In Boston, at the 2013 Medical Library Association’s Annual Meeting I blogged as the Unofficial MLA Insider.  In the past I noticed that both MLA new members as well as long time members aren’t always sure as to how things work.  My posts were meant to shed some light on what happens at the meeting as well as within MLA.

MLA is a great group full of interesting and helpful librarians, and even though we aren’t the size of ALA, it is sometimes hard to know the structure, how things work, who does what, etc. within the organization.  So I have decided to continue my unofficial MLA insider posts with an attempt at pulling back the curtain of the organization. 

One note, much of the stuff I will be blogging about is available on the organization’s website, MLANet.org, and available to current members, but I think the best way to really understand is to also get involved.  It is one thing to read and another to do.

I will still continue writing about other things on the blog, but I will throw in an unofficial insider post every once and a while. 

If you didn’t read the MLA 2013 blog, here are links to my posts which will give you an idea of what I intend to write about.

• 2015 NPC Ideas Starts Now -What all happens when planning the annual meeting. Timelines, speakers, programs, selecting a theme, etc.
• What is the Leaders Tea and Who is a Leader? -It isn’t the medical version of Library Journal’s Movers and Shakers, it is a meeting on what you need to do now that you are chair of a Section, Committee, Task Force, etc.
• How Things Get Done in MLA - Basic background of how things happen within the MLA structure.

In the following weeks I plan to write a post about Sections, SIGs, Chapters and other entities within the larger MLA.  My intention is to shed light on what is sometimes a very confusing area for members.  I will be answering the often asked question, “What is a Section and how is it different than a SIG?”

What are some of the things you always wondered about MLA?  Let me know and I will try and shed some light on it.  I need your imput and questions to help make this unofficial insider series work

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Wow there were a lot of bloggers who wrote great stuff at MLA 2013.  I tried to attend as much as I can but of course I can’t hit everything so I have come to really enjoy reading the Official Meeting Blog  after the meeting to review the things I wasn’t able to attend.  I have taken it upon myself to organize the posts from the blog into some general categories and I thought I would share them. (I am such a librarian I am organizing blog posts…sigh..)

The organization is very rough.  I tried to group like posts on the same topic together, but I am sure I made some mistakes.  I also added some extra details such as the section program title on some of the blog titles where it wasn’t immediately obvious as to what it referred to. 

One thing to remember…. The e-Conference stuff is not just for those who paid for the e-Conference.  Those who physically attended the conference can also access all of the great stuff online using their badge number.

Prior to a conference

• Getting connected when you are the newbie
• Don’t Miss the Colleague Connection
• Colleague Connection
• Mapping out a Conference Itinerary
• Keep your Conference Momentum
• Why come to an MLA Annual meeting?
• Get your backchannel on at #MLAnet13

About MLA and Getting Involved

• 2015 NPC Ideas Starts Now
• What is the Leaders Tea and Who is a Leader?
• How Things Get Done in MLA
• What are you looking for from MLA?

CE’s

• CE Session: Beyond Powerpoint: Leveraging Technology to Enhance Instruction and Learning
• Why teach a CE class?
• CE 503 Session: Emerging Technologies for Librarians
• The Power of Libraries to Reduce Disaster Impact and Speed Recovery
• CE601 Beyond PowerPoint: Leveraging Technology to Enhance Instruction and Learning

Sunrise Seminars

• Discovery Services Helpful for Finding Content, but Don’t Minimize Time We Need to Spend on Search Strategy and Info Literacy Instruction

Plenary Sessions

• A Year of Positive Energy (Plenary 1)
• The Role of Communication in Librarianship and One Health
• MLA Conference – Sunday Morning Speaker
• The Value of the Non-Librarian Perspective: Thoughts on Plenary 2
• What We Can Learn from the Accidental Journalist
• The Threat of Pandemics, Not to Mention Fear and Panic (Plenary 4)
• Sheila Davis and Laurie Garrett: Major Speakers on the Last Day of the Conference

