Medical Informatics Section
Annual Business Meeting Minutes 2006 - 2007

Tuesday, May 22, 2007
7:00-9:00 AM
Philadelphia

Welcome/Introductions
The meeting was called to order at 7:00 a.m. by Kathy Kerdolff. Thirty-three members were present for the meeting. Ms. Kerdolff introduced MLA board member and MIS member Dixie Jones, who provided a MLA update/overview of the year. Ms. Jones referred to MLA President, Jean Shipman's report and discussed several points:
" Lindberg scholarship changes to fund small projects totaling no more than $8100
" Cancer Section's work with Google Scholar
" Health Information Literacy Project
" New Hospital IT standards in development by the Hospital Library Section (HLS)

Pat Weiss elaborated that over the next few years only 6% of the Lindberg endowment would be made available until the scholarship is fully endowed. She also questioned membership helping Google gratis. Ms. Jones reported that the MLA Board made the decision regarding participation in the Google project.

Review of the 2006 Business Meeting Minutes

The minutes were approved with minor changes. 1) Removal of "Colleen Cuddy" as Bylaws Committee Chair. 2) New Business, number 2, should reflect that it is an action item to revise bylaws.

Bylaws Amendments
The proposed bylaws amendments were approved. Kathy added that MLA was looking at SurveyMonkey as a possible way to conduct online elections and bylaws revisions.

Career Development Award
No award was given in 2006. A discussion ensued about better publicizing the award with a decision to defer discussion later in the meeting as indicated on the agenda.

Reports:

Chair - Kathy Kerdolff
Kathy reported:

• Annual report was available on the MIS Web site.
  
  
• MIS will co-sponsor a symposium for the 2008 annual meeting with the Molecular Biology and Genomics(MBG) SIG titled "State of the art: successes, challenges, and realities of library involvement in bioinformatics." Confirmation that the symposium is accepted will be in July 2007. MIS members will be encouraged to work closely on this
  
  
• MIS made a contribution of $100.00 to the 4th International Conference on Evidence-based Library and Information Practice Conference (http://www.eblip4.unc.edu/) that took place in Durham, NC on May 6-11. The conference is not always scheduled in the US. MIS will keep an eye on this conference to allow more lead time for MIS to participate.
  
  
• Kathy asked if we have members who are also members of the International Federation of Library Associations (IFLA)'s Information Technology Section. No one came forward at the meeting. MLA is an organizational member and is allowed members on a number of committees. Because of our interest in working on international interests, this might be an avenue for MIS members to pursue.

Nominating Committee/Elections -
Kathy Kerdolff reported for Catherine Arnott-Smith:

Chair-elect 2007-08: Laura Barrett
Secretary/Treasurer: Bette Sydelko
Section Council Representative Elect: Elizabeth Whipple
MLA Nominating Committee Candidate: Lisa Traditi

Secretary/Treasurer - Colleen Cuddy

Colleen Cuddy explained the Report of the Treasurer. Before preparing the budget she asked for input from membership on speaker fees, contributions to the Lindberg Fellowship, MIS Career Grant, and other spending.
ACTION ITEM: Colleen Cuddy to prepare budget and distribute to section.

It was suggested that since the budget is sound, the treasurer should investigate investing money in CDs or a Money Market Account.
ACTION ITEM: Bette Sydeklo to investigate investment strategy.

Bylaws Committee - Marie Ascher
There was nothing to report in addition to the Bylaws amendments. Marie Ascher will continue as Bylaws Chair.

Government Relations Committee - Brenda Seago
Brenda Seago encouraged everyone to please review the government alerts.

Membership Committee - Amy Harper reported for Sadie Honey.
The section gained 79 members in 2006. The section has 447 members. Recruitment efforts will be made looking at SLA. The new members' breakfast was a big success, with 200 attendees.

