Only Connect!

I have time for one last post before I get kicked out of here. I apologize for the long delay since my last post, but this last month was very crazy in getting ready for the MLA annual meeting. There was the presidential address to write, illustrate, and rehearse; the board meeting to run; the business meetings to run; the awards luncheon to host; and the Wednesday plenary session to emcee. With all of that plus my regular job, blogging was one of my last concerns.

I have been getting lots of compliments about the meeting. But really, about the only thing the president can take responsibility for is his or her speeches. If my speeches resonated with people, I think it was because what I said was what many people wanted to hear. As Scott points out, many people work very hard to put a meeting together. It just happened that this time, topics, technology, and our energy all came together for one helluva meeting. In case you couldn’t attend, MLA had 10 official bloggers reporting the meeting, so you can check out all of their postings in one convenient place. The meeting was well photographed. Here are my pictures, and you can also check out the MLA 2008 photo pool.

The big difference for me with this meeting was the prominence of our younger members. Intellectually, I know they’ve been at previous meetings, but at this meeting they were more visible — presenting papers, posters, and participating in panel discussions. I held a special reception in my suite for new MLA members who have already been on committees, task forces or juries — our future leaders. They seem eager for the challenge. The question is — how eager are our “seasoned” members ready to hand over the reins? Demographically, MLA has the potential for many members retiring in the next few years. We won’t have the luxury of letting our younger members learn the MLA ropes by watching on the sidelines for years, until they’ve “paid their dues.” They need, and want, to participate now. Both Mary Ryan and I worked hard to appoint new members to the available positions on committees, task forces, and juries. But as I pointed out in my presidential address, there aren’t that many positions available. We need to adapt our current governing tradition by opening up participation to more members. And a 30 member committee isn’t the way to do it.

MLA’s units — our sections, chapters, committees, task forces, and yes, even the board, need to start using Web 2.0 tools such as blogs to open up our governance. Allow more members to participate in our governance. Open the windows and doors, and allow our members to see both how and why decisions are made. Allow them to question and comment during the process. Allow them to gain in a few years the kind of MLA experience that took people of my generation 20 or more years to gain.

This isn’t heresy, this really isn’t that radical. It’s just different, and this new technology allows us to do it rather easily. Remember that “We have always done it that way” isn’t an answer, it’s an excuse. Boomers didn’t like that response in the 1960s, and we shouldn’t like it now. And as long as I’m talkin’ ’bout my generation, I can assure them that the kids are alright.

…until we meet again.

April 7 is fast approaching, the deadline when all newly accepted publications based on NIH funding must be submitted to PubMed Central. It’s new, it’s confusing, and a lot of librarians are scrambling around trying to educate their researchers. The April 2 issue of the SPARC Open Access Newsletter has a nice list of very helpful links, including some from medical libraries. I particularly like the NIH compliance flowchart from Becker Medical Library at Washington University in St. Louis.

Thanks to Stephanie Holmgren for posting on medlib-l a few days ago the link to the US News & World Report article on Best Careers for 2008. The author, Marty Nemko, is a veteran career coach, and is also the author of “Cool Careers for Dummies.” The article highlights 31 careers that offer outstanding opportunities based on job satisfaction, training difficulty, prestige, job market outlook, and pay.

Librarianship made the best careers list, and Nemko further calls it an “underrated career.” He also put together a list of “overrated careers,” those occupations with “a mystique that exceeds reality.” New to the list this year is medical scientist. He contrasts the appeal of helping humankind, doing fascinating experiments, and high prestige to the reality of the less-than-lottery-winning-chances of actually making a significant discovery, the superlative grades required, the poor quality of life for medical researchers, and the relatively low pay given the hours worked. This probably isn’t news to most of us. But what really surprised and pleased me is that Nemko offers medical librarianship as an alternative career. He says our chances of actually solving scientific puzzles is greater because we solve lots of people’s problems by finding the information resources they need. He adds that our training is shorter and easier, and requires only a master’s degree in librarianship. He ends up by declaring medical librarianship an “under-the-radar” career, with less competition for jobs. Wow.

One of my presidential priorities is to expand our recruitment efforts by concentrating on college students in the popular new health sciences major, and to work with schools of library and information science in reaching out to these programs. Nemko’s remarks are powerful ammunition in these recruiting efforts.