Exhibitors

• MLA 2013 First Time Exhibitors
• Publishing Innovations
• More Than Free Goodies
• Items of Interest in the Exhibit Hall

Section & Sig Stuff

• History of Health Sciences Section Spotlight
• Informationist SIG
• Clinical Librarians & EBHC SIG Meeting – 2pm Sunday 5th May
• Hospital Libraries Section Activities Sunday with a Glimpse at Monday
• A Special Birthday Celebration for the Hospital Libraries Section
• Public Services Section Meeting
• International Cooperation Section (ICS) Business Meeting

Posters

• Poster Session 1
• Poster Session 1 – Posters That Attract Attention
• Poster Session 1 – A Few More to Check Out
• Poster Session 2 – Monday, May 6
• Poster Session 2: “Partnering for Value”
• Poster Session 2: The learning curve for One Health blogging
• Poster Session 3
• Poster Session 4

Programs

• Online Proceedings Now Open
• One Health One World -Surveying Current One Health Initiatives
• Catching the Welch Medical Library Timeline
• Doing Things Differently: Informationists at the Welch Medical Library
• Order, please: taming the Web with semantics
• Integrating our expertise -Integrating Our Expertise: Engaging Our Partners in Resources at the Bench or at the Point of Care Session
• Quality Assurance -Quality Assurance for Clinical Librarians, Informationists and Embedded Librarians
• Get organized… and save the time of the reader -Leading by Design, Not Default: Focused Direction in Support of the User
• EMTS Session Recap — One World: Online Education 
• The Role of Librarians in EBM: part 2
• Education and Media Technologies Section (Program Section II)
• Lots of carots and sticks, and things with teeth -Librarian’s Role in Systematic Reviews, and Global Data Sharing to Advance Science and Enviornmental Aspects of Global Health
• A Few Highlights FromThe International Clinical Librarian Conference
• Librarians on Animal Use Committees
• An Irish Perspective-Informing future roles through research: a national approach
• Data Management? Yeah, we got that.
• Final Thoughts - Education and Media: Creative Advice from the Media Experts
• ICLC 1: Quality Assurance for Clinical Librarians, Informationists, and Embedded Librarians
• The Impact of the Clinical Informationist -ICLC1 : Quality Assurance for Clinical Librarians, Informationists and Embedded Librarians
• ICLC 2: Emerging Roles for Health Librarians and Finding New Information in Novel Places
• ICLC 3: Practicalities of Searching for Clinical Librarians, Informationists, and Embedded Librarians
• Practicalities of Searching -International Clinical Librarian Conference 3: Practicalities of Searching for Clinical Librarians, Informationists, and Embedded Librarian
• Healthcare Information for All by 2015 (HIFA2015)
• Open Access Presentations - Open Access in Action: Trends, Policies, and Institutional Activities in Support of Open Information
• Structuring Our Services for the Future in Health Care
• Altmetrics and Scholarly Communication- Altmetrics and Revolutions: Web-Native Science and the Future of Scholarly Communication
• Collaboration for Patient-Centered Informed Consents -Pharmacy and Drug Information Section and Leadership and Management Section:Enabling and Enriching Transnational and Interprofessional Collaboration

NLM Stuff

• News from the NLM Booth
• NLM News: Sunday Poster Sessions
• NLM DOCLINE Users Group
• NLM implements the new Library Dark Art, RDA is here!
• NLM Update – my favorite part of MLA
• NLM Update in a Nutshell

Other things

• A taste from afar: reports from ICML and the international experience
• International Visitor’s Reception
• Flipping the MLA Conference

After Conference and the e-Conference

• I’m attending MLA 2013 – I’m just not in Boston!
• Watch and listen to yesterday’s Plenary Sessions
• Thank Goodness They Are Taping This
• New content now available for e-conference
• Audio and slides now available for most sessions
• Don’t worry – you can still access MLA ’13 online proceedings long after the meeting has ended

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