Proceedings, 107 th annual meeting Medical Library Association, Inc. Philadelphia, PA, May 18-23, 2007.

The Medical Library Association (MLA) held its 107th annual meeting in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, May 18–23, 2007, at the Philadelphia Marriott Downtown. The meeting theme was “Information Revolution: Change Is in the Air.” Total attendance was 2,512. 
 
Additional meeting content, including the meeting program and some electronic presentations from business, plenary, poster, and section presentations can be found via the MLA '07 website . Candid photos can be found at the site as well.


INTRODUCTION
The Medical Library Association (MLA) held its 107th annual meeting in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, May 18-23, 2007, at the Philadelphia Marriott Downtown. The meeting theme was ''Information Revolution: Change Is in the Air.'' Total attendance was 2,512.
Additional meeting content, including the meeting program and some electronic presentations from business, plenary, poster, and section presentations can be found via the MLA '07 website Ͻhttp://www .mlanet.org/am/am2007/Ͼ. Candid photos can be found at the site as well.

WELCOME TO MLA '07
Sunday, May 20, 2007 MLA President Jean P. Shipman, AHIP, welcomed members to MLA '07 where she emphasized the meeting theme ''Information Revolution: Change Is in the Air.'' She said that it was fitting that ''we are in Philadelphia which holds such a special place not only in American history but in the history of MLA-the first MLA annual meeting was held in Philadelphia in 1898.'' She pointed out that the world, the country, the profession, and MLA have changed in revolutionary ways since 1898-beyond anything our founders might have envisioned.
Before she continued the official welcome, she told the audience that each of the plenary sessions during the week would start with a research vignette. The vignettes illustrate one of MLA's priorities this year, the focus on the value of research to the profession. President Shipman thanked the 2007 NPC for planning a program designed to help attendees understand and navigate the changing environment in libraries today-with new products, services, and everchanging technology. Members were encouraged to take time to network with colleagues at the social events such as breakfasts, lunches, dinners, and receptions. She also promoted taking time to enjoy the wonderful sights and tastes of Philadelphia-from the Liberty Bell and Reading Market to those renowned Philly cheese steaks.
Nina Long, AHIP, director of library services and archivist at the Wistar Institute, Philadelphia, and chair of the Philadelphia Chapter of MLA, brought greetings from the chapter. The cochairs of the 2007 National Program Committee (NPC)-Diana J. Cunningham, AHIP, director of the Medical Sciences Library, New York Medical College-Valhalla, and Susan Starr, director and associate university librarian, University of California-San Diego, Biomedical Library, La Jolla, California-and the cochairs of the 2007 Local Assistance Committee (LAC)-Anne K. Seymour, associate director, University of Pennsylvania Biomedical Library-Philadelphia, and Etheldra Templeton, executive director of the Snyder Memorial Medical Library at the Philadelphia College of Osteopathic Medicinewere presented to the group. First Ms. Cunningham and Ms. Starr extended their welcomes. They recognized and thanked the members of the NPC, the LAC, and the program planners. The LAC chairs, Ms. Seymour and Ms. Templeton, also welcomed everyone and thanked their committee members and volunteers. President Shipman again thanked the committees for their hard work. She recognized and thanked the many valued sponsors. The MLA '07 sponsors generously contributed more than $104,000 to enrich the meeting. A list of the sponsors can be found at Ͻhttp://www .mlanet.org/am/am2007/about/sponsors.htmlϾ.
Ms. Cunningham then introduced MLA President Shipman who gave her presidential address.

PRESIDENTIAL ADDRESS (PLENARY SESSION I)
[Slides are at Ͻhttp://www.mlanet.org/members/e -present/2007/Ͼ (members only).] Jean Shipman: Around this time last year, I challenged you in my presidential inaugural presentation to be ''ANC' ' [antsy] about our future. With our meeting theme this year being ''Information Revolution: Change Is in the Air,'' I shared some lessons I learned about flying small planes through a pinch-hitters course I took. In this course, I learned that as a passenger in a small airplane, it is important to learn how to handle the plane in the event something unforeseen happens to the pilot. I learned that there is an order to what needs to be done and that that order is ANC: to A-aviate the airplane (know the basics of flying the plane), N-navigate (know where you are located and where you want to go in order to land the plane), and then, and only then, do you C-communicate (let others know that you are in a mayday situation). I encouraged us to collectively follow this mnemonic of ANC in our coming year.
Throughout the year, I have heard many positive comments from you, the members of MLA, about how this basic ANC mnemonic resonated with you. I am so pleased to know that with all of the changes that are in the air, that this basic mnemonic has helped to pilot us through this very busy past year.
It is not my intention with this presidential address to recap everything that has happened during the past year-we would be here for the rest of the meeting if I attempted to do so. Instead, what I will do is highlight the keystone events and their outcomes. Please refer to my annual report on MLANET for a complete list of accomplishments for the year.
All of us are being encouraged by our institutions to assess our impact, what it is we bring to the table and what value we offer through our existence. As your president, I felt it was important that I also be measured through an assessment process-with measurable outputs. Thus, I prepared a small chart of my measurable outputs.
Continuing my approach of looking at things with an ''out-of-the-box'' attitude, I'm going to change the order of the ANC mnemonic as I wish to report first on the major new initiatives achieved during the past year-or in pinch-hitter terms-the N-navigate part of being ANC. And referring to my presidential theme-I'm jumping immediately to the ''Forging New Frontiers'' portion of my theme.
The year really did start off at full throttle as Elliot Siegel from the National Library of Medicine (NLM) asked me during the presidential reception for M.J. Tooey, AHIP, and after my inaugural speech to consider how MLA and NLM could partner on achieving some of my presidential priorities. Within weeks after the Phoenix annual meeting, NLM reviewed a contract proposal from MLA for a health information literacy research project. This proposal, I'm pleased to report, became a funded quarter-of-a-million-dollar two-year multi-prong project that positions health sciences librarians as key partners in educating both hospital ad-ministrators and health care providers about the importance of health literacy and the role librarians can play in helping to effect change in this arena. A project coordinator, Sabrina Kurtz-Rossi, was hired in mid-February to lead the effort. TAP Consultants, a company located in Philadelphia, were soon hired to develop, implement, and analyze two needs assessments to determine the perceived awareness of hospital administrators and health care providers about health literacy and their perceived value of librarians as change agents in this area. The results of these needs assessments will be used to develop a curriculum that will be pilot-tested by seven hospital librarians. The curriculum will be adjusted applying obtained feedback from focus groups, and a final version will be available for any of us to use to educate our institutional personnel about this important public health initiative. A Web-based version will also be made available for any individual to do a self-assessment of his or her knowledge of the topic.
This project accomplishes two of my key presidential priorities-to have medical librarians recognized as key players in health literacy efforts and to establish partnerships with other organizations and agencies. Not only has MLA partnered with NLM and its National Network of Libraries of Medicine (NN/LM), but we are also working with the American Hospital Association's (AHA's) Society for Healthcare Consumer Advocacy. In addition, we achieved another priority through presenting this project at other health professional organizations' conferences. In April, I provided an overview of the project for the AHA patient advocacy membership group and introduced them to key NLM consumer health information resources at their annual conference in Tucson, Arizona. Using my piloting analogy, I applied the C of ANC-by communicating to others our skills and where we are heading with our efforts in this area.
This annual meeting's Wednesday health information literacy program, jointly sponsored by MLA's Section and Chapter Councils, will illustrate through a keynote speaker and panel how medical librarians have been involved with health information literacy. A continuing education course will be offered on the subject as a follow-up to the morning session. Public librarians in the local Philadelphia area have been invited to partake of this specific series of events, starting with a presidential breakfast, in MLA's effort to partner with other types of librarians who have direct contact with the general public.
Our health information literacy outreach continues with another keystone project that once again converges with another one of my presidential priorities, to further develop our international outreach efforts through our fairly new Librarians Without Borders (LWB) initiative. Through an $80,000 grant from Elsevier facilitated by MLA member Tony McSean, MLA's LWB committee members have been providing training to people in Africa, Asia, and Latin America, working with the Health InterNetwork Access to Research Initiative (HINARI), Access to Global Online Research in Agriculture (AGORA), and Online Access to Research in the Environment (OARE) organizations. This training, spearheaded by Lenny Rhine, has helped many individuals gain a better understanding of the health information resources available to them. In addition to this training, more international outreach efforts were achieved via a meeting with the Korean Medical Library Association during the 2006 International Federation of Library Associations and Institutions (IFLA) meeting. As a result of this meeting, a bilateral agreement with this organization has been established and a complimentary one-year MLA institutional membership was granted to the organization. Two of their members are attending MLA this yearwe welcome Jin-Young Park and Mal Yea Hwang from the Seoul National University Medical Library. If you are in the audience, please stand and be recognized. Thank you. Also at the same IFLA meeting, I provided a presentation about the information specialist in context professional. A resulting article summarizing this presentation is being published in the September issue of the IFLA Journal as there is a lot of international interest in this topic.
MLA and NLM are also working together to determine the current status of personal health records (PHRs) through the appointment of a combined task force that will be chaired by Dixie A. Jones, AHIP. This group is assessing the various records in existence, the potential for including health sciences librarians as sources of health information, and encouraging developers to recognize the role that librarians can play in helping individuals decipher the information contained in such personal records. Encouraging linkages to quality health resources is another goal of this task force. As more and more of our nation's citizens are able to document their health through such records, it is vital that our role as navigational assistants be incorporated into these records to ensure that our value is communicated. High technology in this case needs someone to provide the high touch-something we are experts at providing with our service orientation! An unsolicited partnership opportunity with Google arose this year. Through the terrific guidance of Consumer and Patient Health Information Section chair, Howard Fuller, 21 medical librarians helped to tag quality health information Internet sites for Google's Co-op Health. Individuals seeking reliable information can subscribe to MLA's profile to help limit their Internet search results to those recommended by MLA members. To date, 719 individuals have become MLA subscribers and over 1,783 websites have been tagged by our 21 MLA members. My thanks to those individuals who made this unique partnership a success. Will those present, please stand and be recognized.
