Medical Library Association | MLA Leaders : MLA President 2006/07

MLA President 2006/07

2006 Inaugural | Priorities | Activities and Accomplishments
Jean Mapping | JMLA Biography | President's Home

2006/07 MLA Priorities

As vital team partners, we contribute our expertise in knowledge management and discovery to improving health care, enhancing research, and advancing the education of health care providers. Our history of collaboration and strong service ethic is recognized as the keystone for such teamwork. Having our 2007 annual meeting in the keystone state, Pennsylvania, and in Philadelphia, MLA’s founding city and site of the Association’s first annual meeting in May 1898, provides us with a unique opportunity to revisit our founding premises and values. This allows us not only to reclaim our foundations but also to forge new frontiers. MLA and its members can indeed shape the future by responsibly providing "quality information for improved health."

Reclaiming our Foundations

Our professional foundations are built on our skills in the discovery, retrieval, management, and synthesis of knowledge. Over time, our ability to evolve these skills, our resources, and our services have strengthened these foundations. In a changing environment, as others compete with us to provide information, it is necessary for us not only to keep evolving, but to reclaim our basic foundations and promote them as key contributions to society. We need to reclaim our recognition as valued information professionals: including being information creators, educators, expert searchers and information navigators. We need to highlight our enduring values of service, responsiveness, reliability, intellectual sharing, curiosity, and commitment to serving diverse individuals. We can do this by:

Advocating our value and professional contributions by -

Clarifying and promoting our roles with graduate medical education
Supporting health information literacy training to our institutions’ personnel
Initiating a massive media effort to inform health care administrators of librarians’ value (ROI) in providing consumer health information and patient education that improves patient safety, welfare and empowerment
Aligning our libraries as “forces of magnetism” for Magnet hospitals and advocating our expertise to institutional teams seeking Magnet status

Creating, managing, and promoting our professional knowledge through -

Expanding MLA's Center of Research and Education (CORE)
Continuing the redesign of MLANET
Adopting and promulgating the revised MLA Educational Policy Statement
Encouraging development of institutional repositories
Embracing and endorsing scholarly communication changes that provide greater access to scientific information, such as open access publishing
Partnering with library and information science schools to ensure relevant curricula is being offered

Conducting vital research -
- To prove return on investment (ROI) of consumer health information/health information literacy on patient outcomes, safety and health care costs
- Adopt and promulgate the revised MLA Research Policy Statement and encourage evidence-based library practices
Continuing our recruitment and retention efforts by -
- Creating membership benefits that are personalized and customized for MLA’s diverse membership such as member e-portfolio capabilities
- Expanding recruitment efforts with library school, K-12 and undergraduate educators
- Encouraging development and recruitment of a diverse workforce

Forging New Frontiers

There are many new roles and challenges that await us as information discovery and delivery experts. We need to embrace these new opportunities and forge new partnerships that expand our professional recognition as the best providers of quality information for improved health. We need to encourage the adoption of our new roles and equip ourselves with the needed skills and knowledge to be successful in new practice arenas. We need to:

Encourage, fund and promote models that explore and create new roles by -
- Supporting patient education and safety in innovative ways
- Continuing to study new roles and opportunities for hospital librarians
- Implementing Information Specialist in Context Task Force recommendations
- Teaching technological skills that enable mobile health team practice
Enrich and expand partnerships by -
- Joining with other informatics, standards and education-related organizations such as AMIA, AAMC, AAHC, JCAHO, LCME, etc. through participation in their conference programs, provision of e-educational programming and promotion of MLA within their publications
- Encouraging requirement of health literacy competency standards similar to those for cultural competency by working with relevant standards and credentialing organizations
- Assisting to create and implement a national health information network (NHIN) with knowledge at its core
- Advocate with AMIA, NLM and others for health care policies that ensure interoperability (standards), portability and privacy of electronic health record information
- Enrich personal e-health records with relevant and understandable health information linkages and consumer library connections
Further develop MLA’s global presence by -

Implementing action plans of the MLA Global Initiatives Task Force
Working with global organizations as they implement health literacy initiatives, e.g., UNESCO, IFLA, etc.
Further developing the MLA “Librarians without Borders” concept
Encouraging programming and research that helps to partner MLA with other international agencies and organizations

2006 Inaugural | Priorities | Activities and Accomplishments
Jean Mapping | JMLA Biography | President's Home