New UX Blog Posts, and at least someone's enjoying the snow (Pets of WHSLA)!

MLA's User Experience (UX) Caucus has two new blog posts that I recommend checking out, especially if you happen to be a user of APA PsycInfo in the EBSCOhost interface:

• Controlled vocabular field codes and their discontents in EBSCOhost APA PsycInfo: This post discusses the frustrating limitations of controlled vocabulary field codes in EBSCOhost's APA PsycInfo (such as the fact that "there are zero field codes that search exclusively in the Subjects field associated with the APA Thesaurus"!). 

• Mismatched MeSH in EBSCOhost APA PsycInfo: This post explains and provides examples of how MeSH terms associated with records in EBSCOhost PsycInfo don't always match those in MEDLINE.

For those that celebrate, I hope everyone had a safe holiday last week! We received quite a bit of snow over in Madison, Wisconsin. While my husband and I weren't thrilled, our Irish wolfy, Hazel, took some enjoyment from the blizzard. Below is her sitting atop her throne.

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

AI for Libraries: Free Webinars

ai4Libraries

offers free webinars.

I hope you find some of the resources, recordings etc. interesting and useful.

• AI skills and proficiencies are on the list for MLA to add to our professional standards and guidelines.

Here's a snapshot of their 2025 offerings:

Recordings & Slides:

NNLM Reading Club: Winter Self Care

 

On behalf of the NNLM Reading Club team, we are pleased to announce the November 2025 theme, Winter Self Care. 

We are pleased to be featuring three new books related to this topic:

Wintering by Katherine May
How to Winter by Kari Liebowitz
Defeating SAD (Seasonal Affective Disorder) by Norman E. Rosenthal, M.D.

We would like to thank our NNLM Reading Club Advisory Group, which is made up of NNLM Members who worked together to choose this topic, select the three books we are featuring this month, and to develop book discussion guides. Books and health information resources are available on the NNLM Reading Club website.

Reprinted from the NNLM Region 6 Newsletter.

Note from Michele Matucheski: As a lover of Winter, I read Katherine May's Wintering last year and loved it. 

Open Evidence-Krafty Librarian

 

Did you catch the Krafty Librarian's post, "OpenEvidence: Smart Medicine or Smart Marketing?"  After meeting our new Internal Medicine Program Director, who had questions about it, I’ve been dabbling with OpenMedicine myself. While Michelle reports accurately that you need an NPI to create an account; I just used my hospital's NPI, and I was in without issue. (If you want a way around that)

The big question, of course, is its utility. I recently leveraged it not as a substitute for a comprehensive search, but to add to one. Specifically, I used it to reinforce my search results on best practices literature, giving me a quick double-check on established evidence to ensure I had a complete picture.

The original blog post raises vital questions about balancing slick presentation with true evidence integrity, and it challenges us to place resources like OpenEvidence in the correct context for our users. Is it a time-saver? Yes. Is it a perfect primary source? Probably not. We need to be the critical thinkers guiding our clinicians and researchers through the noise. 

https://kraftylibrarian.com/openevidence-smart-medicine-or-smart-marketing/ 

MLA Award Nominations Due December 2nd

 

Image by Mimzy from Pixabay

For fellow MLA members, this year's MLA award nominations are due December 2nd, 2025. Nominate a colleague for one of the many MLA awards!

 The award categories include:

•  New to the profession
• Mid-career professionals
• Proven leader
• Organizational focus
• International focus
• Chapter & caucus
•  Lectureships

 Submit your nominations via MLA's Awards and Honors page. Note that you need to be signed into your MLA account in order to make a nomination. 

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

Liz Suelzer Named MWCMLA’s Distinguished Librarian of the Year!

 Posted on behalf of Karen Hanus

We are thrilled to announce that Liz Suelzer, Applications Support Analyst Sr for the Advocate Health - Midwest Library, has been honored as the Midwest Chapter of the Medical Library Association’s Distinguished Librarian of the Year!

The Midwest Chapter of the Medical Library Association (MWCMLA) unites health sciences librarians across nine Midwestern states. The annual Distinguished Librarian of the Year Award recognizes an MWCMLA member at any career level who has provided outstanding service to the organization and advanced MWCMLA’s achievement and effectiveness.

Liz has held multiple MWCMLA leadership roles, including President-Elect, President, and Past President from 2019 to 2022, and currently serves as Chair of the Professional Practice Committee. In every role, she has brought vision, organization, and energy, transforming committee work and inspiring colleagues to achieve their best. Among her many outstanding contributions to the chapter, Liz launched the chapter’s Member Mixer Series, which created an engaging virtual event that fosters professional connection among our members. She also introduced the “Fan Favorite” award, which has expanded award recognition at the organization’s annual conference to include contributions beyond the traditional research categories. These initiatives reflect her commitment to inclusivity. Liz’s leadership and creativity extend beyond programming. She also guided the development of a strategic plan that set meaningful, achievable goals while positioning the Chapter for future growth.

The most important contribution for which Liz deserves this award is her leadership of the Professional Practice Committee. This committee has a challenging charge with a lot of members; it has been a tough committee to lead due to its size and sprawling purpose. Once Liz took over as chair of the committee, she was able to give its members a clear direction and successfully led the members and reinvigorated the group with a renewed sense of purpose. A member of the committee shared that “Liz made an immediate impression by effectively and efficiently leading her first meeting [of the Professional Practice Committee]. Her leadership, team building, and organizational skills are extraordinary. It only took one meeting for her to engage her committee members, clearly communicate the important work of this committee and convince us to actively participate. In my opinion, her efforts have resulted in the first highly successful execution of the committee’s original intent and purpose.” 

Congratulations, Liz, on this well-deserved recognition! Thank you for all you do to support and advance health sciences librarianship in the Midwest!