MLA has been C-communicating about its members' contributions to the general public's health literacy with the assistance of its public relations company, PCI, Inc. PCI has capitalized on several Internet and health care information-seeking behavior reports such as the 2006 Pew's Internet and American Life Project survey. Eighty placements with the media were accomplished last year, reaching over 54.6 million indi-viduals. Several New Jersey librarians reported how pleased they were to see an article about medical librarians and their willingness to serve the public with their health information needs in their Sunday newspaper. We are communicating about our value and applying the C of the ANC flying mnemonic! MLA, with PCI's assistance, partnered with several librarians in the Chicago area (from the University of Illinois-Chicago and Rush University) to offer classes to senior citizens in the city. Seniors received information about managing medications and about where to find quality and reliable health information. A Webbased version of the class will soon be available to all of us to use to continue such outreach efforts to this growing population.
PCI also helped to present the March 2007 MLA webcast about marketing our libraries, which was seen at ninety-eight sites in addition to forty-four individual viewers. Due to last year's overwhelming demand, at this annual MLA meeting, PCI will once again offer several free marketing sessions to MLA members.
MLA advocacy efforts have included sending letters (often with other information-related organizations) regarding the closure of the Environmental Protection Agency libraries, the reauthorization of National Institutes of Health funding, changes in scholarly communications, and, upon request, encouraging reconsideration of hospital library closures. A summary of legislative activity for the year is available on the MLANET site. In addition, MLA staff assisted the Colorado Council of Medical Librarians Advocacy Committee to develop an electronic presentation and brochure for hospital librarians to use to debunk some of the myths about Internet-based information and the resultant lack of need for hospital libraries.
Going back to the flying framework for this update, it is important that we continue to develop our skills or learn our A-aviation basics and ''Reclaim Our Foundations.'' Several milestones were reached in the professional development area this year. Starting in December, over sixteen MLA-accredited courses were converted into Web-based ones that can be taken from any location. A joint partnership with the NN/LM Greater Midwest Region made this possible.
Also, I was able to meet my goal of visiting at least two library and information schools-in fact, with the assistance of MLA Board members, seven i-schools, or information schools, were reached and one visit is planned for this fall. I met with students from all walks of life and all types of backgrounds. It was fascinating to learn of their intense interest in our field, and their excitement was contagious! Thank you to the students who might be in the audience today for giving me your time, and I wish you the best with your futures! To enhance its relationship with i-school educators, MLA contracted to manage the Association for Library and Information Science Education (ALISE) organization on an annual basis. This has enabled MLA headquarters staff to look for potential areas of collaboration between the two organizations and to leverage the two organizations' efforts.
Our professional policies on education and research have been revised through the efforts of two task forces led by Rick Forsman, AHIP, FMLA, and Suzanne F. Grefsheim. These two task forces have presented their final drafts to the MLA Board, and they were accepted. Thanks go to the many MLA members who contributed to the successful revision of these key MLA documents.
An executive summary of the new educational policy is in your meeting bags. As you may have noticed, throughout this meeting we have and will be seeing ''Research Vignettes'' that highlight our different members' efforts with conducting research that adds to our knowledgebase. MLA and many of its sections also financially supported the ''4th Evidence Based Library and Information Practice'' conference, the first to be held in the United States, in Durham, NC, earlier this month. Thanks go to Joanne G. Marshall, AHIP, FMLA, and Carol Perryman for leading the planning for this great conference.
Several efforts at changing library standards have been initiated in the past year. MLA wrote letters to the American Osteopathic Association (AOA) and the Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education (ACGME) encouraging them to alter their current library standards to reflect changes in technology, information delivery, and information service provision. Diana Balint and Carla J. Funk, CAE, were invited to the AOA Board meeting to further discuss our involvement. MLA's Nursing and Allied Health Resources Section (NAHRS), through the leadership of Melody Allison, the section chair, and Margaret Bandy, AHIP, MLA Board member, have developed a white paper that illustrates how hospital librarians can assist their institutions with getting Magnet status as well as maintaining it. We hope to use a version of this white paper to encourage the Magnet accreditation team to reflect librarians in their ''14 Forces of Magnetism'' and have approved the appointment of an MLA allied representative to this accrediting body to enhance our communications. In addition, Pamela Sherwill-Navarro, AHIP, and Deborah Lauseng are cochairing a NAHRS task force that is creating standards for nursing libraries.
Technology changes continue to direct our work, and MLA has helped educate us about emerging technologies and their potential and existing applications. In November, a webcast was conducted on new technologies with examples provided by several of our members. Mark E. Funk, AHIP, will share his upcoming year's presidential priorities with us this coming Tuesday morning, where he will encourage us to ''Only Connect''-through the use of technology. MLANET has also received a facelift with the hiring of the company, Imaginary Landscape, and through the many efforts of the MLANET Editorial Board and headquarters staff. MLA will be acquiring a new association management software program during 2007/08, and we can expect more robust changes and enhancements as a result.
Hospital libraries and librarians' futures were a major emphasis this year for MLA as closures and downsizings continued to be realities. Many members of MLA's Vital Pathways task forces chaired by M.J.
Tooey have been hard at work documenting the current status of hospital libraries through a recent survey, developing desired library standards as they relate to medical education of health care providers, and creating a white paper on the many roles hospital librarians can perform for their institutions. Please refer to the Vital Pathways website for further details about the accomplishments of these task forces.
MLA continues to provide its members with a full range of benefits, including its renowned continuing education courses and its quality publications-the Journal of the Medical Library Association, MLA News, and MLA-FOCUS. MLA has been recognized by other information organizations as one of the best small organizations in the country. A lot of MLA's achievements are the result of many hours of volunteerism given by its 4,500 members.
MLA also has some celebrating to do to recognize several anniversaries. Our Section and Chapter Councils have been in existence for twenty-five years. They have helped to ''increase involvement of groups in the affairs of MLA and vice-versa by establishing mechanisms which allow each member's specialized interests to be represented at the Board level.'' Would everyone who has served on either council, please stand and accept our appreciation.
Another birthday was recognized this year by MLA with a resolution. It is the thirty-fifth anniversary of the Health Sciences Library Association of New Jersey. Congratulations to this wonderful group! MLA's Oral History Committee is also having a birthday-for thirty years committee members have been helping to capture our rich heritage and document the expertise and personalities of our many notable members. Please be sure to see their poster at this meeting in honor of this anniversary. And last to be mentioned, but by no means least, the MLA Board of Directors presented a resolution to NLM in recognition of the fiftieth anniversary of the National Library of Medicine Act. NLM provides so much to the nation and to MLA members, and we appreciate all that the talented NLM staff does for us! Thank you NLM staff, and would you please stand?
I was able to witness members' efforts through my chapter visits. In talking with past MLA presidents about their most valued experience, attending chapter meetings ranked extremely high. I now understand why. I thoroughly enjoyed seeing many of you in your local context and appreciated your many efforts to provide professionally stimulating yet fun meetings. I especially appreciated the Upstate New York and Ontario Chapter's effort to arrange the only real snow I got to see this year. Thanks for the wonderful snowbound memories! I enjoyed sharing information about MLA through updates, and I was especially astonished at the competitiveness of some of you during the $25,000 Pyramid-type game show version of the update-especially the Midwest Chapter who were so eager at 8:00 a.m. in the morning! Seriously, thank you for inviting me and other board members to participate in your very creative and delightful regional meetings. I appreciated all of your kind hospitality! I feel very enriched from my year as president as I got to know some of you much better, got to meet some of you for the first time, and got to think globally about how we all work together as a team to make our profession a truly great one. I thank all of you for this wonderful year! Speaking of thanks, at the close of my presidential year, there are so many people I wish to thank. I now understand how Academy Award winners can go on for hours expressing their gratitude.
I especially want to thank the MLA Board of Directors for their brilliant contributions, their collegiality, and their willingness to pursue unknown frontiers with me. I learned a lot from each and every one of you and thank you for sharing your time and talents with me and for the work you have done for MLA. I thank the MLA headquarters staff-you are a very hard-working group and make the running of MLA transparent to us! Your ability to provide a basic organizational infrastructure coupled with our many special projects is phenomenal and is why MLA is recognized by others for its successful management.
I truly thank Carla Funk, MLA's executive director, for her tireless devotion to MLA, her wisdom and knowledge, and her international reputation as one of the finest library association leaders. I have enjoyed our weekly conversations, our many travels, and Carla's willingness to go out on a limb to see what lies beyond. What a scout! Thank you, Carla, for all of your wonderful support.
And thank you to my local supporters-the faculty and staff of the Tompkins-McCaw Library for the Health Sciences and Virginia Commonwealth University Libraries (please stand). When I accepted the MLA presidency, I knew I would need to depend on you to carry on without me, and I appreciate that you did so with such finesse and flair. And thank you to my supervisor, John Ulmschneider, who has given me so much support this year in terms of not only time away from my real job, but who has given others the potential to grow and for his listening ear and valuable mentoring services.
Then there's my cat Madrona, who as you can see, grew tired of all of my travels and decided to take things into her own hands-or should I say paws. She will forgive me I'm sure.
And last but not least, I wish to thank my dear husband Mark-I know you have given much to MLA with your understanding of my time away from home, my many requests for time to work on MLA stuff, and your never-ending appreciation of my passion for MLA and my professional commitment. I am forever grateful and thank you for all of your encouragement, support, and understanding. And you will get that bike ride across the country. Thank you Mark! During my closing remarks, I'd like to share some of my favorite pictures from the past year.
