NAHSL: News

Tim Kenny: Reflections on the MLA Annual Meeting

Reflections on the MLA Annual Meeting by MLA Annual Meeting Scholarship Winner Tim Kenny

Greetings NAHSL Colleagues,

First and foremost I wanted to express my appreciation to the NAHSL Scholarship team for the award to allow me to attend MLA/SLA 2023 in Detroit this last May.  There were two particular takeaways that I wanted to discuss.

First, my colleague and fellow award recipient, Heather Kemp and I presented our poster on the changes made to PubMed over the last few years.  In particular we presented results of a brief survey sent to a wide range of medical librarians about PubMed following pretty sweeping updates made in 2019-2020.  We wanted to get a picture of the opinions of professional users of the platform after having a few years of getting a feel for the updates.  As it relates to the meeting this year, we were able to get in contact with and have a meaningful conversation with PubMed Content Specialist, Amanda Sawyer.  It was extremely helpful to get her perspective of the results and gain a better understanding of the PubMed team working on the other side of the resource.  We are hopeful that there may be avenues to continue the conversation and possibly see some adjustments made to PubMed that would alleviate concerns among professional librarian users of the platform.   Overall the poster was well received and it was great to talk with people face to face.

Second, I wanted to mention the fascinating topic of filing cabinets.  The Joseph Leiter NLM/MLA Lecture speaker was author/researcher Craig Robertson.   He discussed his new book, “The Filing Cabinet: A Vertical History of Information” and it was amazing.  One would think a topic of filing cabinets only has so much appeal, but there is so much innovation that has been overlooked in the humble filing cabinet.  Mr. Robertson was also a wonderful speaker and relayed his process and insights in such an engaging manner.   I would encourage everyone to pick up a copy of his book in the history of information and information management.  You won’t be disappointed.  

One last note of appreciation for the scholarship as it allowed me to attend to my responsibilities as outgoing MLA Membership Committee Chair in person.  I was able to emcee the New Members & First Timers Breakfast and connect with my committee members I only often see on Zoom.  There continues to be great value in connecting in person with professional colleagues.