Last month Department of Health Informatics faculty members had the opportunity to share research and projects undertaken by Calder librarians through presenting papers and posters at the annual Medical Library Association Conference in Minneapolis, Minnesota.
Attendees Brenda Linares, Vedana Vaidhyanathan, and Emily Vardell enjoyed learning from medical librarian colleagues across the United States and beyond. Hot topics of this year's conference included open access, outreach to underserved populations, and embedding services where the users are.
Brenda presented on our 3-years strong Department of Community Services (DOCS) health fair outreach which was begun in 2007 by Mary Moore and Suzetta Burrows through a National Network of Libraries of Medicine Award. You are invited to take a look at her presentation as well as read previous blog posts on these efforts.
Emily presented on the information support we have provided UM affiliated working in Haiti, which was also funded by a National Network of Libraries of Medicine Award and possible through the leadership of Mary Moore, PhD, and Suzetta Burrows. Read about our involvement in her presentation as well as in previous blog posts.
Vedana and Emily received great response on the poster How well are we tracking our reference statistics? A usability study on electronic reference statistics (coauthors: Kimberly Loper, Tanya Feddern-Bekcan, and John Reynolds), and they look forward to writing up this effort in a library science journal.
Emily also presented a poster on behalf of Geddy Paulaitis and herself. This poster shared librarian faculty experiences with collaborating with public librarians to host safety fairs. These fairs highlighted the importance of disaster planning and emergency preparedness.
Brenda, Vedana, and Emily look forward to sharing what they learned from their conferences with the library faculty and enhancing the services we provide you, our users.