MLA Takeaways: Day one

Day one: 

Forced myself out of bed in time to get coffee and meh pastries (we need protein) before the sessions. I'm a woman on a budget here. Wasn't enjoying the one hour time change at the moment. 

Subject Heading Revisions (Immersion Session)

• Group of librarians and interested individuals working to update medical subject headings with current terminology
• MeSH has 1 revision per year and Library of Congress has 1 revision per month
• Example of an outdated subject heading: Medical telematics
• Revising to Virtual Medical Health
• Interested? Join the Medical Subject Funnel
• cataloginglab.org/medical-funnel

Negotiating with Vendors [this was my favorite of the whole conference] (Symposium)

1. Have a plan
1. who are the stakeholders
2. what are the priorities
3. what is the timetable (contracts and redlining takes a long time)
4. Build a relationship, they are trying to help you (while also trying to make money)
2. Budget Sustainability
1. One director's rule of thumb was to ensure three years of funding to give a new resource a good try
2. You can just try asking for something to cost less
3. One way to save money can be to try for a multi-year agreement. This also saves your time and ensures the vendor will keep your business for a certain amount of time.
4. When starting a new resource, you could work with the department requesting the resource. For example, asking the department to fund the first three years and then the library will take over when they are sure that they really want to keep the resource long term. Or develop a cost sharing agreement
3. Remember that you are the driver of the call. Take a breath when you need to.
4. Get your own user statistics
1. Note from Kelly: Admittedly, I don't fully understand or have a grasp on my statistics yet. 
2. Look at multi-year trends, not just the recent year
3. What is going on in your institution?
4. What does your ILL data look like?
5. Cost per use trend? $50 per use was one figure put into the discussion

Communities Luncheon

I attended the MLA communities luncheon and ate with the Hospital Libraries Caucus. I met some interesting librarians, but didn't really connect with anyone. Most of the people at the table felt like they already knew each other. It was a little intimidating to put myself out there. The box lunch was quite nice though. I'd only been to conferences at the state level, so it was nice that some of the food was included in the registration fee. 

Took a short break for a power nap in my room. Did not regret booking the hotel attached to the conference site at all.

Opening Session

I enjoyed seeing most of the MLA attendees in one place. The MLA president, Brenda Linares, spoke and introduced her family who were attending. That was sweet. The keynote were medical students from University of Pittsburgh Medical School's Street Medicine group. It was interesting to hear their stories and the impact that the program has for the unhoused of Pittsburgh.

Welcome Reception

The last MLA event of day one was the Welcome Reception in the vendor hall. Food was great, featuring local favorites like pierogis (yum!) and Primanti Bros style sandwiches (meh) among other options. A particular hit were the made to order mini pies as well as the open bar. 😉 Vendors were doling out the swag and prizes. 

I actually had a bit of a challenging time trying to connect with a couple of new vendors that I was interested in. They really seemed to be more focused on their current clients. 🤷 One of the vendors did follow-up with me after the conference at least. 

My final event of this long day was a vendor dinner. I was invited to dinner with about 15 other librarians at Eleven. It was nice and the food was excellent. I enjoyed the smaller group setting to connect with other librarians and get to know my sales rep better. But still after about 2.5 hours of dinner and being stuffed full of food, I ducked out early when the group started ordering desserts. Whew!

Me at the airport at the end of the conference

Well I was going to make this a one post about the conference, but I'll have to split it up into multiples...