2026 WHSLA Professional Development Award

Image from here.

WHSLA is offering 15 awards of up to $575 awards to support members' professional growth.   Awards will be chosen by random drawing from eligible participants the week of February 9th, 2026.

How can I use the award?

• Continuing education
• Conference costs (registration, travel, lodging, etc.)
• AHIP Membership

Requirements

• Active WHSLA member, current on dues
• Dues paid by January 31st (no exceptions)
• Expenses must occur in 2026
• Share what you learned with WHSLA members within 3 months (WHSLA blog post, Wisdom Chat etc.)
• If using funds for AHIP membership, agree to run for WHSLA office within 2 years
• Have not won the stipend drawing in the past 3 years
• If you won more than 3 years ago, you must have completed your sharing obligation 

Deadline: February 6 at 5pm

Submit your name for the drawing here: 2026 Professional Development Grant for WHSLA Librarians  – Fill out form

Note: MLA 2026 will be in Milwaukee-we hope to see many WHSLA members there!

Dora Davis, MLIS

Coord. CME & Medical Librarian

Center for Learning & Innovation

Human Resources Division | ProHealth Care, Inc.

Predatory Publishers: Avoiding Scams ...

Image from here.

Predatory Publishers: Avoiding Scams by Working with the Society as Your Trusted Partner  by The Edocrine Society

This is a concise distillation of predatory publishing from the POV of a legitimate publisher, The Endocrine Society, who did their own investigation of a predatory journal / publisher crowding in on their own good name and reputation.

It's all good to know beforehand, in case anyone asks for help publishing in some of these dodgy journals.

Upcoming MLA Forum on Collection Development Policies: Open to non-MLA Members

 

The Medical Library Association’s (MLA) Collection Development Caucus will be hosting a forum on collection development policies on Thursday, Jan. 29 at Noon CT. 

Non-MLA members are welcome to attend and participate in the discussion. 

To receive the Zoom link contact Karen Gau (gaukh@vcu.edu)

The session will start with brief presentations from librarians who will talk about how their collection development policies were developed, what their policies include, and some of the challenges they faced in developing them. We will hear from:

• Yumin Jiang, Collection Management Department Head, University of Colorado’s Anschutz Medical Campus (Collection Development Policy)
• Robyn Gleasner, Resource Management Librarian, University of New Mexico’s Health Sciences Center (Collection Development Manual)
• Liz Kellermeyer, Director of Library & Knowledge Services, National Jewish Health (Collection Development Policy)
• Ramune Kubilius, Collection Development / Special Projects Librarian, Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine (Collections Philosophy)

Following the presentations, there will be time for Q&A and discussion.

The session will not be recorded to encourage open conversation.

See you there!

Badgerlink Access

 

Check Your Library's or School's Access

The BadgerLink user authentication system was updated on June 20, 2025. Determine if your institution still has automatic access, or if you need to take steps to get it back.

Read More

Hospital Librarian Listening Sessions Jan 27 and 29, 2026

Calling all hospital librarians!

Region 6 wants to hear from you. Here's your chance to share your comments, kudos, concerns, and questions in one of two semi-structured listening sessions. Select one or both sessions if you are available.

https://uiowa.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/SV_eINFXsFEFCfqWFw

Tuesday, January 27th, 2:00 - 3:00 pm CT

Thursday, January 29th, 1:00 - 2:00 pm CT

Article of Interest from The Scholarly Kitchen

Guest Post — Funding Research Services: How Libraries are Exploring Cost Recovery Models

• By Hilary Craiglow, Cynthia Hudson Vitale, Tim McGeary
• Dec 8, 2025
• Time To Read: 7 mins

Excerpt:

 

Editor’s note: Today’s post is by Hilary Craiglow, Cynthia Hudson Vitale, and Tim McGeary. Hilary leads library consulting at Attain Partners, a higher education consulting firm. Cynthia is Associate Dean for Technology Strategy and Digital Services at Johns Hopkins University Libraries, where she leads strategic initiatives in support of research, teaching, and scholarly communication. Tim is the Associate University Librarian for Digital Strategies & Technology at the Duke University Libraries, where he leads in strategic visioning and implementation of digital initiatives and programs for libraries and their partnerships in technology and research, building internal and external collaborations to create sustainable solutions for scholars and researchers. 

