Colleague Connections (Friday)

At the MLA Reception on Friday (I know, it’s already Monday) I was greeted by Rachel Gyore, Reference Librarian (Outreach Services), from the University of Arkansas. The “Colleague Connection” program pairs up a veteran MLA member with a new member to help mentor and guide them through the meeting. What I was most grateful for is that Rachel took the time to introduce me to people. I met several former MLA Presidents and many wonderful people. She helped whittle down the scope and size of the organization by just being friendly and assisting me with making those connections of who’s who. To new members I say, definitely sign up for any types of “mentor” programs. It makes a difference. To MLA I say, please continue to do this in the future, and how long does it take before I’m considered no longer new? 5 years perhaps? I’m going to at least need that amount time to even begin to grasp the vastness of medical librarianship! 

New Member Breakfast (Sunday)

Many of the veteran attendees have told me how lucky the new members are. They didn’t have nice “hold your hand” activities when they first started. Let me just say thanks to those coordinating all of these “new member” events. We really appreciate it! These meetings provided an opportunity to network with similar individuals as well as learn the lingo of the MLA. At the breakfast they presented several of the sections of the MLA, chapters, special interest groups (SIG), and items of interest to new members. Fellow blogger A’Llyn Ettien was at my table and it was nice to put a name to a face and talk about library school, job hunting, and conference experiences so far. The highlight of this event was former MLA President, Lecretia McClure (1990-1991) summarizing what really matters in this industry, “People Count.” Indeed. Connecting, socializing, making friends, listening, and sharing are what really matters. 

Weber Grill New Member Dinner (Sunday)

This wasn’t really a big event, but a nice informal gathering of about 6 new members and 2 veterans leading the way. I would like to thank Ely Whitaker, Reference Librarian/Online Search Services and Outreach Coordinator, from Rush University Medical Center, for coordinating this event. 4 of the new members live in the Chicago area so it was nice to get some local hints. Suggested places to visit were the Shedd Aquarium, Millennium Park, and for Thai food, “Star of Siam.” I’ll have to check that out, time permitting… While enjoying my awesome burger and fries we discussed our conference experiences, jobs, previous lives prior to medical librarianship, and Oprah. She always manages to come into conversations! I guess her studio is somewhere in this city. Once again, it is nice to have these “new member” events that extend a warm welcome and make you feel like you belong. The MLA conference is just more reassurance that I made the right career choice. The profession has a helpful network, you truly are helping people save lives (directly or indirectly), and you feel appreciated.

MLA 2008

This is my first time to Chicago as well as MLA. I am impressed with the organization of such a large scale conference. It is overwhelming, but there are many helpers along the way to help guide you. The accommodations at the Hyatt are awesome, of course I’m biased because I brought my iPod and the room happens to have an iPod Radio dock. Sweet! Chillin’ to some Radiohead as I write this. That’s all it takes to make me happy. Anyways, two full days into the conference and the experience has been amazing so far. Here are some highlights from the CE courses …

CE Courses

I took two courses, one Thursday (Cheap, Fast, and Decent Strategic Planning for Medical Libraries) and one Friday (Practical Project Management for the Solo Librarian). Both were from 8am to 5pm. Now, I have had 1 hour classes before where I just couldn’t wait to get out of there because they were so dull. This was not the case. A full 8 hour day twice in a row never got boring. Pat Wagner was the instructor for both of my classes. For those that haven’t met Pat, she is an amazing teacher. She has run a consulting/training business with her husband for 30+ years. I would recommend her classes, especially to those librarians with limited resources and support.

A lack of resources, including time and personnel, is a symptom of choices we are making. This quote from her handout is inspiring to me. Instead of worrying about my limited budget, miniscule collection, and 1980s copier (okay, maybe I’m exaggerating…1990s), I need to choose my attitude and decide that these obstacles are not barriers but opportunities. It doesn’t happen in a day, but I can get the budget and personnel that I want. I just need to develop relationships of trust over time and develop the library in to a center that is critical to the higher institution’s mission.

The library’s mission should complement and support the parent organization’s vision, which hopefully has something to do with positive patient outcomes or excellent patient care. After all, isn’t that what hospitals do, save lives? Once the leaders of the hospital recognize and see evidence or see the vision of the library’s mission to “save lives” and how it impacts its customers and community, you will have their full support and your wishes will be granted. Of course, these are my attempts to describe the overall concepts; Pat provides more details.

I feel energized and ready to embrace these ideas and implement them in the library. Great classes! I have one more CE course on Wednesday (Intro to Blogs and Wikis)… just because I’m an Official MLA Conference Blogger, doesn’t mean I’m an expert!

