2016 Joint Meeting Report
Posted on January 30, 2016 by Kelli Hines | No Comments
The 2016 Joint Meeting Planning Committee
I want to thank the MLGSCA Awards Committee for selecting me for the Professional Development Award. It was used for the 2016 Joint Meeting at Stanford University.
Many of you may know that I was the registration co-chair of the Joint Meeting along with Nita Mailander. I recommended using Wild Apricot for membership and conference registration and the conference co-chairs decided to use Wild Apricot as our conference registration software which created a separate website from the conference website. We also created two separate registration website, one for exhibitors and another one for attendees.
There were 110 attendees at the Joint Meeting and eight exhibitors. Since there were so few vendors the conference co-chairs revamped the conference schedule and decided to ask each exhibitor to deliver a presentation to the attendees. On Thursday Alan Carr gave the RML Update, he said UCLA has been awarded the cooperative agreement with the National Library of Medicine for 2016-2021. Data management support activities will be a new focus area of responsibility. Kelli Ham spoke about Consumer Health Toolkit, Kay Deeney gave an update on Midday at the Oasis, and Lori Tagawa spoke about the results database initiatives in ClinicalTrials.gov as well as funding. Following the NN/LM PSR, there was a presentation by Ovid Wolters Kluwer on ‘Resources for a Flipped Classroom.’
Kevin Baliozian, Executive Director of MLA gave an update. He talked about the transition of MLA, sections, and SIGs to the new Socious platform and website. Kevin also spoke about the finances of the organization and we now currently have 2700 members and 56% of our budget comes from membership dues. He spoke about MLA’s strategic plan that encompasses four areas:
- What MLA does
- Education
- MLA Technology
- Research
What MLA’s current international presence is and the changes at the annual conference that is combining the MLA’s Presidents reception with the Awards luncheon, and the addition of more paper sessions in the same time frame. EBSCO, Rittenhouse, Sage and McGraw Hill each gave a presentation on ‘Supporting Evidence Based Practice: Solutions for Libraries in Clinical Practice.’
The Opening Plenary Session with Dr. Richard Kelly, clinical faculty at the University of California Irvine took a look at how Obamacare originally had been structured to provide health coverage for most Americans. Dr. Kelly explained the way the laws have been enacted by Congress and decisions by the Supreme Court have limited its scope. His presentation examined who is now being left behind, what the consequences are of maintaining such a population of uninsured, and what, if anything, is being done to remedy the situation. Dr. Kelly presentation contained a lot of data and great slides. One slide that struck me is that if the United States continues along the same path, the only things Americans will be paying for with our taxes by 2020 is Medicare and Social Security. There will not be enough money for roads, education or defense. Dr. Kelly’s slides are uploaded to the conference website under speakers and presenters.
The Closing Plenary Session with Dr. Pat Brown, Professor of Biochemistry at Stanford University encompassed three areas: freely accessible scientific papers, the peer-review publication process, and animal farming. Dr. Brown is one of the founders of the Public Library of Science (PLOs.org) and spoke about how he and his colleagues went to the publishers back in 2000 to ask them if they could collect pre-printed publications for a database and the publishers said ‘No.’ So they started PLOs.org a nonprofit open access scientific publishing project aimed at creating a library of open access journals and other scientific literature under an open content license. Currently there are seven publications that are primarily funded by payment from authors.
Dr. Brown’s second topic was on the peer-review publication process. He believes there is no effective pre-publication review and says it takes too long for an author to get published. He says there should be a post-publication review that would allow for the comparing of study results and this would identify the studies that are false. The third topic during his presentation was about animal farming and how it contributes to greenhouse gases, poor conditions for animals, sub-standard food products, impact on the environment, and global warming. Dr. Brown spoke about the ‘Impossible Cheeseburger’ and expounded on the benefits and the complex process of recreating the experience of meat using only plant based ingredients. The burger would have to be better than a regular meat burger for consumers to actually want to eat the product. He said the HEME-cell component is what gives meat its savory flavor. Although it appears that Dr. Pat Brown’s talk was unstructured he was an engaging speaker and the takeaway was you do not have to be an expert to make a difference.
There were 13 poster presentations on Thursday afternoon and three paper sessions on Thursday afternoon and two paper sessions on Friday. Please check conference website for lists of posters and papers.
Once again I would like to thank Laura Stubblefield and the MLGSCA Awards Committee for selecting me for the Professional Development Award.
Kathleen Carlson, MLS, AHIP
Associate and Education Librarian
UA College of Medicine-Phoenix
2016 Joint Meeting Registration Co-chair
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