"Academic and research libraries have long been a cornerstone of the scholarly enterprise, providing the information resources, books, journals, collections, and expertise that make research possible. Over time, the roles of research libraries have expanded and now encompass modern, mission-critical services such as research data management, curation, and sharing; systematic reviews; digital transformation initiatives; impact assessment; and an ever-growing range of functional and discipline-specific supports that connect directly to every stage of the research process.

These activities are now fundamental to how scholarship is created, published, and shared. Unlike the broad-based resources libraries provide to all users, regardless of discipline, project, or financial situation, this research support work is inherently more specialized and project-specific. Much of it happens within individual labs or through grant-funded initiatives, which means it requires deep expertise, significant staff time, and customized workflows tailored to each research team’s methodologies, timelines, and deliverables.

This project-specific nature of research support also intersects with how university research is funded. Research across a university exists along a broad spectrum of funding sources. Some research is supported by departmental or centralized institutional funds that are broadly available to the academic community. In contrast, other research relies on extramural grants, external funding from agencies, foundations, or other sponsors, which include specific compliance requirements, budget requirements, deliverables, and accountability tied to the projects or researchers."

 

Read the full article Here.

Blog post with tips for spotting hallucinations in AI generated content

Image by Afif Ramdhasuma from Pixabay

A new post published December 16, 2025 on the blog, Card Catalog, discusses practical tips for identifying hallucinations in AI generated citations. The post, titled, How to spot AI hallucinations like a reference librarian by Hana Lee Goldin, provides a quick, plain-language overview of why AI has the tendency to hallucinate references, and some tell-tale signs of hallucinated content. 

Something I particularly appreciate is that, in addition to providing tips for determining if a citation exists, the post also provides tips for verifying whether the AI is accurately summarizing the sources it's citing, being a vital check that often gets overlooked in AI generated content.

Happy reading, and hope everyone has a great weekend! ⛄

Free NNLM Webinar: Hospital Librarians Going Virtual

Pay No Attention to That Librarian Behind the Curtain!

by Dora Davis, WHSLA Professional Development Chair

 

While doing my usual crawl of regional offerings (just call me the Nancy Drew of Professional Development), I stumbled upon a gem: Region 7 is hosting a webinar on “Hospital Librarians Going Virtual.”

 

Most of us have already made the leap into virtual spaces—hello juggling all the things with only your keyboard and mouse—but aren’t you curious to see how others have navigated this transition? From creative outreach strategies to tech hacks that actually work, I’m curious to hear what’s worked (and what we wish we had never attempted).

 

When I first transitioned to virtual services, it felt a little like the Wizard of Oz moment—“Pay no attention to that man behind the curtain!” Suddenly, all the behind-the-scenes magic we used to do in person had to happen online. The curtain was pulled back, and our patrons could see the gears turning live via Teams (or Zoom or Webex or….): the tech troubleshooting, the resource wrangling, the creative pivots, that time someone banged on my door and my camera fell off so all anyone could see was the dirty ceiling in my office. My first virtual education session was nerve-wracking—I worried no one would show up, and then 42 people logged in!  Talk about deer-in-the-headlights dodging oncoming traffic. But that was my aha moment: Going virtual wasn’t just a workaround; it was an opportunity to reach more people than ever before.

 

The best part? This webinar is free. No budget approvals, no expense reports—just pure professional development goodness at the click of a button.

 

If you’ve ever wondered:

• How do other hospital librarians keep that personal touch online?
• What tools are making their lives easier?
• Who’s figured out the secret to making virtual orientations actually fun?
• How many of us are sporting “the best pair of socks you’ve ever worn” behind that curtain?

