Thursday, July 3, 2025

A bit of cuteness to brighten your day: Wisconsin sandhill cranes adopt Canada goose gosling

In today's stressful times, everyone can use a little bit of cuteness to brighten their day.

In Madison, Wisconsin, a family of sandhill cranes adopted a Canada goose gosling. Cynthia Carlson recorded the family of four on her YouTube channel. The same video is embedded below (warning: viewers may experience cuteness overload!). WKOW covered the story of the found family, which can be found on YouTube via this link.

An update from the International Crane Foundation's Facebook page features a photo of the family, with the gosling and the sandhill crane colt, now both gangly teenagers, posing next to their proud parents.

Thanks for reading, and I hope everyone has a great day! 


Thursday, June 26, 2025

2025 Joseph Leiter NLM/MLA Lectureship: 7/10 @1pm CDT

 Join Us for the 2025 Joseph Leiter NLM/MLA Lectureship

MLA invites you to attend the 2025 Joseph Leiter NLM/MLA Lectureship, a distinguished event that fosters collaboration between the Medical Library Association and the National Library of Medicine. This biennial lecture highlights thought leaders in biomedical communications.

We’re excited to announce that Kristi Holmes, PhD, will deliver this year’s lecture virtually on Thursday, July 10, 2025, at 1:00 p.m., central time.

Holmes, PhD, is associate dean for Knowledge Management and Strategy, director of Galter Health Sciences Library and Learning Center, and professor of Preventive Medicine in the division of Biostatistics and Informatics at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine. She serves as the director of Informatics and Data Science at the Northwestern University Clinical and Translational Sciences Institute (NUCATS) and chief of Knowledge Management in Northwestern’s Institute for Artificial Intelligence in Medicine. She directs evaluation and continuous improvement for several programs and centers, including the NNLM National Evaluation Center. Her work focuses on discovery and access to knowledge through collaborative computational and social information initiatives, including the role of repositories to enable FAIR data practices and a vibrant sharing ecosystem.

This lecture is open to both MLA members and the public. Don’t miss this opportunity to hear from a leader shaping the future of biomedical information and strategy.

👉 Register to receive the Zoom link and secure your spot.

 Link to original post: https://www.mlanet.org/article/join-us-for-the-2025-joseph-leiter-nlm-mla-lectureship/ 

Thursday, June 19, 2025

Phineas Gage

Phineas Gage, Britannica


This article on Slate came up on one of my feeds again recently ... 

Back when I was a student runner for the ILL Department at an earlier rendition of Ebling Library  at UW-Madison, we'd often get requests for some of the early articles about Phineas Gage from the 1800s, He was a railway worker who had an iron spike accidentally blasted through his head, and survived!  These articles were in the closed stacks in Micaela's historical journals section and fragile.  The articles were requested so often, that we kept copies in the ILL Department so we would not have to disturb the originals in the history section and risk further degradation.

It was a fascinating case study.  I remember the article saying that when he was recovering from the accident, mushrooms started to grow out of his wound.  His physician removed the mushrooms, and cleaned the wound with alcohol, and they didn't grow back ...  Phineas made a complete recovery -- well, as complete as was possible.  People love to talk about his personality change after the accident, but there's some debate about that ...

There are multiple documentaries and articles about this famous patient, if you'd like to learn more.  Here are a few:

What if Part of your Brain was Missing. NOVA.   

How Phineas Gage's Freak Accident Changed Brain Science.  To the Best of Our Knowledge.  

Schleim S. Neuroscience Education Begins With Good Science: Communication About Phineas Gage (1823-1860), One of Neurology's Most-Famous Patients, in Scientific Articles. Front Hum Neurosci. 2022 Apr 28;16:734174. doi: 10.3389/fnhum.2022.734174. PMID: 35572004; PMCID: PMC9096075. Link to article.

Why Brain Scientists Are Still Obsessed With The Curious Case Of Phineas Gage - NPR (2017)

Monday, June 16, 2025

Post by 2025 WHSLA Professional Development Grant Winner, Eileen Severson!

Guest post by WHSLA member, Eileen Severson

First, thank you for the boost of cash to attend MLA!  Here’s a bit about what I learned, and thought might be important for you all to know.

I took the CE entitled “Hospital Librarianship: Keeping Traditions and Bridging to Innovations: (Re)Vitalizing your Career and Your Library.”  The title of this course attracted me because there are times lately I’ve needed a bit of re-vitalizing around my career and library.  What I came away with the most was that I wasn’t alone.  I sat in a room of both exhausted but enthusiastic hospital librarians who shared their frustrations and problems as well as their successes.  We discussed creating a mission, vision and strategic plan for your library, and making sure they connected with the organization’s mission, vision, and strategic plan.   We brainstormed services and ways we could “get out of the library” and make our value known.  Some ideas were being on committees like continuing education, research, patient education, IRB, GME and grants.  Other ideas included attending grand rounds, morbidity and mortality conferences, and department meetings.  One of the librarians shared her email tag line that we all thought was spot on: “We use our expertise so you can focus on using yours”.  Through this course I met some creative and kind librarians with lots of ideas and feel more energized to try new things in my library.

I attended a variety of symposiums and poster presentations.  Some takeaways from these presentations:

  • Take time to reflect on how you are hiring—is it inclusive? Where can you offer flexibility in the position description and job ad?  Do years of experience need to be in a library—what other experience does the candidate have?  Be more flexible in the interview—for example, give the candidate the questions before the interview, turn off the camera to give candidate time to think before answering a question.  Allow notes—this isn’t a test! 
  •  Succession planning! This presentation hit home for me.  Basically, if you have someone retiring or moving to a different position—make sure to document, document, document all that they do.  The presenters suggested that the documents don’t have to be prescriptive but should describe the thought process when performing tasks.  They created flow-charts showing the thought process of several responsibilities of one of their retiring staff. 
  •   How to highlight your library as a value driven partner: 
    • Use data that means something to your leaders; align your data with organizational goals.   
    • How much money does the library save?  How do we help meet strategic objectives of the organization?  What is the ROI of the library?
    • Don’t just share the data, include narrative, stories.  Make sure to eliminate library jargon. 
    • How do we provide a community benefit?
    • Talk to people, attend events
    • Connect work with incentives/reimbursement 
  • AI is the new hottest topic—it was everywhere at MLA.  I have determined I need to learn more about it and our library needs to be a resource for understanding and teaching others about AI. 

I also networked with my fellow WHSLA Professional Development winner, Kathy Koch!!!

Photo of Eileen and Kathy

Before (left) and after (right) photos below:

Photo of Eileen and Kathy Photo of Eileen and Kathy