I recently read an MLA presidential article, ''The Medical Library Association: Aims, Activities, and a Brief History,'' by L. Margueriete Prime who was our thirty-second president. This was a written record of a speech she gave at the first-ever MLA chapter meeting, at the Midwest Chapter in Chicago, Illinois, in the fall of 1951. I was struck by how closely our current organization's reasons for being aligned with those indicated in this article. Ms. Prime discussed organization communications such as the Exchange, the Bulletin of the Medical Library Association, and MLA's international outreach. She also included MLA's role with professional development; including training, certification, and the development of hospital and various health sciences school library standards. She even used the word ''magnet'' to stress how the Exchange was attracting members to the profession. Today, our foundations still deal with exchanges-not so much that of sharing journal issues-but with networking and talking with one another, which nicely coincides with Mark Funk's upcoming presidential priorities and theme of ''Only Connect.'' Ms. Prime's article discussed our many early partnerships with other organizations, including IFLA (1934) and about members having roundtables to discuss subject headings, classifications, etc. She even was on to the idea that meetings should provide time to discuss reports and papers that had already been written. And we thought we were so clever with trying this ''new'' approach at this meeting! What a frontier woman Ms. Prime was! It is her final words I'd like to echo now, ''We owe much to the past, but more to the future. While we are in Philadelphia (. . . I'm not making this up . . . ) commemorating the past, deeply involved with the present, planning for the future, let us recollect that, even as there is no such thing as a bystander, so we today are, in a sense, founders of this Association. It exists only through us and will be only what we make it. It is not wise to regret ever what a small part of time we play. All that matters is to make the small part count, and in as creative a way as possible. That is to say, we must give as well as take.'' I hope during this past year I had done just that-I hope I have given you a lot for the short time I served as your president. I will never regret the part I played and the many parts all of you play in making this association what it is. Your volunteerism and support has been phenomenal and is deeply appreciated. I trust that our many small parts have cumulated in making a major difference, and that we will continue to collectively direct our creativity to ensure our future, as we ''reclaim our foundations and forge new frontiers.'' Let me repeat one phrase of Ms. Prime's that deserves such, ''we must give as well as take.'' Let us focus our efforts for the coming year in connecting to one another, to those we serve, and to the general public who need us. Let us give as we take. It is my pleasure to take a part of all of you with me as I preserve my memories of being MLA's president. It truly was an honor. Thank you for this privilege and for the many wonderful memories! I have been forever changed! Thank you!

AWARDS CEREMONY
The Awards Ceremony and Luncheon was held on Monday, May 21, 2007, and was supported by the American Medical Association's JAMA & Archives Journals. President Shipman began the ceremony by reminding the audience that the purpose of the ceremony was to honor colleagues who have made outstanding contributions to the profession and the association and to recognize their accomplishments. She thanked Janice Cox, AHIP, chair of the Awards Committee; Janette Schueller, chair of the Grants and Scholarship Committee; and all the jury members for their time and effort. President Shipman announced that Kent Smith, FMLA, was unable to attend the ceremony but would receive his certificate when he presented the Joseph Leiter NLM/MLA Lecture at MLA '07 on Wednesday, May 23. At Sunday's meeting, Arthur Caplan-noted bioethicist, accomplished writer, professor, and speaker-had delivered the John P. McGovern Award Lecture and had received his award and certificate at that time.
MLA awards MLA Scholarships annually to students who show excellence in scholarship and potential for accomplishment in health sciences librarianship. The David A. Kronick Traveling Fellowship was established in 2001 with an endowment from the Bowden-Massey Foundation. It is awarded annually to an MLA member to cover expenses involved in traveling to three or more medical libraries in the United States or Canada for the purpose of studying a specific aspect of health information management. This year's recipient is Michele R. Tennant, AHIP, who was also the recipient of the Donald A. B. Lindberg Research Fellowship. Dr. Tennant is a bioinformatics librarian at the University of Florida Health Sciences Library and the UF Genetics Institute in Gainesville, Florida. Her goal for the Kronick fellowship is to travel to various bioinformatics libraries in the United States to explore models for library-based support for bioinformatics programs.
The Donald A. B. Lindberg Research Fellowship, established in 2001 with contributions from MLA members and other people and companies in the health care community, is awarded annually through a com-petitive grant process to a qualified health care professional, researcher, educator, administrator, or librarian. MLA established the fellowship to fund research that links the information services provided by librarians to improved health care. The fellowship is named in honor of Dr. Lindberg, director of the National Library of Medicine (NLM) since 1984, in recognition of his significant national and international achievements at NLM, the world's largest medical library. Dr. Tennant, the fifth recipient of the award, will study the bioinformatics information-seeking skills and information needs of a diverse set of biomedical and biological researchers, students, and instructors through online assessment of researcher skills at various institutions.
The MLA Research, Development, and Demonstration Project Grant promotes excellence in health sciences librarianship and information science. This year's winners are Fern Cheek, AHIP, Lynda Hartel, and Sally Harvey, AHIP. Ms. Cheek and Ms. Hartel, who are employed as medical librarians at the Prior Health Sciences Library at Ohio State University-Columbus, plan to use their grant to look at electronic book usage in the health sciences setting to help their library and others make informed decisions on future e-book purchases. Ms. Harvey, director of learning resources and continuing medical education at the Banner Good Samaritan Medical Center Library in Phoenix, Arizona, will study the publication rate of poster entries and abstracts from MLA annual meetings in peer-reviewed or respected professional and trade journals.
The MLA Continuing Education award is awarded annually to an MLA member to assist with the development of theoretical, administrative, or technical aspects of medical librarianship. This year's recipients were Rick Wallace, AHIP, assistant director at Quillen College of Medicine Library, East Tennessee State University-Johnson City, who took an evidence-based workshop at Duke University in March 2007 that will enable him to train librarians at his institution in the principles of evidence-based medicine, and Alice Weber, a medical librarian at the Spencer S. Eccles Health Sciences Library at the University of Utah-Salt Lake City, who plans to take an online MLA continuing education course on filtering using evidence-based skills. (Ms. Weber was unable attend, so her certificate was mailed.) The Estelle Brodman Award for the Academic Medical Librarian of the Year was established with a gift from Irwin H. Pizer and is given to an association member who has made outstanding contributions to academic medical librarianship as demonstrated by excellence in performance, publications, research, service, or a combination thereof. It was noted with sadness that Estelle Brodman passed away this March at the age of ninety-two. Her impact on medical librarianship as a scholar, teacher, and researcher was apparent throughout her long and distinguished career. She worked at Columbia University, NLM, and later as director of the Washington University Medical School Library in St. Louis. She served on the MLA Board of Directors and was MLA president from 1964-1965, served as editor of the Bulletin of the Medical Library Association for ten years, delivered the 1971 Janet Doe Lecture, and was awarded the Marcia C. Noyes Award, MLA's highest honor, in 1974. She was a true visionary and leader for standards in the academic medical library.
The 2007 Estelle Brodman Award was presented to Jan LaBeause, AHIP, director of the Medical Library and Learning Resources Center, Mercer University School of Medicine, Macon, Georgia. Ms. LaBeause's contributions to the academic world have been extensive, particularly influencing health care in the state of Georgia and at Mercer University. She began her career working at a children's hospital in Memphis and then moved to Mercer. She is a Distinguished Member of the Academy of Health Information Professionals and serves as co-coordinator for Georgia's Go Local Project, a state outreach project. She also served as the first nonphysician president of the Georgia Rural Health Association. At Mercer University, she holds numerous community and campus leadership positions. Professionally, she has served on various MLA committees including the Bylaws Committee and the Joint MLA/Association of Academic Health Sciences Libraries Legislative Task Force.
The Lucretia W. McClure Excellence in Education Award was established in 1998 and first presented in 1999, in honor of one of MLA's most respected members. The award recognizes an outstanding educator in the field of health sciences librarianship and informatics who demonstrates skills in teaching, curriculum development, mentoring, research, or leadership in education at local, regional, or national levels. President Shipman presented the 2007 award to Renata Geer, technical information specialist at the National Center for Biotechnology Information (NCBI), NLM, Bethesda, Maryland. Ms. Geer has used her background and experience in information technology, sciences, and education to take a leadership role in integrating bioinformatics instruction, resources, and services into medical libraries. In particular, she envisioned a role for medical librarians to provide services and instruction in bioinformatics and was a pioneer in bringing forth her vision to develop and teach courses to librarians in this area. Since the mid-1990s, she has developed several MLA continuing education courses on genetics and bioinformatics and taught a molecular biology information resource course, which has been converted into an MLA online continuing education course. She was instrumental in the development of a five-day course, NCBI's ''Advanced Workshop for Bioinformatics Information Specialists (NAW-BIS),'' and has trained regional trainers to offer these sessions throughout the nation. Currently, Ms. Geer is converting all modules of her courses into electronic presentation files to make them more readily available for instructors, class attendees, and other users. Ms. Geer demonstrates a strong commitment to medical librarianship and has shared her knowledge broadly by teaching and promoting excellence in education.
The Lois Ann Colaianni Award for Excellence and Achievement in Hospital Librarianship is given to a professional who has made significant contributions to the profession in overall distinction or leadership in hospital library administration or service; has produced a definitive publication related to hospital librarianship, teaching, research, or advocacy; or has developed or applied innovative technology to hospital librarianship. The 2007 recipient was Ethel Madden, director of knowledge management at the Ochsner Clinic Foundation, New Orleans, Louisiana. Ms. Madden helped transform her library from a collection of modest resources to a library that serves as an integral part of the Ochsner Health System. She has served as an adjunct professor teaching health information courses at Louisiana State University School of Library and Information Sciences. Outside the medical library, Ms. Madden showed tireless dedication and leadership to the entire community in restoring library services to the community in the wake of Hurricane Katrina, well beyond the scope of daily hospital librarianship. She obtained and found funding for the Medical Library Recovery Project that provided aid to twenty-six separate sites to facilitate patient and professional information access. As stated in a letter of support, ''Ethel swiftly acted with compassion and a clear head to provide both medical information and human touch to the community.'' Ms. Madden fully embodies the spirit and criteria of the Colaianni Award. She could not attend the annual meeting so her certificate was mailed. The Louise Darling Medal for Distinguished Achievement in Collection Development in the Health Sciences, endowed by Ballen Booksellers, recognizes distinguished achievement in collection development in the health sciences. This year's award was presented to Esther Carrigan, AHIP, associate dean and director of the Medical Sciences Library at Texas A&M University-College Station. She has had a long and distinguished career in collection development and, over the course of ten years, has developed the veterinary collection at her library to be one of the most comprehensive in the nation. She shares her knowledge by coordinating consortia purchases and information sharing for colleagues throughout her region and nationally and has been very active over the years in the Veterinary Medical Libraries Section of MLA. Through her participation in the section, she was instrumental in a review of veterinary medicine that has resulted in improved coverage of veterinary literature at NLM. Ms.Carrigan is also a Distinguished Member of the Academy of Health Information Professionals.
