It's conference season: Midwest Chapter MLA, WLA, MIRL, Charleston Conference

Despite MLA taking place in spring, I've always thought that fall felt like conference season. To that end, here are a few upcoming library and library-related conferences you might be interested in. 

Remember that WHSLA is offering a second $500 Professional Development award in 2024. To be eligible you must submit your name for the drawing by Friday, September 13, 2024 at noon. For more on eligibility requirements, see Dora's WHSLA email from Thursday, Sept 5.

Midwest Chapter MLA (virtual)

• Support our MLA regional conference and hear what your Midwest hospital and health science librarians are working on. 
• Virtual from October 9-11, 2024
• $
  

Wisconsin Library Association (Green Bay, WI)

• This year's theme is "All In: Include and Innovate" and features librarians from across the state representing different types of libraries. 
• In-person from November 5-8, 2024 
• $$
  

Charleston Conference (virtual and Charleston, SC)

• This serials and acquisitions conference is a great opportunity to network with publishers, vendors, and librarians interested in licensing, acquisitions, new purchasing models, publisher/library collaborations and more
• In-person from November 11-15, 2024
• Virtual from December 9-13, 2024
• $$$
  

Medical Institutional Repositories in Libraries (MIRL) 24 (virtual)

• Even if your institution doesn't have an institutional repository, consider attending this free symposium. You'll hear from small and large medical, health science, and hospital libraries about how they support, promote, and preserve the scholarly output coming out of their institutions
  
• Virtual event takes place on November 21, 2024
• Free; registration opens on September 23, 2024
  

Professional Development Award Report: Midwest Chapter/MLA Megan Olson

I was fortunate enough to win a $500.00 stipend to help cover my costs, so I could attend 2019's WHSLA/SWHSL/Midwest Chapter MLA.  The conference being in Milwaukee, WI, allowed me to visit the Bronze Fonz and stop at Kopps while also learning the latest greatest in medical librarianship. 

I’ll be honest, I ended up taking more away from the conference than I had even hoped. The highlights:

• I won the jackpot and received a free membership to MLA. Seriously, I went out and bought a lottery ticket because I was feeling so lucky.     
• Drinking adult beverages at the hotel bar with fellow librarians. Along with my coworkers, Melinda Orebaugh and Eileen Severson, I was able to visit  with Julia Esparza, MLA president,  who is a hoot. 
• MK Czerwiec, RN, MA, uses comics in healthcare. You can read more about her at www.comicnurse.com, My main takeaway is that comics are a powerful tool that can be used to convey highly dense important information in high stress situations. I need to investigate further to see if anyone is currently using comics to create patient ed hand-outs. I am familiar with the graphic novels such as Lighter Than My Shadow by Katie Green or the Medikidz series, but I am wondering if anyone is creating one or two page hand-outs on health topics. Also, Can’t We Talk about Something More Pleasant has been added to my to-read list.  
• Evening at the Harley Museum.  It was a super fun evening networking with fellow librarians and seeing how Harley’s have changed over the years. This must be a dream job for any archivist. Oh, and the gift shop isn’t too shabby.   
• I was completely fascinated with the Social Determinants of Health: From the Patient to the Community and Beyond panel of speakers. The future of healthcare really is going to be going where the patients are. I can’t recall, which group is doing it, but they have had positive outcomes with centering pregnancy and centering parenting appointments, which are group driven visits. 

Toodles - 

Megan Olson  

  

Professional Development Award Report: Midwest Chapter/MLA 2019 Deborah Ruck

Midwest Chapter/MLA & WHSLA & SWHSL Annual Meeting

I attended the Midwest Chapter/MLA Annual Meeting in October 2019 with the generous financial support of a $500 WHSLA stipend award.  This was one of the best Midwest Chapter Meetings I have ever attended because of the timeliness of the program and poster topics, authoritative and interesting speakers, diversity of exhibitors, and excellent conference venue.

In this blog post I would like to focus on two of the presentations I attended.

Keynote Address

The Keynote address given by MK Czerwiec, RN, MA aka Comic Nurse, was illuminating and moving.  She spoke of how she began drawing as a way to cope with her grief after one of her AIDs patients died.  Since then MK has authored 8 graphic medicine comic books and is currently working on an anthology of comics about menopause to be published in Spring 2020 and a graphic medicine memoir about caring for her mother and aunt.

MK explained that comics are used because of the effectiveness of the medium as a powerful teaching/learning tool when there is a high density of information, a high level of importance, and high stress involved.  Storytelling in this way can help us heal, move past barriers, and bear witness to other’s stories.  For example, see Mom’s Cancer, Marbles, and My Degeneration.  MK is the co-manager of GraphicMedicine.org, a site that provides links to author and artist sites, online articles, comic sites, blogs, comic reviews, podcasts, conference information and much more.

Social Determinants of Health: From the Patient to the Community and Beyond Panel Presentation

Anne Getzin, MD, a family physician with Advocate Aurora Health, gave a very passionate presentation, Health Equity and the Patient Experience, about her experiences providing prenatal care and delivery of babies via the Aurora Midtown Health Center near 60^th and Capitol in Milwaukee.  She stressed the importance of providing equitable healthcare at the level of need required.  She mentioned the American Academy of Family Physicians (AAFP) The Everyone Project which “focuses on providing family physicians and their practice teams with education and resources, advocating for health equity, promoting workforce diversity, and collaborating with other disciplines and organizations to advance health equity.”

Dr. Getzin said that her patients experience bias all of the time in their lives.  Her patients have conditions such as hypoglycemia, hypertension, and lead poisoning.  She is doing a research study on the impact of lead exposure during pregnancy and advocates for the necessity of testing women for lead poisoning.

She does centering pregnancy and parenting programs, which are 2-hour doctor visits in a group setting at a local Family Resource Center.  They talk about health maintenance topics to help decrease the numbers of low birthweight babies and infant mortality.  Often the group meetings result in the women supporting each other in ways she could never do.  For example, a mother provided her cell phone number to another mother who had difficulty affording baby formula and told her to call at any time for help rather than considering stealing formula from a grocery store.  The Family Resource Center has a food pantry; they also screen for food insecurity and provide $20 vouchers for the Fondy Farmers Market nearby.

Deborah Ruck

Information Resources Librarian

Medical College of Wisconsin Libraries