Section Council Representative - Susan Lessick
Susan announced the upcoming locations for the MLA meeting; 2008 Chicago, 2009, Hawaii. There is a new content management system for MLANET; other updates to MLANET will be a current list of officers and a link to the MLA president's page. Judy Burnham is the incoming Section Council Chair. Beth Whipple is heading up a committee to investigate 1,000 section-less MLA members.

Section lunches will not continue in the future. There was some discussion regarding this topic, with members commenting that the lunches were a positive experience and a chance to meet each other socially. A MLA taskforce will look at the structure of Section Council, including rotation schedules. It was suggested that chairs of sections play a larger role in Section Council, but the feasibility of this suggestion based on time constraints was questioned.

Professional Development/CE Committee - Lisa Traditi
Lisa Traditi reported that she forwarded to the MLA CE Committee a suggestion for a class on Developing a Curriculum for Informatics. The CEC invited any of the section members who are interested to propose such a course for the 2009 annual meeting. The Independent Reading Program will be expanded to include the Haworth Press titles. The CE Clearing House, as well as all of MLANET has been redesigned.

She noted that other changes include a new MLA CE Policy Statement and that instructors will be notified automatically when their class is up for renewal. The topic of the fall MLA Webcast is open access. Proposals for classes for MLA 2009 are due in Oct/Nov. She will send a message to the MIS listserv to encourage members to teach classes. There appears to be a need for CE in the area of technical services.

The idea of certification in informatics was raised. MLA has other certifications, but may not want to establish more.

ACTION ITEM: CE/Professional Development Committee will review the CE course list to identify courses relevant to informatics.

Webmaster - Nic Cecchino

Nic Cecchino reported that the membership directory has been updated and resides on the secure section of mla.org

Program Chair - Janis Brown

Janis Brown reviewed this year's programs. The two Monday sessions were very well attended-standing room only--: "Revolutionizing Discovery through Text Mining" and
"Top Technology Trends: Where Is the Revolution Leading Us Next?" The third session, "1,776 Uses for Technologies" is scheduled for Tuesday afternoon. Janis noted that a section can only be a primary sponsor for two sessions.

Old Business

Section:
Kathy reported that she is working with MLA to make sure that the section gets credit for its contributions to the Lindberg fellowship.

Section Council:
Kathy referred members to Jean Shipman's health literacy study. She also wants to see MIS involved in Mark Funk's testing of new technologies. It was noted that the journal club format is not working and a new format will need to be developed. A link to the MLA News needs to be put on the MIS Web site. The Membership committee needs to identify hospital librarians in the section.

New Business:
The career development award was discussed.
ACTION ITEM: Membership Committee will work with the incoming chair to advertise and promote award and contact past winners to feature their projects in MLA News or in section news.

Continue History of MIS:
ACTION ITEM: Marcia Henry will work with Kathy Kerdolff to continue the work of Betsy Humphreys from 1999 to the present.

MIS Section members should continue to develop ways to mentor new members, encourage AHIP membership and encourage publishing.

An initiative to network with affiliated associations should be investigated including:
American Medical Informatics Association (AMIA)
American Society for Information Science & Technology (ASIS&T)
Special Interest Group on Medical Informatics (SIGMED)

Webpage Updates:
Continuing education needs assessment (1999): ACTION ITEM: Remove
Self-Education resources project (1999): ACTION ITEM: Lisa Traditi to contact Kris Alpi about possible update.
Directory from Vanderbilt: ACTION ITEM: Remove
Stanford University short course: ACTION ITEM: Remove: Replace with link to MBL

2008 Programs (Laura Barrett)
Programming ideas for 2008 were discussed. The Top Technology Trends will be repeated. It was suggested that the section could sponsor a program again with the Molecular Biology SIG or the Vet Medicine SIG. Program ideas mentioned included; technologies that support EBM, Millennials and beyond-the next generation of library users,

ACTION ITEM: Laura Barrett to present options to the MIS via email following the conference.

Other Business:

Karen Albert distributed a flyer about an IAIMS Program and Poster Session at AMIA.

The meeting was adjourned at 9:00 a.m.

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