The Thomson Scientific/Frank Bradway Rogers Information Advancement Award is sponsored by Thomson Scientific and recognizes outstanding contributions in the application of technology to the delivery of health sciences information, to the science of information, or to the facilitation of the delivery of health sciences information. The 2007 award was presented to the Legacy Tobacco Documents Library project. Karen Butter, AHIP, accepted the award on behalf of the group that was instrumental in the development of the online library: Ms. Butter, Heidi Schmidt, Robert Ma-son, Kirsten Neilsen, Albert Jew, and Stanton Glantz. This project, located at the University of California-San Francisco, is an online multimedia database of tobacco industry documents that resulted from the 1998 master settlement agreement between the attorneys general of most states and major US tobacco corporations. The library comprises more than seven million tobacco documents related to the tobacco industry and serves as a model for an open access digital repository library. The development team created a pioneering and complex search method to allow searching across the entire collection and to accommodate the extensive growth of the collection. It has an automated routine to continually update and incorporate relevant new documents into the collection. As one letter of recommendation mentions, ''the Legacy Library shows the power of libraries to make information available on a global scale with broad impact.'' The From time to time, the officers and the board of directors see that an exceptional contribution has been made to the profession and the goals of the association and, therefore, elect to give the President's Award, recognizing the significant contribution. For 2007, the award was presented to Beth M. Wescott, Southeastern/Atlantic Regional Network access coordinator for the National Network of Libraries of Medicine in Baltimore, Maryland, in recognition of her valuable contributions to health information literacy on behalf of the association and its members. Ms. Wescott is a leader in health information literacy, providing librarian education, outreach, and training that features easy-toread and useful health care information for consumers. She won the Institute for Health Care Advancement Award in 2004 for outstanding achievement in health literacy. Her easy-to-read health and wellness material for a consumer course is an integral part of MLA's Consumer Health Information Specialization program. Ms. Wescott's involvement in projects, standards, and teaching will further the cause of health information literacy for years to come.
The The newly created T. Mark Hodges International Service Award was presented for the first time by MLA. This award was established to honor outstanding individual achievement in promoting, enabling, and/or delivering improvements in the quality of health information internationally through the development of health information professionals, the improvement of libraries, or the increased use of health information services. The first awardee was T. Mark Hodges, who passed away last year. Mr. Hodges had a long and illustrious career in medical librarianship and, in his last position, served as professor of medical administration, emeritus, and director of the Vanderbilt University Medical Center Library from 1972 until his retirement in 1995. The award recognized many of Mr. Hodges's achievements in international efforts on behalf of MLA, which included: serving as a librarian on three continents; working to reestablish the Cunningham endowment; writing a history of the International Cooperation Section, of which he was a member since its inception; and acting as the MLA representative to the new Morton Bursary Fund. Other international efforts include induction as a fellow of the UK's Library Association in 1990 and contributing to the publications of its medical, health, and welfare group. Mr. Hodges was a very active member of MLA for many years and of the Southern Chapter of MLA. The award was accepted on his behalf by his wife, Judith Hodges.
Judith Hodges: I am not sure which would have made Mark prouder-to receive an award for international service or to have such an award named for him. The combination of both honors would have awed-and then delighted him immeasurably. And even I feel honored, merely to have been asked to accept this award posthumously in Mark's name. Joining me in relishing this honor are our daughter, Sara, and Mark's brother, John, who are seated at the table in front of me. Mark loved MLA. Some of his (and our) best friends were made in this organization. And if you are one of the many MLA members who sent me a lovely note or card after Mark's death last year, please forgive me if I did not acknowledge it. I read and saved every one of those precious documents. (And true to my profession, I even alphabetized them for ready reference!) After Mark's death last year, I had the bittersweet task of clearing out his office in the medical emeritus suite at Vanderbilt. Bitter, because his death was so unexpected. As I shredded some items, distributed others to various sources, and de-cided which precious few to pass on to our children or save for myself, I felt as if I was disassembling a life. Sweet, because I found impressive records of Mark's accomplishments and some beautiful tributes to him for some of these accomplishments, many of them from people in this room. On the wall of Mark's office was the framed certificate from MLA's International Cooperation Section recognizing (and I quote), ''extensive service in researching and writing the history of the International Cooperation Committee and Section, continued leadership, and dedication toward the success of the International Cooperation Section, Medical Library Association.'' Tucked into the frame was the strip of paper from a Chinese fortune cookie and it said, ''You will be awarded some great honor.'' Mark was not the kind of person who routinely hung Chinese fortunes from certificates of recognition, so this one must have been very special to him. Although a naturalized American for several decades, Mark was still very much an Englishman and rejoiced in his participation in the International Cooperation Section and all the friends he made through that participation. Mark wasn't wrong very often, but he was wrong then if he thought that certificate was the greatest possible honor he would receive for his international involvement. This honor that you have bestowed on him by naming an award for him and presenting the first one to him posthumously, is indeed the greatest honor. President Shipman then announced that the Board of Directors had named five association members as MLA Fellows. Fellows are chosen for their outstanding contributions to health sciences librarianship and to the advancement of the purposes of MLA. President Shipman introduced these five new Fellows as follows: Ⅲ Nancy Clemmons, AHIP, FMLA: Along with her many awards and accomplishments, Nancy Clemmons can now add the prestigious honor of MLA Fellow to her list. Ms. Clemmons, recently retired, has had a long and illustrious career. As deputy director at the Lister Hill Library of the Health Sciences at the University of Alabama-Birmingham, she rose through the ranks to achieve appointment as full professor and, upon her retirement, last summer received emeritus status as a faculty member. When she served as interim director, the library's physical plant was completely renovated and educational programs expanded. Ms. Clemmons also made time to teach, nurture, and mentor many students entering the profession including her daughter, Susan. Ms. Clemmons has contributed extensively to MLA and the Southern Chapter over the years. She served on the MLA Board of Directors from 2003-2006 and has participated in over twenty-eight MLA committees at the national and chapter level. She is a Distinguished Member of the Academy of Health Information Professionals and was the board liaison to the Credentialing Committee from 2003-2006. Ⅲ Kathryn J. Hoffman, AHIP, FMLA: I am pleased to welcome Kathryn Hoffman as a Fellow of the association. Her impact on the profession is far-reaching at the local, regional, and national levels. Since 1995, she has served as the executive director at the University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center Research Medical Library-Houston. Building on a tradition of excellence, she has developed the library into one of the finest research libraries in the country and the largest specialized research patient care library in the region. Technology has remained a top priority over the years. Since the early 1990s, she planned and built a new branch library, supervised sixty full-time equivalents, provided new computers for the staff, and developed a state-of-the-art fully networked teaching lab. She has published numerous papers and given presentations on a diverse range of topics nationwide. Her consultations include Roswell Park Cancer Institute and Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center. Ⅲ Sheldon Kotzin, FMLA: It is with great pleasure I recognize Sheldon Kotzin as an MLA Fellow. Mr. Kotzin joined the NLM staff in 1969 and has been promoted to increasingly responsible positions throughout his career. Since 1998, Mr. Kotzin has served as executive director of MEDLINE. In this role, he has made significant worldwide contributions, ensuring that the best journals, both print and electronic, are indexed in PubMed, so that libraries across the world are enriched by MEDLINE and can access the database free of charge. He was recently named associate director of library operations at NLM, an indication of his contributions and the high esteem held for him at the National Library of Medicine. Over the years, he has contributed extensively to MLA, serving on a wide range of MLA committees and juries, including two annual program committees, the Centennial Celebration Committee, and the Janet Doe Lectureship Jury. Mr. Kotzin has made numerous presentations at regional, national, and international meetings. He presented a paper on ''Archiving NIH Research Results in PubMed Central'' at the International Federation of Library Associations and Institutions (IFLA) conference in Olso, Norway, 2005. NLM presented him with the National Institutes of Health Directors Award in 1991 and the NLM Directors Award in 1990. A letter of reference sums up Mr. Kotzin's qualifications, ''There is no doubt that he is eminently qualified to join the select group of individuals that represent the highest ideals of our association and profession.'' Ⅲ James Shedlock, AHIP, FMLA: Along with the other four Fellows receiving this year's award, James Shedlock can now add the prestigious title of Fellow to his list. Mr. Shedlock has been an MLA member since 1976 and has been the director of the Galter Health Sciences at Northwestern University in Chicago, Illinois, since 1991. A colleague summarizes, ''Jim has a demonstrated history of notable leadership in MLA, remains an outstanding achiever, has produced significant scholarship and is held in high regard by his fellow professionals.'' Mr. Shedlock's renovation of the Galter Library established a standard for renovation projects that is still referenced over a decade later. He has explored and utilized leading computer technologies at the Galter Library and is known as an outstanding teacher to staff, with over forty publications, presentations, and papers contributed to the profession. Currently, he serves on the Biomedical Library and Informatics Review Committee (BLIRC) for NLM. He has made extensive contributions to MLA, serving on numerous committees, most recently as the 2006 National Program Committee chair and on the Board of Directors from 1996-1999. He received the Thomson Scientific/Frank Bradway Rogers Information Advancement Award in 1998 and is a Distinguished Member of the Academy of Health Information Professionals. Ⅲ Patricia Thibodeau, AHIP, FMLA: I am pleased to welcome Patricia Thibodeau as an MLA Fellow. Ms. Thibodeau is the associate dean for library services and archives at the Duke University Medical Center Library, Durham, North Carolina. In this role, she oversees management of the library and medical center archives and represents the library on many key internal and external committees and task forces. Ms. Thibodeau has acquired a unique, multifaceted perspective on the profession with more than two decades of experience. She first served as a hospital librarian, became an Area Health Education Center (AHEC) medical library director, and then began a long, productive career at Duke as an academic health sciences librarian and director. Her various leadership roles focus on three major areas with a significant impact on our profession-advocacy for hospital librarians, scholarly communication, and international leadership. winner, Betsy L. Humphreys, AHIP. This award for high contribution to the association and to the profession is not automatically given annually, but occasionally, when one of MLA's own rises to such distinction as to merit MLA's highest honor. Betsy Humphreys is such a person. In fact, those who know her readily acknowledge that she is an extraordinary medical librarian. Betsy has the rare ability to think strategically and tactically. She can see the big picture, imagine the goals, foresee the obstacles, and detail and execute the plan for profession-changing accomplishments: Ⅲ Accomplishments such as the Unified Medical Language System (UMLS), which brought together thesauri from many disciplines, permitting searches and inquiry across the boundaries of many biomedical groups. UMLS has been used by individual libraries to manage in-house resources and currently runs behind PubMed and other NLM databases to improve recall and precision for searchers throughout the world. In the process, Betsy was also able to negotiate a US license for the Systematized Nomenclature of Medicine (SNOMED) vocabulary, thereby removing one significant barrier to the development of the electronic health record in the United States. Ⅲ Accomplishments such as the NLM focus on public health, a mission ten years in the making. Betsy started this effort and has continued to provide energy and direction to its development. Ⅲ Accomplishments such as the expansion of NLM's Library Associate Fellowship and the collaboration in other NLM initiatives for the education and development of leaders in the medical library profession.