 

Then this webinar might be worth your time.  Go ahead and take a peek because although there’s no place like home, sometimes a visit to someone else's home gives you that idea you didn’t know you needed.

 

Register here: Hospital Librarians Going Virtual

 

In the meantime, watch out for flying monkeys!

 

Dora 

Can automatic indexing algorithms compare apples to Apple's?: An overview of automatic indexing in PubMed, errors, and potential band aids.

 

Image by Michal Jarmoluk from Pixabay

Inane indexing

As librarians, we've encountered some…well, let's say interesting indexing choices in PubMed records.

Such as this case, where an article about Apple iPad Pro's was indexed with the MeSH term, "Malus" (being the genus name for apple tree)…

…or this case, where an article about early identification of autism was assigned the MeSH term, "humans." Anything else? Nope. Just "humans."

So what's going on here? Well, there are a few different ways a record can be indexed in PubMed [1]:

• Manual: This is where a record was indexed manually by an indexer at the National Library of Medicine (NLM).
• Automated: This is where a record was indexed by an algorithm, with no review by human indexers.
• Curated: This is where a record was indexed by an algorithm, but was later reviewed/modified by human indexers.

If the indexing of a record seems particularly bizarre, such as in our examples, odds are the record may have been automatically indexed.

A bit of Background on Automatic Indexing in PubMed

Automatic indexing isn't new to PubMed. In 2002, automatic indexing began as simple suggestions given to indexers at the NLM as they reviewed a record [2-6]. In 2011, first line automated indexing with human review was implemented for a selection of 14 journals [2, 4, 6, 7]. This progressed to full automatic indexing for all OLDMEDLINE records in 2015, comments and backlogged citations in 2016, and, finally, full automatic indexing for all MEDLINE journals in 2022, with the NLM's newest automatic indexing algorithm, Medical Text Indexer NeXt generation (MTIX) being introduced in 2024 [4, 7, 8].

While automatic indexing has improved efficiency, it has also resulted in issues relating to precision and recall, as demonstrated in the examples I had alluded to earlier. A few studies have documented these errors more formally [3, 9-12], including an article I recently published in the Journal of the Medical Library Association (JMLA), which examined precision errors observed in a sample of MEDLINE records automatically indexed with the MeSH term, Malus, being the genus name for apple tree [13].

How do I check how a PubMed record was indexed?

For those curious, there's a nifty trick you can use to check how an item is indexed. You can do this by looking at the PubMed record in XML. To access a PubMed record in XML, simply use the URL below, replacing the highlighted number with the PMID of the record you would like to check.

https://eutils.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/eutils/efetch.fcgi?db=pubmed&id=24410017%2c11700088&retmode=xml

The indexing method is typically listed to the right of the label "indexingmethod=".

Below are screenshots of the XML of both of our examples from earlier. Sure enough, they were both automatically indexed.

Link to XML for Example 1

Link to XML for Example 2

What can we do about automatic indexing errors in PubMed?

While we can't fix automatic indexing errors in PubMed, ourselves, or wholly prevent them from occurring, there are a few ways to ameliorate their effects.

In addition to conducting additional studies on automatic indexing errors and reporting errors to the NLM HelpDesk, librarians can instruct researchers to use standardized language and the very MeSH terms they would like to see assigned to their records in the titles and abstracts of their manuscripts (at the least, this way, records may have correct MeSH terms appear alongside the erroneous ones).

Fellow librarians from the University of Iowa developed a checklist that has additional tips for helping researchers reduce the effects of automatic indexing errors in their own manuscripts [14].

Will automatic indexing algorithms ever compare, with 100% accuracy, apples to Apple's? Who knows. But, regardless of whether indexing errors cause you laughter or grief, they're likely to be sticking around for a while.

