MDMLG Professional Development Committee - Annual Report, 2005-2006

Promotion of MDMLG Health Sciences Award

Committee Members:

Donna Marshall, Co-Chair (2007)
Aimee Haley, Co-Chair (2007)
Chris Hunt (2006)
Juliet Mullenmeister (2006)
Annette Healy (2007)

Objectives:

Develop, organize, and implement one or more continuing education opportunities to the membership and interested nonmembers on relevant topics related to medical librarianship.
Coordinate efforts with the program committee in order to provide programs that are beneficial to the membership.
Prepare an annual report summarizing the committee's activities for 2005- 2006.
Notify membership of appropriate and timely professional development information, courses, and resources.
Prepare a projected budget and submit an expense report for the 2005-2006 fiscal year.
Submit relevant materials to the archives.

Accomplishments:

Two four-hour MLA approved continuing education opportunities were offered this year. In addition, notices of courses sponsored by other groups in the area were posted on the MDMLG listserv and blog.

The Spring CE, “Proactive Librarianship,” was hosted on Friday, March 24, 2006 at the Troy Marriott. We were fortunate to have the support of Swets Information Services in providing this course. Don Litner, the Swets representative for our region, gave an excellent overview of their federated search engine. La Ventra Danquah presented a timely and informative course on developing leadership skills and career management. La Ventra is a Librarian at Shiffman Medical Library, Wayne State University.

The Spring CE was advertised on the MDMLG, MHSLA, and Michigan SLA chapter listservs. The cost for the CE course, continental breakfast, and lunch was $45. Thirty-five attendees rated the content of the course and the speaker as positive overall.

The Summer CE course was a four-hour MLA approved course entitled “Super Searcher.” This course was held on Tuesday, July 25 th at Shiffman Medical Library. Bryan Vogh, technology coordinator for the Greater Midwest Region of the N/NLM, was the presenter. This course was an overview of advanced search features of web search engines. Surveys indicated an overall favorable response to the material covered and to the presenter.

We provided this course and lunch for free to the 29 participants. Shiffman Medical Library generously offered the use of the computer lab at no cost. The N/NLM covered Bryan 's expenses and fees.

Notes:

Special thanks to Valerie Reid, for keeping the website up to date with the course offerings, registration postings and other information. Also thank you to Valerie and Alexia Estabrook for implementing the blog this year. It has helped very much in promoting our activities.

The attendees rated our course offerings as positive this year. I'm pleased that we are able to offer low or no cost CE opportunities to MDMLG, especially as budgets tighten and more members cannot go to national conferences. Suggestions for future courses include advanced reference, QuickDoc, Docline, and statistics.

Although I was pleased to have offered the “Super Searcher” course for no cost, there was some complaint as to how quickly it booked up. While we had limited space in the computer lab, I would suggest that it be offered again in the near future. Other local organizations may want to consider offering this course due to the high demand we experienced.

I am proud of our committee's accomplishments this year. Donna Marshall, Chris Hunt, Juliet Mullenmeister, and Annette Healy were enthusiastic, supportive, and fantastic to work with! I look forward to co-chairing with Donna next year and working with the committee in continuing to offer informative and relevant CE courses.

Respectfully submitted,

Aimee Haley, Co-Chair
Professional Development Committee
August, 2006