Betsy's skills and talents are known personally to many of you, for she is more than willing to share her knowledge, make useful suggestions, and encourage and broker collaborations. These same skills and talents have seen her career flourish at the National Library of Medicine over the last thirty-four years as she rose from librarian, Serials Records Section, to her current position as deputy director of the National Library of Medicine. Well published across a wide variety of topics and venues, Betsy is a recognized authority in many domains, including medical librarianship, medical informatics, standards, vocabulary development, UMLS, and public health information to name a few. She has an extraordinary breadth of interest and command of multiple disciplines. Not surprisingly, this breadth of knowledge and her strong speaking and writing abilities bring many opportunities to educate and illustrate to a broad spectrum of professionals the importance of medical librarianship and quality information management. Betsy is one of those few amazing individuals whose intelligence and hard work make a difference for many. Her contributions to the field of medical librarianship have strengthened the work of health sciences librarians throughout the world. She is a modest person who shares credit easily and whose logical, strong, pragmatic approaches to problems brings many into the development of solutions. She is a star in our library world, and it is most fitting that she receive MLA's highest honor. Please join me in congratulating the 2007 Marcia C. Noyes Award Winner, Betsy Humphreys. President Shipman concluded the session by saying that the awards ceremony and luncheon serves as an important reminder of the numerous accomplishments our peers have made to the profession. It simultaneously provides the encouragement to continue aspiring toward higher levels of achievement. In recognizing these individuals, we affirm the ''best and brightest'' in the field of health sciences librarianship. President Shipman then asked attendees to join her in a moment of silence to honor the memories of the many valuable members who had died during the year as screens displayed names and assembled photographs of Godfrey Belleh, Estelle Brodman, Lois O. Clark, Linda F. Dorrington, Frederick G. Kilgour, Linda Nanette King, Cecile E. Kramer, and Cheryl Y. Newman.

BUSINESS
Ms. Funk then recognized the efforts of chapter chairs, section chairs, special interest group (SIG) conveners, committee chairs, task forces chairs, and MLA representatives to allied organizations. She also ac- Mr. Haynes explained that the Rules of the Assembly included information on addressing the chair, presenting motions, debating, and voting and are available on MLANET. At the direction of the Board of Directors, he then moved that the Rules of the Assembly, as they appear on MLANET, be adopted. Voting paddles were raised, and, there being a majority in the affirmative, the rules were adopted.
Mr. Haynes noted that the agendas for the 2007 business meetings were on pages 25 and 32 of the Official Program. Then, by direction of the Board of Directors, he moved that the revised agenda for the 2007 business meetings of the Medical Library Association be adopted. Again, the vote was affirmative and the agendas adopted. For the first item of new business, President Shipman called on Ms. Jones to present the treasurer's report.
Dixie Jones: Before getting into figures, I will explain how the association's budget works and list the key players for the Medical Library Association's fiscal health care team: Ⅲ The Board of Directors has the responsibility of setting priorities and objectives. The board approves action plans and the association business plan. Ⅲ The treasurer coordinates financial discussion and reports to the board and the membership, as well as monitors overall financial activities. Ⅲ MLA headquarters staff drafts the budget based on the objectives approved by the board. They implement the approved budget to achieve desired financial re-sults and operational objectives and issue the financial statements. Ⅲ The auditors examine financial records to assure that the financial statements provide an accurate picture of MLA's financial condition in accordance with generally accepted accounting principles. Ⅲ The members, vendors, donors, and consumers of MLA products are the sources of MLA's financial support, which is vital to its ability to fulfill its mission.
Mission: The Medical Library Association (MLA) is organized exclusively for scientific and educational purposes and is dedicated to the support of health sciences research, education, and patient care.
MLA fosters excellence in the professional achievement and leadership of health sciences library and information professionals to enhance the quality of health care, education, and research.
The cycle for association financial activities is the calendar year, i.e., MLA's fiscal year runs from January through December. At the fall board meeting, the board sets objectives for the coming year and the headquarters staff then works on a business plan budget during the fall, based on these objectives. In December, the business plan is presented to the Board of Directors who review the plan and the budget, which begins implementation in January.
In 2006, a deficit budget was planned. However, the year finished in the black with net revenue of $52,661. Each year, an audit is conducted and posted on MLA-NET. The 2006 auditor's report may be found under Financial Reports, under Staff and Headquarters Information, or by going directly to this URL: Ͻhttp:// w w w. m l a n e t . o r g / m e m b e r s / o r g a n i z at i o n / hqdocs.htmlϾ (members only).
The revenue generated in 2006 is being used during 2007 to fund: Ⅲ a contribution toward endowment of the Donald A. B. Lindberg Research Fellowship, Ⅲ content management for MLANET, Ⅲ implementation of the revised research policy statement, and Ⅲ travel for advocacy to support our members.
The 2007 budget is over $3 million. Revenue is projected to exceed expenses by over $10,000. As you can see from the pie chart on the screen, dues provide only about 22% of the association's operating budget income. The annual meeting generates 40% of MLA's revenues. Of course, the annual meeting is also expensive to produce, and, at 23% of the expense budget, it is the largest association cost. The April 2007 issue of MLA News has side-by-side comparisons of 2006 and 2007 budget information, if you would like to curl up with financial charts for some cozy bedtime reading.
Some of the initiatives being funded in 2007 are: Ⅲ production of additional Medspeak brochures found in your registration materials, Ⅲ redesign of MLANET (You may view the test version of the new design at the MLA Connections booth while you are here), Ⅲ a face-to-face meeting of the Task Force on Research Policy Statement Revision, Ⅲ two webcasts, one of which has already been held, and Ⅲ an upgrade of the association management system. Ray Naegele is director of financial and administrative services for the association overall and works with section and chapter treasurers regarding their responsibilities. If you have a question at any time about MLA's budget process or finances, you may contact him or the treasurer. My status as treasurer only lasts about two more days; succeeding me for a two-year term as treasurer will be Linda Walton, who just completed her first year on the board.
I have learned much from Ray Naegele, Carla Funk, and other headquarters staff during the past two years and appreciate the privilege of serving as treasurer. If you are looking for me after the annual meeting, I will be relaxing at my retreat in the north Louisiana woods. Thank you.
Next, President Shipman called on Carla Funk to present the executive director's report.
Carla Funk: Good afternoon, everyone, again. On behalf of your MLA staff, I want to add our welcome to Philadelphia. MLA was last here, as many of you know, in 1998 for the association's wonderful Centennial Celebration. Changes that had already begun at that meeting have intensified over the past nine years, and I would like to update you on some of these.
A summary of MLA's activities over the past year is on the back of the National Medical Librarian's Month poster that you all received in your portfolio, and the full annual report is available on MLANET. Now, MLANET was a fledgling website in 1998. Today, visits to MLANET continue to increase, amounting to three and a half million in 2006-that's visits, not hits. This year, the top five websites visited included the MLA store, jobs, the Medspeak brochures, the Journal of the Medical Library Association, and the Educational Clearinghouse.
After several surveys and focus groups about the site, the MLANET Editorial Board and staff, working with an outside designer, have redesigned the site. As we have all said, and I wish you will go there, the site is available for your comment at the booth. And please stop by, give us your comments. We have tried to incorporate a lot of the things that you have asked for in our surveys of you, including blogs, really simple syndication (RSS) feeds, mouse-overs, a more prominent consumer button, and easier navigation. And we hope to launch the site shortly after the annual meeting, so any input that you can give would be very, very helpful.
As part of this project, we have also redesigned the Educational Clearinghouse to make it easier for instructors and health sciences librarians to use. The Continuing Education Committee is currently reviewing the prototype, and the site should be completed shortly. After the new MLANET is launched, we will begin looking at a content management, association management system for the site to give members the functionality that you have requested.
In 1998, Platform for Change, MLA's educational policy statement, was six years old. At this meeting, we are launching the newly revised educational policy statement, Competencies for Lifelong Learning and Professional Success. There is an executive summary of the statement in your portfolio, and the full policy has been posted to MLANET. I want to add my thanks to the Task Force on Educational Policy Statement Revision for all of their hard work in creating the document. I also want to point out that the document features a 1979 quote from Estelle Brodman that is particularly poignant this year, but, as usual, she was right on target.
Events over the past years also have us focused on disaster recovery. Through your donations to MLA's Medical Library Disaster Relief Fund, we were able to provide funding for library materials, computers, supplies, and travel to those libraries devastated by hurricanes and tornadoes. MLA has also updated its own headquarters disaster recovery plan and now has all financial information and MLANET backed up electronically on a regular basis at several off site locations, in addition to the tape backups that we have made over the years.
In 1998, MEDLIB-L had been in existence for seven years, serving both MLA members and other health sciences librarians. The hosting of MEDLIB-L became a hot topic this year when the State University of New York (SUNY)-Buffalo, which had hosted the site since the beginning, changed its policy, making it impossible for them to continue to do this. The board and staff put the issue out on MEDLIB-L for discussion, and I am happy to say that through the discussion, the Dana Medical Library at the University of Vermont has agreed to host the list on Vermont's website. We want to thank both SUNY-Buffalo for their past support of the list and the University of Vermont, particularly Tina Kussey, who is our sponsor, for their willingness to take this on.
MLA has reached out in many ways this year, to its members, other health sciences librarians, and the public. In 1998, the first Medspeak brochure debuted at the annual meeting. Now, nine years later, with the publication of three new brochures, there are a total of seven Medspeak brochures. The three new ones are on eye disorders, HIV-AIDS, and stroke and are in your portfolios. Also, we are working with members from the Massachusetts Health Sciences Library Network to try to translate the original Medspeak brochure into plain language to make it more accessible to people at lower literacy levels.
In 1997/98, PCI began to work with MLA and continues to help us to promote the value of health sciences librarians and the importance of quality health information. From June 2006 through April 2007, we have reached almost fifty million people through a variety of placements, including AARP, the magazine, Kiplinger' s Retirement Report, Nursing Spectrum, Prevention, the Chicago Tribune, News Day, abcnews.go.com, Health News Digest, Computers in Libraries, and usnews.com.