 

Works Cited / Fun Reading

1.      Incorporating values for indexing method in MEDLINE/PubMed XML [Internet]. NLM Technical Bulletin; 2018. Available from: https://www.nlm.nih.gov/pubs/techbull/ja18/ja18_indexing_method.html#note

2.      Mork J, Aronson A, Demner-Fushman D. 12 years on - Is the NLM medical text indexer still useful and relevant? J Biomed Semantics. 2017 Feb 23;8(1):8. Epub 20170223. DOI: 10.1186/s13326-017-0113-5. Available from: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5324252/pdf/13326_2017_Article_113.pdf.

3.      Chen E, Bullard J, Giustini D. Automated indexing using NLM's Medical Text Indexer (MTI) compared to human indexing in Medline: a pilot study. J Med Libr Assoc. 2023 Jul 10;111(3):684–94. DOI: 10.5195/jmla.2023.1588. Available from: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10361558/pdf/jmla-111-3-684.pdf.

4.      MEDLINE 2022 Initiative: Transition to Automated Indexing [Internet]. NLM Techincal Bulletin; 2021. Available from: https://www.nlm.nih.gov/pubs/techbull/nd21/nd21_medline_2022.html

5.      Rae AR, Pritchard DO, Mork JG, Demner-Fushman D. Automatic MeSH indexing: revisiting the subheading attachment problem. AMIA Annu Symp Proc. 2020;2020:1031–40. Epub 20210125. Available from: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8075546/pdf/139_3413087.pdf.

6.      Mork J, Jimeno Yepes A, Aronson A. The NLM Medical Text Indexer System for indexing biomedical literature. 2013. Available from: https://lhncbc.nlm.nih.gov/ii/information/Papers/MTI_System_Description_Expanded_2013_Accessible.pdf.

7.      Frequently Asked Questions about Indexing for MEDLINE: National Library of Medicine; 2023. Available from: https://www.nlm.nih.gov/bsd/indexfaq.html.

8.      Sticco A. NLM Office Hours: MEDLINE Indexing Update 2024. Available from: https://www.nlm.nih.gov/oet/ed/pubmed/02-24_oh_medline-automated-indexing.html.

9.      Aronson AR, Mork JG, Gay CW, Humphrey SM, Rogers WJ. The NLM Indexing Initiative's Medical Text Indexer. Stud Health Technol Inform. 2004;107(Pt 1):268–72. Available from: https://ebooks.iospress.nl/pdf/doi/10.3233/978-1-60750-949-3-268.

10. Fernandez-Llimos F, Negrão LG, Bond C, Stewart D. Influence of automated indexing in Medical Subject Headings (MeSH) selection for pharmacy practice journals. Res Social Adm Pharm. 2024 Jun 12. Epub 20240612. DOI: 10.1016/j.sapharm.2024.06.003.

11. Moore DAQ, Yaqub O, Sampat BN. Manual versus machine: How accurately does the Medical Text Indexer (MTI) classify different document types into disease areas? PLoS One. 2024;19(3):e0297526. Epub 20240313. DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0297526. Available from: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10936797/pdf/pone.0297526.pdf.

12. Brief Communication – concerning algorithmic indexing in MEDLINE. Journal of EAHIL. 2024 03/17 [cited 2025/04/09];20(1):18–21. DOI: 10.32384/jeahil20604. Available from: https://doi.org/10.32384/jeahil20604.

13. Wilson P. Sometimes the apple does fall far from the tree: a case study on automatic indexing precision errors in PubMed. J Med Libr Assoc. 2025 Oct 23;113(4):318–26. DOI: 10.5195/jmla.2025.2110.

14. Allen C, Carol H, Riley S, Deberg J. Developing an Author Checklist to Improve Discovery of Published Articles in the Era of Algorithmic Indexing. 2025. Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.17282091

Thanks for reading!

Culture Study Interview: How a Hospital Librarian Spends Their Days

 

Link to the article on substack.

Helpful Hint: I was looking for a link to a podcast -- audio -- and couldn't find one.  Turns out this is an interview with transcribed text, so once you follow the link to the website, scroll down past the usual podcast intro patter to read the "real" article / interview with Hospital Librarian Carrie Grinstad.  

You'll see a screenshot of a PubMed search strategy ...  That's about where the interview begins.