Okay, I gotta finish this MLA Web 2.0 course. I took a look at an interesting MashUp example that took the data from the US News Report on top medical schools (2007 data) and mixed it with google maps. You can view it at: http://www.mibazaar.com/education/medical_school.html The site gives you a map of the United States and the locations of the top medical schools. When you hover or click any of the electronic equivalents of a push-pin, you get specific data on that medical school such as: rank of school; avg MCAT score; avg undergrad GPA; acceptance rate; faculty/student ratio; and avg. tuition fees. It’s nothing fancy but still neat. The one piece of data that is missing is avg student loan debt acquired upon graduating from the institution…

Apologies to those who do or do not understand the title reference… On Monday, May 19^th, at the MLA 2008 Conference, I will be attending the, “Connecting the Dots: Strategies for Building A Portable Career and Speed Mentoring” session from 2-3:30pm. There are two parts to the session. The first part consists of four round-table discussions including: Leadership; Professional Networking; Career Reinvention; and Professional Development. Each round-table is 20 minutes and you pick two of them. I selected networking and development.

For the second session, you may have heard of speed-dating, now introducing, “speed-mentoring.” Participants will have two to three 10 minute meetings with library administrators that will review your resume and provide guidance/discussion on professional development opportunities. For anyone that is new to the field of medical librarianship, like me, then consider signing up for this event. Today is the last day to sign up.

Having operated my own business I am no stranger to taking initiative or jumping head first into something. As exhilarating it can be to live by the “jump first, ask questions later” creed, it may not always bring the result you expect. I think this session will provide an opportunity to network and learn from those that have an understanding of the industry. Instead of jumping blindly into the profession you could get some precious advice and guidance from those that have the experience. Use this as an opportunity to carefully plan out your career path and development. A well thought out attack is better than coming out with guns blazing!

Okay, gotta do my early morning routine…clear out email, check voice mail, look at RSS feeds. What’s this? I received an email that someone has posted on my blog. Wow, exciting! Someone actually looked at it. The comment was congratulating me on becoming an Official MLA Conference Blogger. Uh, okay. That’s wonderful! Thank you, it’s just I thought I would hear it from someone or somewhere else. Well, I guess that’s how were doing things now-a-days, all web 2.0 like. Well, I’m feeling pretty excited, but now I’m wondering, “is this a joke?” I guess I’ll learn more about my blogging duties later. I’m sure the MLA officials will send some instructions or at least tell me what to do when I get there. So, moving on, I’m looking at my RSS feeds, and one of those I subscribe to is the MLA 08′ Blog. Well what do you know? There it is, I’m official. My name is listed on the blog. Cool, now it has become a more elaborate prank! Moving on to my once a week cleaning up my Junk-Mail folder. Having learned from previous experience, I always look through my SPAM folder, just in case something important is there. Sure enough, something important had been incorrectly flagged as SPAM through our wonderful, censored, BIG-BROTHER system. There inside my Junk Mail was my official congratulation on being selected as an Official MLA Conference Blogger. Yeah! So, it wasn’t a joke after all. I have MLA’s Web 2.0 101: Introduction to Second Generation Web Tools course to thank or blame for sparking my interest in blogging and web 2.0. I am new to blogging as well as librarianship, so this will be an interesting experience as a first-time attendee of the conference. Can you say, “NEWBIE?” I will be attending the breakfast for first-timers, so I look forward to meeting all of you that are just like me, deer in headlights. I am looking forward to the conference, to learning, meeting new people, Chicago’s good food, and just having fun absorbing the whole experience. Everyone have a safe trip there, and remember, always check you Junk Mail.

YouTube is a great video sharing service. I have been an avid fan of watching senseless, pointless videos for a long time. Recently, I have seen additional value in utilizing the service professionally. Unfortunately, the majority of the websites in this class, including YouTube, are restricted. I do believe it can be a benefit and a value-added service to patrons of the library when you can share instructional videos that assist them with their information needs. However, I don’t think it is necessary to utilize YouTube to accomplish your video sharing requirements. YouTube is just a convenient and easy medium to distribute videos, but if you are like me, where IT policies restrict your Internet access, then just post your videos on your library site, or blog sans YouTube.

Surprisingly, Flickr is one of the few sites that is not blocked from my work’s internet access. I’m sure it will just be a matter of time. I use Flickr frequently for personal use and have incorporated it into my personal blog. It is easy to use and I like the tagging capabilities similar to del.icio.us and other social sites. At first, I didn’t really consider the opportunities to use online photo sharing professionally. However, I now see several possible applications for this in the medical library.

Every year there are several events involving some type of national [fill in the blank] library week/month. Use these events as an opportunity to share pictures to engage your patron base. You could take pictures of your special displays, marketing/outreach events, and various other activities. Also, the library might get involved in taking pictures of CME events or grand rounds. Right now, our hospital video records the grand rounds and I retain a copy and archive a DVD record. But I could see incorporating pictures from the grand rounds and providing a forum on the library blog as a way of providing an opportunity for physicians to continue the discussion and make comments.

I believe the library has unlimited potential use for online photo sharing. Here are some more ideas, or just random thoughts on how to use this service: put together a semi-virtual map of the hospital with pictures; document special projects that other departments are working on; committee meetings or committee events; photos of instructional course on searching health literature; if you are an enormous library use photos as a visual means to help patrons find what they are looking for; maybe your hospital has special/unique equipment like a $2million dollar robotic assistive surgery device, take pictures of it and share.