As part of the vital pathways for our hospital librarians project, we have worked with the Colorado Council of Medical Librarians Advocacy Committee to produce the presentation, ''Myths and Truths About Library Services''-along with the accompanying brochures, bibliography, and white paper-to help health sciences librarians, especially hospital librarians, advocate on behalf of their libraries. And this tool, I am happy to report, has already been used by both librarians and doctors who are hoping to save their libraries.
We have also developed the Hospital Library Status Notification Form, so that people can report a change in status at their hospital library. To date, we have received over 80 forms, from both MLA members and nonmembers. Of these responses, about 62% were negative-library downsizing, closures, and that kind of thing-while the remaining ones were positive or neutral.
MLA's governmental relations program, very active in 1998, is still active today. Staff continues to work with the Governmental Relations Committee, the Scholarly Publishing Task Force, and the MLA/Association of Academic Health Sciences Libraries Joint Legislative Task Force on a number of issues, including the Environmental Protection Agency libraries closings, the Federal Research Public Access Act, the National Institutes of Health Reauthorization Bill, the proposed revisions to section 108 of the Copyright Law, and the National Library of Medicine's fiscal year 2008 funding. MLA continues also to work with the Library Copyright Alliance on a myriad of copyright issues. Please see the Information Issues and Policy area of MLANET for a description of these activities.
Recruitment and retention, both for the profession and for MLA, is becoming increasingly important. In 1998, MLA had 4,930 members, with 536 new members joining the association, the second highest number in recent history. In 2007, the good news is that a record number of new members have joined, 627, but the bad news is that over 800 members have not renewed, due to job changes, retirement, and other factors. MLA membership has dropped to about 4,100 as of January 2007. Now, the Membership Committee and headquarter's staff continue to work very hard to recruit librarians into the association, and we have developed new recruitment materials, which are available at the booth. And the committee had its third member-phone-athon in January that resulted in about forty members. We have also had several academic health sciences libraries support memberships for a number of their librarians who are new to MLA, and we are very, very grateful for this support. Thank you.
During 2007, we will increasingly reach out to nonmembers in this and related professions through direct mailings to promote membership in MLA. Also, please watch for MLA's membership survey that will be sent electronically to all members this summer, and be sure to participate.
MLA continues to work to recruit people into the profession through the work of the Professional Recruitment and Retention Committee and through partnerships with the University of Pittsburgh-WISEϩ, Leveraging the Power of the Network to Increase the Diversity of Library and Information Science Curricu- In 1998, MLA's research policy statement was three years old. As you have seen from our research vignettes, MLA will be celebrating a year of research in 2007 with the publication of our newly revised research policy statement developed through the hard work of the Task Force for the Research Policy Statement Revision. Jean has already discussed the Health Information Literacy Project, and there will be an open forum to discuss it more fully this Tuesday, so please, I hope that you come.
Also, since the 2006 annual meeting, composite hospital libraries reports, using data from the 2004-2005 benchmarking database have become available in the members only area. The benchmarking database continues to be used successfully by members to advocate on behalf of their libraries.
Staff also assisted with several surveys via Zoomerang, the web survey tool, including the Academy of Health Information Professionals chapter survey, the MLA meeting site survey, and the final hospital library survey to state and chapter groups. Results of the complete hospital library survey, which is part of the Vital Pathways Project, will be published in 2007. The article will update, in part, the hospital library survey that was published by Pat Wakely and Eloise Foster, AHIP, FMLA, in the Bulletin of the Medical Library Association in 1993. Also, there will be an open forum to discuss the academy survey results on Tuesday.
Staff has also assisted the Fellows in posting fellows' biographies to MLANET, another window into MLA's history. If you haven't seen these, please check them out on the website.
MLA has also provided some new resources for the profession this year. With our copublisher, Neal-Schuman, MLA has published The MLA Guide to Cancer Resources, by MLA member Ruti Volk, and will shortly publish Using Benchmarking, Needs Assessment, Performance Improvements, Outcome Measurement, and Library Standards: A How-To-Do-It Manual, by MLA member Rosalind Dudden, AHIP, FMLA, two very valuable resources.
In 1998, MLA's copyright brochure was about nine years old. Many changes have taken place over the past nine years, and I am happy to say that you received, in your portfolio, information about a valuable new member resource, ''Copyright Law and the Health Sciences Librarian,'' a complete revision of the 1989 document developed by headquarters staff and an MLA task force chaired by Marianne Comegys. The complete document is located on MLANET, and we hope this expanded version of the copyright brochure will help you through many of your everyday copyright questions.
A new, regular case study feature in the JMLA debuted in July 2006 with a companion blog on MLA-NET under the stewardship of the JMLA editor Nunzia Giuse and her team. Also, early precursors to the JMLA, the Aesculapian-Mark Funk helped me pronounce that-and the Medical Librarian and History Journal were added to the PubMed central digital archives by NLM, for which we are very grateful. There are now over 9,000 articles available from MLA's journal on PubMed Central, and, over the past 3 months, we have had over 120,000 people access the journal via PubMed Central.
MLA has expanded its relationships with other organizations over the past year in a variety of ways. In September, we took over the management of the Association of Library and Information Science Education (ALISE), an association of library school faculty. Founded in 1915 as the Association of American Library Schools, ALISE provides a forum for library educators to share ideas, to discuss issues, and to seek solutions to common problems. MLA staff have served as allied representatives to ALISE for many years, and, with MLA's over fifty-year interest and work in the area of continuing education, we felt that this was a natural partnership. Kathleen Combs, of headquarters staff, serves as ALISE's executive director.
In the international arena, Jean has already updated you about MLA's new bilateral agreement with the Korean Medical Library Association. We hope that this will be the beginning of a strong partnership between our two groups.
Also, I want to call your attention to the open forum on the Librarians Without Borders e-library training project managed by Lenny Rhine and funded from a grant from Elsevier. Lenny will talk about the courses he has taught and where he has taught them at the open forum, and you can see his poster at the MLA Connection booth. The new and expanded website for the Librarians Without Borders program will be up this summer.
Finally, I would like to recognize some staff members. We have added an additional website assistant in the office to work on both MLANET and ALISE's website. But we also have some milestones to celebrate this year. Susan Talmage, our copy editor, had her second baby, Calvin, this summer. Also, some of us that were here in 1998 are celebrating significant anniversaries this year. This is my fifteenth year at MLA, and Evelyn Shaevel has been with the association for ten years.
And there is another staff member who's celebrating his twenty-fifth anniversary with MLA. Ray, could you please come up to the podium? Twenty-five years is a long time to work at one place, but MLA is very happy to have had you for this amount of time. You have made countless contributions to the association, not only in the area of finance and administration, but also in the development and management of the annual meeting.
You have helped to revolutionize it by adopting new technologies and processes, and we know that there is still more to come. Your good nature and your ability to get along well working with a variety of members over many years has helped the association succeed during very challenging times. I am happy to present to you this token of our appreciation for your hard work, your good ideas, and your good nature. Thank you.
Also, on behalf of staff, I want to thank our wonderful Board of Directors this year, and our gracious and hard working president, Jean Shipman, for a fabulous, fabulous year. You have been a true inspiration to all of us.
That concludes the headquarters report. Staff will be here throughout the meeting to answer questions and provide any other assistance you need. Have a great meeting. Thank you.
President Shipman returned to the podium and moved on to the next order of business, the annual report. In the interest of time, she received the annual reports in a block. The information reports of the appointed officers, officials, councils, the committees, the representatives, chapters, and sections are found in the 2006/07 Annual Report of the Medical Library Association. These reports are posted on MLANET Ͻhttp://www.mlanet.org/about/annualreport/06 07/Ͼ and will remain so throughout this year. They are also available in paper copy upon request from the executive director's office. There being no corrections or objections from members, the reports were filed as presented.
President Shipman then explained that each attendee had received a flyer with a ticket for the MLA/ HINARI drawing in support of MLA's Librarians Without Borders global initiative. The libraries named on the raffle ticket are part of the HINARI program set up by the World Health Organization, together with major publishers. The winning librarian selected at the meeting received an iPod, and the medical library named on the winning ticket got a fully equipped personal computer. called the morning's session to order. She reminded everyone that this session was the conclusion of the association's business for 2006/07. A quorum of voting members was present. President Shipman then recognized and thanked the retiring MLA board members, Dixie A. Jones, AHIP, and Faith A. Meakin, AHIP, FMLA. They were presented with certificates as tokens of respect and gratitude for work well done. Next, President Shipman expressed her sincere gratitude to retiring Immediate Past-President M.J. Tooey, president of MLA during the 2005/06 association year. She was crowned with a royal tiara symbolizing the many hats she wears and to recognize her ''royal role as President and Past-President of MLA'' as well as presented with a certificate and plaque.
The new members of the MLA Board of Directors, Gary Freiburger, AHIP, Paula Raimondo, Laurie Thompson, AHIP, and President-elect Mary Ryan, AHIP, FMLA, were then welcomed and introduced. President Shipman proceeded to introduce the incoming president, Mark Funk, AHIP. Incoming president Funk presented Shipman with the presidential cup and congratulated her on an outstanding year on behalf of the association.
Mark Funk, head of collection development at the Samuel J. Wood Library, Weil Cornell Medical College, in New York City, 2007/08 MLA president, delivered the inaugural address.

INAUGURAL ADDRESS
[A Quicktime movie and podcast of this address can be found at Ͻhttp://www.mlanet.org/members/e -present/2007/Ͼ (members only).] Mark Funk: Why? Why are we here? Why is it that back in January we started making plans to come to this meeting? Why do we disrupt our busy lives, leaving family, friends, and work on our desks to gather in one place? Some of us travel hundreds of miles, many of us travel thousands of miles to get here. It's inconvenient, it's expensive, and only a small portion of MLA business is accomplished here.
Here's another question. Why is it, when we've started making plans to come here, we start asking each other, ''Are you going to MLA?'' ''Yes, I'm going to MLA. Are you going to MLA?'' ''Yes, I'm going to MLA.'' Obviously, this is not MLA. This is the annual meeting of the Medical Library Association. But our overwhelming desire to come together, to reunite with old friends, to meet new friends, to expand our knowledge is so important to us that we have created a verbal shortcut to indicate it.
You, me-us-this mass gathering of like-minded individuals, is why we are here. The sense of community, of connectedness, of associating that we derive from joining MLA and, in particular, attending the annual meeting, is very important to us.
