MLA Medical Informatics Section
Midyear Report 2001-2002

The section is taking the lead on two programs for the annual meeting:

• Nunzia Giuse, Chair-Elect, has put together a program that includes a contributed paper session on Knowledge Management. The session is co-sponsored by the Technical Services, Medical Library Education, Electronic Media & Technology, and Medical Societies sections and the African-American Librarians Alliance SIG.
• A second session will be an invited speakers panel on Electronic Records Management, co-sponsored by History of the Health Sciences, Educational Media and Technology, and Technical Services sections.
  

This year we are continuing a successful professional development activity that was started last year. With the Molecular Biology and Genomics SIG, we co-sponsored an electronic journal club. The journal club is conducted completely online. The topic for this club was Bioinformatics. We are planning to coordinate a second e-journal club on Knowledge Management.

The section was interested in having a way to provide input into the planning for the a technology credential at MLA. Gail Persily, section chair, was asked by the Continuing Education Committee to serve as our section’s liaison to the Technology Continuing Education Credential Task Force.

At the May 2001 business meeting, the section membership voted to increase the amount of our section-sponsored Career Development Award from $1,000 to $1,500. A motion for this increase was passed by the Board. We are hopeful that a number of strong applications were submitted on December 1.

We are collaborating with the Medical Library Education Section on a project to introduce library school students to the field of medical informatics. We are working with MLES to develop materials for their web site about medical informatics.

One of our organizational goals is to involve new section members in the activities and committee work of the section. We have a number of people, who had previously not been involved in section activities, taking active roles this year:

• Martin Brennan is taking over the management of the section web site.
• Wallace McLendon is working with the membership committee to develop a PDA version of our membership brochure.
• Sandi Parker is chairing our Bylaws committee.
• Zoë Stavri is our Professional Development liaison.

We are working to find more ways to use technology to improve communication among section members and to inform MLA members about our activities. We are in the process of transferring the administration of our section web site from its long-time web master, David Yamamoto, to Martin Brennan. As mentioned above, we are also developing PDA-compatible membership materials that we can beam to attendees at the annual meeting.

Section Personnel:

Martin Brennan, Web Site Co-editor
Elizabeth Connor, Section Council Representative
Nunzi Giuse, Section Chair-Elect
Beth Layton, Secretary and Treasurer
Shawn Manning, Membership Committee Chair
Wallace McLendon, Membership Committee
Sandi Parker, Bylaws Committee Chair
Nancy Roderer, Government Relations Committee Liaison
P. Zoë Stavri, Professional Development Liaison
David Yamamoto, Web Site Co-editor
Gail Persily, Section Chair

Written by Gail PersilyPage

Created 5/17/02, by Martin Brennan

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