Clowning around with EndNote 2025's AI Research Assistant (clown shenanigans part II!)

 

EndNote 2025 now has an AI-powered Research Assistant tool to accompany its Key Takeaway tool. This new feature allows you to ask the Research Assistant (i.e., chatbot) questions, which the Assistant will answer using the content provided in the PDF you attach to a reference. As a note, in order to use the tool EndNote 2025 users must use a library they have synced with the online version of EndNote.

Of course, I couldn't help but resort to my old clown antics to test out the tool, just like I did when testing out the Key Takeaway tool.

For this experiment, I tested whether the Research Assistant could pick up on clown nonsense in a study's methods. To do this, I replaced the abstract and methods sections of one of my own articles about clinical trials information sharing with nonsense about clowns (for a humorous read, you can take a look at the manipulated PDF here), and attached it to its corresponding reference in EndNote. I also replaced the abstract metadata in the EndNote record with clown nonsense. After syncing my library, I then entered the following question into the Research Assistant, "What methods were used to determine the extent of data sharing?"

Theoretically, the Research Assistant should have either stated the authors didn't specify their methods for determining extent of data sharing, or mentioned something along the lines of balloon animal residue analysis and unsolicited honking detection, but it did nothing of the sort. Instead, it appeared to draw data from the results and introduction sections to inform its methods summary. It didn't mention clowns, at all, even though all sections relating to the methods had been replaced with clown nonsense.

 

Here is the output of the Research Assistant, as the screenshot can be a bit hard to read:

• Methods used to determine data sharing

• The study analyzed 206 ClinicalTrials.gov (CTG) records of US federally funded COVID-19 clinical studies that included at least 200 participants
• It evaluated the records for links to supporting documents, individual participant data (IPD) sharing information, and associated publications
• The researchers looked for specific sections in the CTG records that indicated the presence of protocols, informed consent forms, and statistical analysis plans.
• Data was collected on how many records provided links to these materials and the mechanisms for accessing IPD, as well as any discrepancies in the information provided.

To be fair, the Research Assistant did pick up on clown nonsense when you asked it to "Summarize the methods used for this study."

 

Here is the output for that query, as well:

• Methods summary
• Study design: the research employed a multi-phase, interdisciplinary approach to investigate the discoverability of supporting research materials in COVID-19 clinical studies on ClinicalTrials.gov.
• Data Collection:
• Behavioral surveillance: Observers were trained to recognize clown behaviors, using tools like binoculars and audio recorders to monitor high-traffic areas for clown-like activities.
• Material forensics: Environmental samples were collected from locations identified as high clown activity zones, focusing on traces like wig fibers and greasepaint residue.
• Psychological profiling: Participants were assessed using three instruments to gauge their clown potential, including a questionnaire and observational tests.
• Data Analysis: Observations and samples were catalogued and scored using the Clown Threat Index (CTI), which quantified behaviors to identify individuals with clown-like tendencies.
• Ethics and oversight: The study was approved by the Institutional Review Board, ensuring ethical standards in data collection and participant interaction.

While I hope it would be unlikely authors would replace sections relating to their methods with utter nonsense, this little experiment demonstrates the limitations of AI PDF summarizers, namely how they can miss vital context within the full text. Researchers wanting to save time with these summarizers may miss (potentially critical!) methodological flaws in a study (such as in this case, where there was a mismatch, to say the least, between the methods and the aims of the study). While PDF summarization tools and chatbots can be convenient, researchers should exercise caution if they decide to utilize such tools, and always verify information by examining the full text. 

For some additional resources relating to generative AI in the health sciences, check out:

• Evaluating large language models on medical evidence summarization: “In this study, we systematically examine the capabilities and limitations of LLMs, specifically GPT-3.5 and ChatGPT, in performing zero-shot medical evidence summarization across six clinical domains.”
• Evaluating a large language model’s ability to answer clinicians’ requests for evidence summaries: “This study investigated the performance of a generative artificial intelligence (AI) tool using GPT-4 in answering clinical questions in comparison with medical librarians' gold-standard evidence syntheses.”
• Evaluating ChatGPT's ability to simplify scientific abstracts for clinicians and the public: "This study evaluated ChatGPT's ability to simplify scientific abstracts for both public and clinician use. Ten questions were developed to assess ChatGPT's ability to simplify scientific abstracts and improve their readability for both the public and clinicians."
• How effectively do large language models and AI-based automation tools assist in writing and summarizing evidence syntheses?: Cochrane Training webinar recording on potential uses of large language models in systematic reviews.
• AI Hallucinations Are Getting Worse: NY Times coverage of the worsening issue of hallucinations in generative AI
• Ebling's AI Examples (Ebling's Box folder containing additional generative AI examples!) 

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

Nominate Someone for WHSLA's Librarian of the Year Award!

 

 Nominate one of your colleagues for WHSLA's Librarian of the Year Award! The deadline for nominations is October 31st, 2025.

This career award is bestowed upon a professional (MLS or equivalent) librarian in recognition of outstanding leadership, achievement and commitment to the library profession. The librarian shall be currently employed in a Wisconsin health sciences library and must be an active member of WHSLA.

Criteria for the award include (but are not limited to):

1. Distinguished service to the profession; outstanding participation in activities of professional associations; and notable 
2. publications, presentations and projects.
3. Dedicated leadership and vision in health sciences libraries including automation technology, management, networking,
4. education or service.
5. Active support of and participation in WHSLA.
6. Enhancement, expansion and interpretation of library service to the community and/or strengthening of the library's role and position in the community.
7. Development of innovative programs that have benefited WHSLA members. 

Nominate a colleague via WHSLA's Librarian of the Year nomination form. 

Thanks for reading, and I hope everyone is having a great fall!