And not just us. It seems that associating is a pretty common thing in the universe. Lots of things associate. This definition from Answers.com shows us that, in addition to people, thoughts, ideas, feelings, even chemical ions, will naturally associate. The need to associate is a basic aspect of nature. People, however, join associations, because they want to work together on a common interest, activity, or purpose.
These common interests and activities are as varied as the human experience. Take a look at the Encyclopedia of Associations. The version for just US national associations is 17 pounds, 4 volumes, and over 4,000 pages. There are additional versions for US regional, state, and local associations and, of course, the international associations. I wanted to get an idea of just how varied the association world is, so I sat down with the Encyclopedia of Associations for an hour. People, there are some weird associations out there.
I want to share with you some of our brethren associations that I discovered. They may sound strange, but their similarities to us are amazing. They have mission statements, annual meetings, awards, and committees. They all exemplify the human need to associate.
Starting off is the Bowling Writers Association of America. I hardly ever think about bowling, and I have to admit, before I found this group, I had never thought about bowling writers, yet here they are. Their name even implies that other countries may have bowling writers associations as well.
Next is the Northern Nut Growers Association-not just, the Nut Growers Association, but the Northern Nut Growers Association. I have to wonder what deep philosophical differences in the past caused the northern group to split off and go off on their own.
Here we have the National Association of Reunion Managers, the official association of professional reunion managers. I've been to reunions that were handled by amateurs. The results were not pretty. The attendees were all old, overweight, and losing their hair. They got drunk and generally made fools of themselves. I've also been to reunions that were handled by professionals. While I admit the results were actually the same, at least they were achieved professionally.
Next is the Association of Professional Piercers. Piercing, while gaining in popularity recently, has always suffered from an image problem. Sound familiar? This association is very active in fighting that image. You can see in their banner they highlight health, safety, and education. The piercers have a scholarship fund; they have a legislation outreach committee and a scholarship committee. Overall, they are not that different from us.
But my favorite strange association that I discovered is the International Sand Collectors Society. ''Discovering the world, grain by grain'' and proud of it. Like most associations, they have a newsletter. Theirs is cleverly called The Sand Paper. They have an annual meeting. Their upcoming 2007 Sandfest this year will be held in Chesterton, Indiana, home of the Indiana Dunes State Park. This very ambitious group also wants to build a sand museum.
But what really attracted me to this group were their divisions. Not unlike MLA sections, the divisions cater to the particular interests of their members. So I took a look at these divisions, and they divided themselves into different groups. The first group was the scientific group. These are people who are interested in the origin, the geology, and the useful aspects of sand. Another group is the fun group. Although I have to wonder if, perhaps, the sandcastle people split off from the beach people several years ago, because they just couldn't get along.
Then there's the ''I never thought of that'' category: sand education, historical mortars (which I found out are used not only for archeological research, but also to help restore buildings), and rare sand. Who knew there was rare sand? And finally there is the ''Who in the world let these guys in the room?'' category.
I had to look up ''psychometry,'' because I had no idea what it was. It's also called sand reading. In sand reading, a person makes a hand print in a bowl of sand and then a sensitive ''reads'' the sand and gathers psychic information about the person. I just wonder how these guys get along with the scientists at their division council meetings. I wonder if they're made to sit in the corner during those meetings.
But no matter how strange any of these associations may appear to us, they all serve the same purposeto get people with similar interests connected to each other. Now, in addition to the incredible variety of associations, there's a long history of associations. MLA comes from an ancient tradition of like-minded people associating together. Let's look at how we got here.
Here we are today, in 2007, all bright and shiny, but we've been here a long time. In 1998, in this very town, we celebrated our centennial. We began in 1898 here in Philadelphia with our founders, William Osler, Margaret Charlton, and George Gould. Being 109 years old sounds impressive, but associations go back much farther, even in the United States. In 1830, the French statesman and author Alexis de Tocqueville toured our relatively new nation. He pointed out that we seemed to be succeeding so well at democracy, because ''Americans of all ages, all stations of life, and all types of disposition are forever forming associations.'' Associations evolved from guilds, which were prominent in Europe from the Middle Ages through the Renaissance. Guilds were organized around different professions, the numbers of which increased rapidly as civilization moved from the farm to the cities. Guilds introduced the concept of a lifetime progression in a trade from apprentice, to craftsman, to journeyer, and, finally, to master. This was a case of required mentoring. There were no independent study programs available.
Before the guilds, groups of Roman craftsman known as collegia spread throughout the Roman Empire, starting around the third century BCE. The earliest craftsmen organizations are thought to have originated in India. These organizations, known as shreni, were formed as far back as 3800 BCE. That's a very long time ago, but that just reflects what is known from recorded history. Surely the need to associate, to connect with others of similar interests, must go back farther, to prehistoric times. What were the earliest associations?
To answer this question, I undertook months of archeological and anthropological research to create what I think is an accurate simulation of a very early association. [An animated clip is shown. A caveman says ''Good morning. I want to welcome you to the Fourth Annual Cave Dwellers Association meeting. In my keynote address, I want to cover these main points.'' The animation ends with him pointing to several lines of cave drawings, each preceded by a bullet.] Now, two things I want to point out. Who knew that cave men spoke English and with a British accent? I didn't until my computer finished running its simulation. So I've decided to name him Cyril, Cyril the caveman. Also, I want to mention that even in those ancient times, the need to communicate with bullet points was already deeply embedded within our DNA. Even without Microsoft and without power, we see Cyril here making use of a very early point presentation.
This primal need, this urge, this drive to connect with others is the basis of my presidential theme and priorities: ''Only Connect!'' This phrase is the famous epigraph of E. M. Forster's novel Howard' s End, published in 1910. If you're not an English major, you may only be familiar with the movie adaptation starring Emma Thompson and Anthony Hopkins. Oddly, the most famous lines of the book are not used in the movie.
[Male Voice of Cyril the Caveman]: ''Only connect! That was the whole of her sermon . . . Only connect the prose and the passion, and both will be exalted . . . Live in fragments no longer . . . Only connect.'' Forster's novel contrasts the Wilcoxes with their superficiality, but unquestionable material power, with the Schlegels, who are sensitive to values but have a very limited ability to change society. It is Margaret Schlegel who is able to connect their separated fragments of prose and passion into a unified whole. I'm using ''Only Connect!'' to describe a strategy of creating more and tighter connections between the members of our association.
You may recall Carl Sagan, in his award winning Cosmos television series on PBS, explaining that as the universe expands, galaxies move away from each other, becoming increasingly isolated in the vast distances of space. Over the years, the universe of MLA has also expanded into new roles, new functions, and new activities. This is a healthy expansion, and we can't afford to contract our reach. We must always be adapting and expanding our reach.
However, that small, dedicated band of medical librarians who first gathered in Philadelphia over a hundred years ago is vastly different from our current membership. Today, our members are spread out all over the globe, working in specialties and subspecialties unknown to our founders. We thrive in a variety of environments far beyond hospitals and medical schools. But, like galaxies, many of us have become, or are in danger of becoming, isolated from each other. We must stop that from happening.
Take a look around this room. You are surrounded by the leaders of MLA, people who participate in sections, chapters, committees, and task forces. Many of you are officers of these units. Many of you are presenting papers or posters this week. All of us are fortunate enough to be here, attending this meeting. These leaders, however, represent a minority of MLA members. We have a large, untapped resource of both new members and experienced members, who cannot, for various reasons, participate in these traditional association avenues. The vision of my theme, ''Only Connect!,'' is to implement technology that will allow our members to decrease their isolation, improve communication, make it easier to share knowledge, make it easier to participate, and keep our members connected to each other and to the association.
When I started writing this speech, Time magazine had just named You as their ''Person of the Year.'' Now be sure to add this great achievement to your resume. It will sound great on your next job interview. Even Time magazine, not exactly the hippest publication around, had taken notice of the changes in the Internet over the past couple of years. They called it ''a story about community and collaboration on a scale never seen before.'' New tools such as wikis, blogs, RSS, instant messaging, and podcasts have created a new version of the Internet, dubbed Web 2.0. While some consider Web 2.0 merely hype or a marketing buzzword, it can't be denied that these new tools are allowing the collaborative creation of content despite barriers of time and distance. Web 2.0 has inverted the traditional power structure of the Internet. More and more users are creating content. This is a bottom-up web, not a top-down web. As I mentioned before, some consider Web 2.0 all hype and predict it will turn into another dot com bust. I don't think so. The dot com bust was about businesses running out of money. Web 2.0 is about people, and their need to communicate and participate. That won't run out.
So what are these Web 2.0 tools, and how can MLA use them to allow our members to better connect? You're probably familiar with most of these tools, but you may not have thought about them in terms of what an association can do with them. So I will briefly explain three main tools and how they might work for us. Ⅲ A blog is a user-generated website where entries are made in journal, or diary style, and displayed in reverse chronological order, so the newest postings are right there on top, the first thing you see. There are millions of blogs on the Internet. The most popular blog in the world is Boing Boing, coedited by science fiction author Cory Doctorow. Technology blogs are very popular, as are political blogs, such as The Huffington Post. MLA Board member Scott Plutchak has a very popular blog. MLA has dabbled a little bit in blogs, with the National Program Committees for the last few annual meetings using them as a way to inform people about local activities, restaurants, weather, etc. Ⅲ A wiki is a website that allows visitors to add, remove, edit, and change content. Its main advantage, ease of interaction, makes a wiki an effective tool for mass collaborative authoring. Probably the most fa-mous wiki in the world is Wikipedia. For all its faults and shortcomings, most of us have probably used it. Ⅲ While the origins of the initials are in dispute, most people say that RSS stands for really simple syndication. RSS is a format for automatically delivering regularly changing web content such as blogs, news feeds, wikis, or podcasts. It's a way to find out what's new on a lot of sites without having to visit each one. A site is RSS capable when you see this icon. Here is an example from my own ''my Yahoo!'' page. I have set up feeds from The New York Times , Reuters, and BBC News. I go to one page; I see the latest updates from several sites.
Why would an MLA unit such as a section, special interest group, chapter, committee, or task force want to use these new technologies? Most of the functions of these units are driven by the expertise and opinions of their members-it's an extended conversation. These new tools can help facilitate that conversation. They have advantages over email and email lists.
