share the results of our work with other librarians in the field was certainly one of the many highlights of the Conference; there were also two presentations that stood out for me in terms of interest and importance – theJoseph Leiter NLM/MLA Lectureship, and an Information Services Papers presentation, “The Redesigned Core Clinical Journals Filter: What it is, How to Use It, and Why to Use It”.

This year’s Leiter Lecturer presenter was Craig Robertson, associate professor of communication studies at Northeastern University.  With his presentation and latest book, The Filing Cabinet, he focused on the relationship between paper and information, specifically how the recording, classification, and storage of information on paper affects not only who gets to handle and access information, but also how information is conceptualized as something people can use.

One may wonder how something as “basic” as a filing cabinet – as office equipment – has to do with information (and libraries). Throughout Mr Robertson’s engaging talk, he enabled us to ride along through history (the cabinet itself was invented in the US in the 1890s), exploring how the cabinet itself evolved from being a “gimmick” to something useful.  It allowed paper to be stored “on its edge” – supporting the evolution of reference; it’s easier to locate things in a “file” than from a pile of papers on a desk – thus, the “vertical file” was born.  The manila folder was invented in 1898; “tabs” made information easy to find with frequent handling and use.  They also prevented paper cuts on fingertips.  Filing cabinets changed office work; information became a “thing” – they helped increase efficiency ; the “file clerk” became a respected profession, albeit a job originally performed by men but quickly became a woman’s entry into the working world.  Because the “filing clerk” became the purview of “women’s work” in an office setting, Robertson asked us to think if this was the beginning of the “feminization” or “de-skilling” of office work.  The “filing” of information became rote, automatic, and “brainless” – “just the office secretary”.  Work was now valued in different ways depending on the gender of the person doing it.  There, of course, is, correlation between “library work” – started out as primarily a male profession, to one almost exclusively thought of a woman with a bun with a shushing finger over her lips.

File cabinets have also kept with the times, including with the advent of computer technologies.  Computer “filing” systems in the 1980s was started by Apple Computers and continued by Microsoft with its Office software.  Seemingly overnight, we have adapted the paper filing system into computer usage.  We save information in “files”; we use “tabs” to sort and save digital materials, without even thinking that this task had a paper beginning.  Interestingly, 21^st century-students have no knowledge of the paper filing system of the past.  It is questionable whether or not knowledge of “paper filing” is a useful skill in this day and age.  Being a librarian, of course, I will say yes – computers can crash and fail, its systems become obsolete.  Paper is timeless.  

Michelle Klein-Fedyshin, MSLS, AHIP, FLMA, of the University of Pittsburgh Health Sciences Library gave a very eye-opening, interesting, and important presentation entitled, “The Redesigned Core Clinical Journals (CCJ) Filter: What it Is, How to Use It, and Why to Use It”.  It was unfortunate that her presentation was limited to a smaller meeting space within the conference venue.  Her topic, at least for hospital librarians, was too important to miss.  We who use PubMed/Medline on a daily basis and run literature searches were obviously dismayed when NLM decided to cancel updating of the ‘core clinical journal collection’ in 2020.  That feature was invaluable when running literature searches, and allowed searchers to provide citation information from many well-known journal titles.  Little did I know that the current collection of journals was woefully dated and that its continued use may have prevented librarians from providing the most current information for many subjects.

The collection of journals included in the CCJ were now 50 years old and needed to be looked at and revised.  Ms Klein-Fedyshin, along with her colleagues, began to tackle this project in 2014.  An article in the Journal of Evaluation in Clinical Practice (PMID: 24904958), shed light on the problem and gave examples on how best to remedy it.  An addendum to the 2014 article mentioned that the CCJ filter was planned for an extensive review and update; thus CCJ became CUJ – ‘Clinically Useful Journals’.  New criteria was established; statistics and inclusion was now data-driven.  The data used for the 2023 updated and revised list came from several sources: Kaiser Hospital Use Data; Morning Report data from the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center and LSU (Louisiana State University), patient-discharge indicators, and patient-driven counts.  After the numbers were crunched and data analyzed, a list of 80 clinical subjects – 33 which were ‘new’ (“mental health”, “infectious diseases”) were now part of the journal inclusion list for the new CJU.  These additional clinical subjects gave a soft of snapshot into how clinical medicine has changed over time; subjects that were once “popular” can now be verified by measureable data which can attest to their staying power or removal from the journals listing.  Ms Klein-Fedyshin mentioned at the end of her presentation that she hopes to publish this updated information in the July 2023 JMLA (Journal of the Medical Library Association).  There will be 241 journal titles in the new CUJ listings.  An audience member asked during the question period whether or not NLM will include the CUJ in PubMed; unfortunately, she could not give a definitive answer.  Only time will tell.

The City of Detroit was a surprise in many ways, seemingly shaking off its negative reputation of the past.  The conference center was convenient and modern; right in the heart of the downtown; walkable and safe.  It was good to see folks I have communicated with only by e-mail face-to-face and new faces as well.  I applaud the MLA Conference Committee for choosing Detroit as the 2023 venue; they should keep it in mind for future dates.

I thank the NAHSL Professional Development Committee for giving me the opportunity to attend MLA in 2023.

Respectfully Submitted,

Heather D Kemp, MLIS

Maine Medical Center Library

Portland, Maine