Post by Kari Zelinka! MLA 2026 –Top Takeaway

Hello, this is Kari Zelinka from UnityPoint Health – Meriter in Madison, WI. I was fortunate to be a recipient of the WHSLA professional development award. With MLA closer to home than ever this year, I was happy to be able to attend with the help of WHSLA. I enjoyed networking, learning from colleagues at other institutions through talks and poster sessions and the blanket making party! It was exciting to see all the research being conducted and shared.

The session that was most helpful to me at MLA 2026 was a very practical lightening session, Keeping the Line Moving: Making Transitions Work for Retiring and New-hire Solo Librarians. Loren Hackett and Theresa Kline from Cleveland Clinic showcased a library handoff checklist that will make transitions from outgoing librarian to incoming librarian as smooth as can be.

Libraries have many ways of trying to preserve institutional knowledge AND varied methods of orienting new employees. Think binders, learning modules, tours, meetings and much more. Occasionally, you’re lucky enough to overlap with your predecessor or be part of a larger team to learn the ropes from, but more often than not, in a hospital library, you may be a solo librarian who has to puzzle it out as you go.

Documenting procedures is not my forte and updating them as they change? Well, that never seems important until it’s time to pass the baton to someone new. I’ve worked places where they had a wiki to try to capture institutional knowledge and I thought that worked much better than individual Microsoft Word files that are organized according to one person’s thought process, never to be duplicated. The wiki was searchable; however, it was only helpful if it was current. In a smaller shop, without multiple librarians, the Library Handoff Checklist, developed by Hackett and Kline seems to fit the bill for passing on knowledge and making sure you cover your bases for library specific new employee orientation.

When thinking about what I do as a hospital librarian, two things come to mind – literature searches and articles requests. Yes, those might be the two most common daily tasks for a solo librarian, but there is so much more that goes on behind the scenes. When you only negotiate contracts once a year, it takes a while to develop a rapport with the vendors. What about the library budget? How are invoices processed? Maybe you have no problem changing the toner in the copier, but can’t figure out how it gets recycled or disposed of (speaking from experience here). Don’t panic! Consult the checklist and if there isn’t one, consider creating one for the future. Any information you can pass onto the next librarian is helpful, especially if it’s easy to locate. In the past, I have kept notes for myself, both digital and the post-it’s on my monitor type. Moving forward, I’m switching over to an annotated checklist after seeing this presentation at MLA. Maybe it will be helpful to you too!