I think that online photo sharing is mostly an enhancement, value-add tool that could be utilized by libraries. The only thing we are limited by is our creativity (or network restrictions!) so with that, I am very interested in how other libraries are actually using this. Please comment or share your ideas about using online photo sharing in the library.

Are you a new member of MLA? Consider joining the New Member Special Interest Group. I just recently stumbled upon this and signed up for the list-serv. I am not sure why I haven’t seen it before. The MLA Chicago conference is now just a few weeks away. On Sunday, May 18th, there will be a New Member/First-time Attendee Breakfast, I believe it’s free. Look at the New Member SIG schedule for more information. Have you visited the MLA ‘08: Tips for First Timers & New Attendees page on the MLA 08′ website? There are plenty of helpful tips and resources for first timers such as: travel/hotel tips, planning your time, section meetings, social events, exhibits, and more. Does it seem too overwhelming? Get guidance from an experienced attendee through the Colleague Connection. This will pair you up with someone more experienced that can help you navigate the mass sea of choices at the conference. For the first-timer, these resources should be helpful and make your experience a little less nerve-wracking. Good luck to all the newbies and I look forward to joining you there!

I examined three platforms: Google Docs, Zoho, and Microsoft Office Live. Here are some of my observations.

Google Docs- Okay, Google has its hands in everything these days, and it actually does a decent job with this product. I do like the product but I have a couple of reservations. First, the capabilities and functionality do not even come close to the standard Microsoft Office platform. So, even though it is free, I wouldn’t replace MS Office with Google’s product line. One of the initial disappointments I had with Google Docs is that you need a constant internet connection. Someone mentioned that a beta has been released to allow working offline, but it appears only a privileged few have this access so far. If you are a road warrior of any type, this feature is crucial. In my previous life, getting work done on the plane was critical. Whether or not Google provides this “offline” feature, I think the true value of Google Docs, like the other products, is “collaboration.” It is easy to use, to sign up, and invite others to collaborate on your documents. Google Docs has 3 applications: Document (for writing), Spreadsheet (for data), and Presentation (for slides).

Zoho – This product seems to have more features and be a little more robust than Google’s product. It currently has a plug-in download that allows you to work offline. To me, it seemed easier to use than Google Docs. I also liked the variety of applications that Zoho offers, 15 total, which is a wider selection than Google Docs. Of course, Google has similar apps to Zoho not found in Google Docs such as chat, calendar, and mail. Zoho’s web-office solutions are more complete and user friendly. However, once again, it is not a replacement of MS Office. I don’t think Zoho or Google are ready to be a replacement. The key feature of these “web office tools” is collaboration.

Microsoft Office Live - I didn’t really bother with Microsoft’s product. I did sign up, but I didn’t even know where to start. Way too confusing. Now, their Office product is great. It is, after all, the standard anywhere you go. But, their attempt at collaborative productivity with Microsoft Office Live is not impressive. I think they may be just waiting for someone to perfect it first and then steal it and monopolize it, like they have always done.

The Future of Office Productivity

I think web office tools have shown some amazing potential. Ultimately, I believe this is the future of all software products. It is just a more efficient way to work. However, until the quality of these applications improve, my use of them will be limited to collaborative projects only. I know many of you will say, “Well that is what it is designed for.” That may be the case, but I think many organizations are not looking at these software suites for their collaborative productivity but also considering the cost savings of converting to these platforms and throwing out MS Office altogether. Could you imagine if your organization did that? Maybe they have. I would love to hear about it.

The MLA has recently announced that they will sponsor 15 Official Conference Bloggers for their May 2008 conference in Chicago. I am attempting to become one of those fifteen. I am currently enrolled, as many are, in MLA’s Web 2.0 101: Introduction to Second Generation Web Tools CE course. This course is absolutely fascinating. The discussions have been meaningful, engaging and the topics are applicable to my job. I have created 3 blogs now, including this one, one for the library, and a family blog. However, I still am a rookie at this and have much to learn. That is why I want to be a “blogging star” for the MLA conference.

If I am put in the spotlight it will require me to sharpen my Web 2.0 skills and put on my best performance. It would force me to jump out of my comfort zone and take professional risks (Kraft, 2008). I am also new to the field of medical librarianship and I think it would be nice to have at least one of the fifteen official bloggers be a newb (pronounced new ‘bee). Conference attendees could gain a perspective of what it is like for a newcomer and veterans could reflect on their first-time experiences as well as relate, provide guidance, and give advice on the blog to those trying to navigate the conference for the first time. Other first-timers would love to have representation of their group in the midst of the “official bloggers.” I think it would be encouraging to them if they knew their opinions mattered and are recognized.

Now I don’t claim to know everything or be the best at blogging, writing, medical librarianship, or in fact anything; but I can promise that at the MLA 2008 Conference in Chicago, I will be equipped with a laptop, a camera, and an eagerness to learn and share.

References
Kraft, M (2008). Risk is a Four Letter Word That Isn’t Always Bad. Retrieved on April 15th, from the World Wide Web at: http://kraftylibrarian.com/2008/04/risk-is-four-letter-word-that-isnt.html