From Jennifer Schram, Mayo Clinic Libraries
=====================
I received a Professional Development Award for 2020 and had
planned on using it to attend MLA 2020 in May in Portland, OR. Registration and airfare had been paid when
things changed because this is 2020 and a pandemic hit. MLA moved the in-person meeting to August but
realized over the summer that an in-person meeting was not going to be possible
this year. MLA and the National Planning
Committee quickly switched gears and developed a virtual conference for the meeting
in August. My registration for the
in-person conference was exchanged for the vConference and CE Passport.
The conference actually opened in July with the opening
session and some different social events over the next few weeks. Paper and paper presentations were
pre-recorded and available on demand. In
the middle of August, the live sessions of the conference were held. These sessions included the vendor sessions
and virtual exhibit hall, Q&A sessions for paper presentations, the
different plenary speakers, and immersion sessions. I am still going through different sessions
and catching up on the many things I missed.
A common problem with the vConference is that attendees (myself
included), did not block off time for the sessions and attempted to work while
attending. Next year, I will definitely
plan to block off more time for the sessions.
The Janet Doe Lecture this year was by Chris Shaffer
entitled “The Move to Open: Medical Library Leadership in Scholarly Communication.” This talk started with an overview of the
history of medical librarianship, ILL, MLA and open access. A common problem over the years has been
access to information and rising costs.
In 2008, the NIH mandate increased open access and open science is the
next step beyond open access. Open
science is the movement to make science research and data accessible for all
according to UNESCO. The Foster taxonomy
can be found here. https://www.fosteropenscience.eu/taxonomy/term/100
Immersion Sessions
I really have enjoyed Immersion sessions the past few years
and made sure to attend several of those this year. One I attended was “Context is Everything:
Answering the Clinical Question for Nursing, Culture and Research.” This would have been a great session for a
librarian who was newer to medical librarianship. They gave an overview of Evidence-Based
Practice and how to frame a question into the PICO(T) (Population/Patients,
Intervention/Therapy, Comparison, Outcome, and Time/Duration) format. They showed the Evidence Pyramid and worked
through different scenarios with typical search questions one might see. Some tips for point of care searching were:
to listen to the end to fully hear the questions, don’t be afraid to ask more
questions to clarify, might think about a quick answer right away followed up
by more papers later, and to learn how to use your favorite tools well. When working with EBP the following were
suggestions for questions. How will the
information be used? Shared governance
project? Change in policy or
procedure? Is so, can you see the
current policy/procedure and the references used for that?
Another Immersion session I attend was “Part II:
Reenvisioning Data Visualization Services and Training: Data Storytelling and
Data Visualization Lessons for the Field.”
This session introduced me to different types of data
visualization. Data comics use data
driven comics that tell a story about data.
There are four parts to data comics: visualization, flow, narration,
words and pictures. Data visualization
is used in evaluation. There are also
four steps in the evaluation process and data visualization happens at any of
the steps.
·
Understanding-GIS, graphic recording, mixed
mapping
·
Collecting-sticky notes, dot voting
·
Analyzing-dash boards, spectrum graph, network
mapping
·
Communicating-infographics
Data storytelling is a process of transforming data into
understandable information to affect a decision. There are seven types of data stories: change
over time, drill down, zoom out, contrast, intersection, factors, and
outliers.
Data visualization should be reproducible.
A great deal of decision making comes into play with data
visualization. Some questions are: how to group, what story to tell, what
connections to highlight, what data to use, what format, what background
information, how simple/complex? There
are some ways to make the data visualization reproducible. Data management should be done. Save the data and record the steps. Mention what software was used for the data
visualization. The last step is collaboration
by creating an overview of the project and clarifying rights and citation
information.
The third Immersion session I attended was “You Can Do It:
Developing Your Research Identity within Health Sciences Librarianship.” The takeaway is that many of us are doing
research even when we do not really realize we are doing research. We were encouraged to go beyond the
survey/questionnaire. Develop a research
agenda. Think about the study design-the
strategy to answer your research question.
The research method is how you will implement that strategy. Some questions to ask to get started.
- ·
What do you want to learn/know?
- ·
Population/audience and what do you want to tell
them? What impact do I hope to have?
- ·
What is the big question?
- ·
How will I collect, store and organize data?
- ·
Is budget a concern and if so what is the
budget?
- ·
Do you have access to help for research or are
you willing to learn?
How to pick a topic?
Think about what you are already doing….or is there a new idea you have
been thinking about trying? Some
examples would be in teaching maybe assess a new educational intervention. For collection development you might be
looking at usage or user experience on a new platform. For services one might look at a space use
study or patron survey.
Once the research is finished, sharing is strongly encouraged. Ways to share your research include published
papers, conference papers, lightening talks, and posters.
The fourth Immersion session I attended was “Improving
Ourselves and Improving Care: A Hands-On Workshop to Address Unconscious Bias
in Health Sciences Literature and Health Sciences Library Systems.” Unconscious bias is attitudes or stereotypes
that affect our understanding and decisions in an unconscious way. They can be favorable or unfavorable and are
without awareness. Unconscious bias is
related to racism, microagressions and cognitive bias. For further exploration it was recommended to
read Blindspot: Hidden Biases of Good
People and take the The Implicit Association Test (IAT) at https://implicit.harvard.edu/implicit/takeatest.html
Implicit bias affects health sciences libraries in several
ways. One way is that there are racial
disparities in medicine. Examples were
given about childbirth, pain control, and not recommending rehab for traumatic
brain injuries in people of color.
Certain medications might be damaging or ineffective to certain ethnic
groups/races. There is also bias in the
underrepresentation of people of color in clinical trials. Unconscious bias appears in libraries in
things like catalog records, discover systems, controlled vocabularies and
hiring patterns. The reference interview
can also be problematic as one makes assumptions about that patient or the
research question. Two sources suggested
for culturally diverse health information are https://ethnomed.org/
and http://spiral.tufts.edu/ in addition to Medlineplus.gov and resources
from the NNLM. To address unconscious
bias we need to assess our personal biases and consider what databases,
resources and terms we are using to answer research questions.
Thank you to WHSLA for the Professional Development
Award!
Jennifer Schram, Mayo Clinic Libraries
