Call for questions: Navigating the ADA Title II Digital Accessibility Rule

The April 2026 compliance deadline is approaching. Is your library ready?

Join five MLA Caucuses (User Experience, Accessibility & Disability, Vision Science, Technical Services, and Technology in Education) for a 90-minute deep dive into the Department of Justice’s new rule impacting websites, LibGuides, databases, and instructional materials.

Event Details

 

Date: Wednesday, February 25, 2026

Time: 1:00 PM Central / 2:00 PM ET/ 12:00 pm MT/ 11:00 AM PT

Who can participate: Anyone! MLA membership not required

Platform: Zoom https://us02web.zoom.us/j/83051394100?pwd=JM4jFRGGBteWR7bB4BDVvrX0hJa1LN.1

We Want Your Questions!  Help our expert panel address your specific "on the ground" challenges—from legacy PDF remediation to vendor accountability. Questions will be anonymized and used to provide actionable, real-world solutions.

Submit Your Questions Here Deadline to submit: Thursday, February 12, 2026 (11:59 PM PST)

See the full text of this rule at ADA.gov: https://www.ada.gov/law-and-regs/regulations/title-ii-2010-regulations/ 

Note: The above text was written by the MLA Multi-Caucus Planning Committee (on behalf of the User Experience, Accessibility & Disability, Vision Science, Technical Services, and Technology in Education Caucuses)

Entertaining Read: Author responds to journal's phishing email with fake paper on "pregnancy cravings for prime numbers"

Image by Kris from Pixabay

Retraction Watch published a guest post on an author's experience submitting a fake paper to a likely fraudulent journal. In addition to being an entertaining read, the post provides a bit of a behind-the-scenes look at some of the predatory tactics employed by potentially fraudulent publishers. 

Spoiler: The author's fake paper was, in fact, published, and, as noted by a commenter, is searchable in databases like OpenAlex and Google Scholar. The paper can also be helpfully summarized by AI tools such as Elicit (which isn't surprising, as Elicit, like many AI literature summarizers, crawls OpenAlex as one of its data sources). 

For a firsthand account from someone who had fallen victim to a predatory publisher, I highly recommend checking out this 2019 article from Science by Alan H. Chambers.

Thanks for reading, and hope everyone has a great Monday!

2025 WHSLA Award Winners!

Karen Hanus & Dora Davis

Submitted by Barb Ruggeri – Immediate Past President, WHSLA

On January 5th , I had lunch with Dora Davis and Karen Hanus to give them their well-deserved awards.

Dora Davis was the recipient of the 2025 Robert Koehler Award for Exemplary Service to the Wisconsin Health Science Library Association (WHSLA). Robert Koehler served as a distinguished member of the WHSLA board for nearly 38 of his 39-year membership. The award was created last year upon Robert’s retirement, and Dora is the first person to receive the award after him.

As our coordinator for Professional Development, Dora Davis has devoted countless hours to surveying membership about their interests, applying for support from NNLM Region 6 to fund MLA webinars, distributing funding codes to members to attend certified continuing education seminars at no cost, tracking the funding utilization and reporting this activity at our board meetings. She also administers our Professional Development stipend program each year.

Professional Development is the leading purpose and activity of WHSLA membership and it has sustained our state professional organization thanks to her consistent efforts since 2016. In addition to this role, Dora has served as an officer and a representative of our organization to other groups. She assisted in the planning of a large in-person conference in Milwaukee in 2019 as well as virtual conferences for our state association.

Karen Hanus received the WHSLA Librarian of the Year for 2025, in recognition of outstanding leadership, achievement and commitment to the library profession. It’s unusual for a WHSLA member to receive this award twice in their career, but since Karen Hanus’s first award in 1999, her continuous active involvement in WHSLA and her success as a health science library leader makes her a unique exception! 

In their nomination, WHSLA members acknowledged her decades of service to WHSLA which included archival preservation, digitization of records, executive leadership and most recently, innovations in WHSLA asset management in her first year as WHSLA treasurer. She was also cited for essential contributions to integrating the libraries for two healthcare system mergers since 2020, consistent efforts to increase awareness of library services across the Advocate Health enterprise, and her unflagging support for her library staff. As the submission aptly put it – “she does everything with compassion, wisdom and steady resolve.”

On behalf of the WHSLA membership, I sincerely thank Dora and Karen for their leadership and service to WHSLA.

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! ⛄