A controlled email list means that not everybody can participate in the conversation. Important decisions are often made with limited input. Although a decision may be perfectly valid, nonparticipants may not understand how that decision was derived, and unless the email list is archived, the conversations can be lost or repeated. Blogs and wikis enhance the conversation. They allow more people to participate, even passively, as they get to at least read the conversation, even if they don't want to add to it. By seeing the entire conversation, members can understand how decisions are made, and new participants can see the history of a particular conversation. Openness and participation are vastly increased.
When would a blog be useful for us? Blogs are ideal for conversations or divergent thinking. When a unit wants to have discussions that are far-ranging, deal with new topics, or gather opinions, a blog is ideal. Blog entries are saved so that latecomers to a conversation can catch up on what's already been said.
What about wikis? Generally, wikis are used for convergent thinking. They are ideal for a group to collaborate on best practices, writing standards, creating manuals, or compiling a history. The Hospital Library Section has already set up a wiki. To avoid the wellpublicized problems that Wikipedia has had, they have enabled their wiki so that, while anyone can see its content, only registered users can add or edit the content. As a bit of inspiration for you, the Public Library Association has announced plans to start an encyclopedic wiki about public librarianship. Why couldn't we do the same for medical librarianship?
In addition to bringing these social networking tools to the association, I want to revitalize MLANET, make it more than just a passive repository of documents and information. What if we could personalize MLA-NET so each of us could have a ''myMLANET'' page? Could we include aspects of a virtual annual meeting on MLANET? Let's also use MLANET as a tool to both welcome new members, and allow them to have meaningful participation in MLA within ten minutes of joining, rather than having to wait ten years. What might this look like?
Let's follow a new member in perhaps the not-toodistant future. He has just joined MLA online, and ten minutes later he received a welcoming email with a link to his own myMLANET page. Here is his my-MLANET page after he has uploaded his photograph. Look! It's our friend Cyril, who, after being frozen in a glacier for eons, has been miraculously revived. Yes, his name is Cyril D. Kaufman. You didn't think it would be Cyril D. Caveman, did you? Do you know anybody with the last name of Caveman? No, I didn't think so.
Cyril has turned down a high-paying job from Geico and is now a new librarian, eager to participate in MLA. All of the traditional address and contact information is displayed. You can also see his page has already been filled in with his section and chapter membership, with links to those websites. A brand new librarian, he is not a member of the Academy of Health Information Professionals, but this page will keep track of his status and accumulated academy points.
In addition, other social contacts can also be included, such as a personal web page, instant messaging alias, and del.icio.us. It would also be very easy to add his Flickr, mySpace, and other social network contacts as well. Cyril has also decided to include his resume and both professional and personal tags. These are yet other ways for people to connect with members who have similar interests and expertise. Notice that any of these fields are optional to show or to hide-it's up to Cyril to decide, and of course all of these tags are searchable.
Here is Cyril's myMLANET content page-one page to see all the latest news in which he is interested. He was automatically signed up for several RSS feeds when he joined: the association-wide news, the newmember wiki, the new-member blog, and the blogs for his chapter and sections. He can easily change these feeds as he wants. Rather than wait to be invited, he sees he can connect and participate right away. A new post in the Public Services Section blog catches his eye. A saber-toothed tiger in the stacks! He knows something about these, and he can supply some vital information. Oh, you don't think saber tooth tigers still exist? Well, smarty pants, this library is in Kansas, where we all know that evolution is not allowed, so they still have saber tooth tigers. So there.
Exploring MLANET some more, Cyril discovers that many aspects of the annual meeting are available. He decides to take a quick look at the 2007 annual meeting. Cyril is fond of 2007 because that was the year he was thawed out. Here is a video of Jean Shipman's presidential address. [Brief video is shown.] You can see that beneath Jean's video is a video of my inaugural address. I was going to show you that video, but I consulted with a physicist who warned me that if I attempted to show a video from the future of the speech that I'm giving now that would cause an infinite loop from which the universe would never recover, so you can't see it. Cyril discovers that more recent annual meetings have most of the presentations and posters available on MLANET.
[Brief video is shown.] These are just some of the possibilities we can create. I am appointing a task force to work on implementing the social networking tools, and I'm also asking the MLANET Editorial Board to begin work on expanding the capabilities of our website. They will be seeking your input, so I hope you have some great ideas to add. Now I know MLA does not have a wonderful history of getting things done quickly. Things move fast on the Internet, and MLA has to be able to be more nimble than we have been in the past. My hope is that these tools can be implemented relatively quickly. For the task force, for the MLANET Editorial Board, for headquarters staff, and for everyone who will assist in this implementation, I have a simple plea: Just do it. Let's start now. We can add components incrementally. We don't need long and involved planning before we start to see things happening. Let's avoid the Culture of Perfect. It will never be perfect; it will never be finished. We have to get used to being in perpetual beta mode.
I know that some units of MLA will embrace these new tools. I also know that some will be reluctant. Some units will find these new tools perfect for their needs, while others will find that these tools just don't work for them. But I can guarantee that when the association gives our members these tools, they will be used. Over time, our members will transform themselves and the association. This won't happen in my presidential year, and it probably won't happen in Mary Ryan's presidential year. But within a few years, I think we can look at ourselves and say [ But most of all, it will be about our Members Connecting, and that, that is why we are here. Thank you.
At the completion of his address, President Funk invited Jane Blumenthal, AHIP, and Lora Thompson, AHIP, cochairs of the 2008 National Program Committee, to give the official thank you for the 2007 annual meeting.
Ms. Blumenthal: Whereas, the 2007 National Program Committee (NPC) has planned and presented an inspiring Medical Library Association program on the revolutions and changes in our profession, including such featured speakers as Arthur Caplan, Henry Lemkau, and Kent Smith; Whereas, the NPC has sponsored a debate on the need for physical space in the electronic age, has challenged us to move beyond the digital revolution and lead the charge into virtual libraries, and has encouraged us to share and learn from our failures forward; and Whereas, we look forward to gaining more knowledge from tomorrow's informative and inspiring session on health information literacy; Whereas, our President Jean Shipman has inspired us all with a challenge to aviate, navigate, and communicate as we soar to new heights in MLA; Whereas, our exhibitors and partners have worked closely with us to make MLA '07 a revolutionary and inspiring event; Whereas, Philadelphia itself represents the best of our culture and historic past and is the city where the Liberty Bell rang in another revolution; Whereas, the 2007 Local Assistance Committee introduced us to the Reading Terminal, Philly cheese steaks, and the best ice cream and chocolate in town, and we have profited from their advice on the best local restaurants, historic sites, and current events; Whereas, MLA headquarters staff and professional meeting planners have done their usual outstanding jobs with grace and patience to help us all facilitate this 2007 annual meeting; Therefore, be it resolved that the membership of the Medical Library Association extends its profound appreciation and deep felt thanks to the 2007 National Program Committee, the 2007 Local Assistance Committee, and the entire MLA headquarters staff and professional meeting planners for their stellar efforts in planning this revolutionary, inspiring, and allaround wonderful meeting.
After applause, the membership adopted the motion by acclamation. President Funk thanked members for shopping at the MLA Scholarship Booth and supporting the MLA scholarship program. The names of the winners of the MLA Scholarship Booth raffle were announced.
Next, James Shedlock, AHIP, FMLA, and Christine Frank, AHIP, cochairs of the 2008 Local Assistance Committee, invited members to attend the 2008 meeting, May 16-21, 2008, in Chicago, Illinois. They proceeded to highlight attractions in the host city and urged members to attend next year's meeting.
At the conclusion of the invitation, President Funk recognized Craig Haynes, AHIP, secretary of the MLA Board of Directors, who moved to adjourn the meeting. The motion carried, and the second business session of the 107th annual meeting was officially adjourned.

SECTION PROGRAMMING
Contributed papers were presented in three sessions. This list is organized sequentially by day and then by lead MLA section. Abstracts are available at Ͻhttp:// www.mlanet.org/am/am2007/pdf/07abstracts .pdfϾ.

Tuesday, May 22
Early Tuesday morning, several MLA units met: Benchmarking Network Editorial Board, Bylaws Committee, chapter continuing education chairs, Donald A. B. Lindberg Research Fellowship Jury, and Professional Recruitment and Retention Committee. These sections also had meetings: Hospital Libraries (Committee Meetings), Leadership and Management (Executive Board), and Medical Informatics. The Voyager SIG also met, and the National Network of Libraries of Medicine, Middle Atlantic Region, Regional Medical Libraries consultants held an informal meeting.
In the afternoon, these MLA units met: Benchmarking Chapter Liaisons, section treasurers, and Task Force on Vital Pathways for Hospital Librarians Steering Committee. A number of sections also met: Chiropractic Libraries, History of the Health Sciences, Hospital Libraries (with reception), International Cooperation, Leadership and Management, Pharmacy and Drug Information Reception with Corporate Information Services, Public Services (Discussion Roundtables), Relevant Issues, and Technical Services #2. The Complementary and Alternative Medicine, Mental Health, and Primary Care SIGs also met. The marketing seminar, ''Coping with Change: Reaching Your Library's Users,'' was held again, and these groups held informal meetings: EOS.Web, PubMed Linkout Users, and QuickDOC Users Group.

Wednesday, May 23
In the early morning, the Continuing Education, Grants and Scholarships, Joseph Leiter NLM/MLA Lectureship, and Oral History Committees met, as did section program planners (MLA '08), Hospital Libraries Section (Executive Board Meeting #2), and Department of Veterans Affairs Librarians SIG. After the close of the meeting, the MLA Board of Directors met, the National Library of Medicine/Association of Academic Health Sciences Libraries Leadership Fellows Program Leadership Institute took place, and the Continuing Education Committee held another meeting.

OPEN FORUMS
Three open forums were held concurrently on Tuesday, May 22, from 2:00 p.m.  The twenty-nine pre-meeting courses, three postmeeting courses, and one post-meeting symposium had a total attendance of 702.

RESOURCES AND SERVICES
MLA offered its usual array of services for meeting attendees. A Hospitality Center provided maps and information about Philadelphia. The Information Desk, part of the MLA Registration Center, was the place to leave messages for MLA staff or the Board of Directors, and it served as the Lost and Found center. A Message Center allowed colleagues to connect through notes, and the Internet Café was available twenty-four hours a day, Saturday, May 19-Wednesday, May 23. The Job Placement Center was open for twenty-five hours, Saturday, May 19-Tuesday, May 22, and shared space with the Member Resource Room that provided copy machines, computers, and printers for association business. The Speaker Ready room was available Friday through Tuesday for those making presentations during the meeting.