Business Meeting History of the Health Sciences Section of MLA

MEDICAL LIBRARY ASSOCIATION
HISTORY OF THE HEALTH SCIENCES SECTION
BUSINESS MEETING
WASHINGTON, DC
MAY 25, 2010
7:30 – 9:00 a.m.

Attendees: Michael Flannery, Patricia Gallagher, Stephen Greenberg, Heidi Heilemann, Dee Jones, Cynthia Kahn, Mary Kreinbering, Lucretia McClure, Diane McKenzie, Susan Marshall, Susan Sanders, Debra Scarborough, James Shedlock, Joan Stoddart, and Paul Wrynn. Connie Schardt attended as MLA Board Representative.

Chair, Michael Flannery called the meeting to order at 7:30 a.m. The 15 members present at the meeting constituted a quorum.

Membership

In order to establish the number of meeting attendees needed for a quorum, the number of active members was questioned. Dee Jones provided a list of 77 active members and a list of 31 lapsed members. Various members in attendance agreed to contact the lapsed members in hopes of having them reactivate their membership.

Chair’s Report       

Michael Flannery summarized the Annual Report and discussed the following:

·         Stephen Greenberg is the HHSS liaison to the Gottlieb Award Jury.

·         The possibility of publishing the papers that have received the Gottlieb Award over the years was discussed. Numerous problems associated with copyright, location of heirs, previously published papers, locating a publisher, etc. led to the conclusion that this project would not be worth the effort.

·         There will be a special issue of the Journal of the Medical Library Association with articles that focus on the history of health sciences. Michael has already received several good articles. All submitted articles will be peer reviewed by members of the HHSS.

Treasurer’s Report

Dee Jones submitted the 2009-2010 Treasurer’s Report with a balance of $5,847.98.

·         Since we have a reasonable balance, a discussion ensued as to whether the membership should identify some projects to spend some of the money. It was decided that we should not spend any extra money at this time and hold for future projects.

·         A motion to accept the Treasurer’s Report was made by Stephen Greenberg and seconded by Diane McKenzie.

Web Report 

Patricia Gallagher reported on usage statistics for our website, mla-hhss.org.

·         Totals for the last 12 months (June 2009-May 2010) show 72,239 visits with 109,347 pages viewed. 

·         The lowest month was May 2010 with 1,255 visits and March 2010 was the highest month with 8,324 visits.

Section Shuffle Report        

Diane McKenzie reported on the Section Shuffle scheduled on May 25^th from 5:00 – 6:00 p.m. HHSS members will dress as historic medical librarians Garrison Fielding, John Shaw Billings, Janet Doe, Marcia Noyes and Estelle Brodman. The HHSS contributed $100 to support the Shuffle.

Section Programming          

Joan Stoddart serves as the HHSS representative at the Section Programming meeting. In anticipation of this meeting, she asked for possible programming ideas. The 2011 MLA Conference theme is “Rethink” a topic broad enough to encourage more paper submissions. Sections are requested to sponsor one paper session and to co-sponsor another session.

Ideas generated during the meeting were: the education of medical librarians, changes in library education over the years, faces of medical library education, and diversity in medical library education. After much discussion, “Remember, Rethink, Reinvent: Using History to Show the Way” was chosen as the title for our proposed session. A suggestion to invite Bruce Fye, outgoing president of the American Association for the History of Medicine, to be a speaker at our session was made.

Section Council Report

Diane McKenzie reported on the following issues that were presented at the Section Council meeting:

·         The Benchmarking SIG has been disbanded.

·         Only 23% of the people who took part in the one year/one section free membership offered by Section Council became a paid member when the first year membership expired.

·         MegaMeeting and Skype software were discussed for online meetings

·         There were 1400 conference registrants at the 2009 Hawaii meeting and 2000 registrants at the 2010 Washington, DC meeting.

Membership Committee

Susan Sanders reported that there were 16 new members welcomed to the HHSS this year. She sent a welcome note and a HHSS pin to each new member. How to get new members involved in Section activities was discussed.

Murray Gottlieb Jury    

Cynthia Kahn is a member of the Gottlieb Jury and Frank Ames is the incoming chair. Stephen Greenberg is the HHSS Liaison to the Jury.

In preparation for making a formal motion to MLA in advocacy for the Gottlieb Award, Lucretia McClure presented a motion to this committee. The motion states that the research paper that receives the Gottlieb Award each year shall be published in the JMLA. The motion was seconded by Stephen Greenberg and passed unanimously. The motion will now be presented to the MLA Board for their action.     

Oral History Committee

Pat Gallagher is the HHSS Liaison to the Oral History Committee. Since the committee would not meet until Wednesday, May 25th, committee chair, Susan Sanders, reported on the committee’s activities.

·         The Continuing Education course sponsored by the committee, “Preserving the History of Medicine and Science in a Modern Age: an Oral History Training Seminar,” was very successful with 20 registrants.

·         The project to index all existing oral history interviews is ongoing.

·          Carolyn Lipscomb is the newly appointed Project Director. 

Incipit

Newsletter editor, Cynthia Kahn, reported that the Incipit is published 2 times per year and is available online.

New Business

Bylaws Revision 

·         Pat Gallagher addressed the need for a Bylaws revision. Currently, the Immediate Past Chair of the HHSS serves as the Section Council Representative, as well as the Liaison to the Oral History Committee. Since this is too much responsibility for one person, the proposed change is that the Immediate Past Chair will serve as Section Council Representative and the HHSS Board will appoint the Oral History Committee liaison. Stephen Greenberg seconded the motion.

·         This change in Bylaws will be submitted to the entire membership of the HHSS for their approval.

 Nominating Committee

·         Stephen Greenberg discussed the process to compose the Nominating Committee. HHSS Chair Michael Flannery will select a chair, who will convene the Nominating Committee. Once established, that committee will solicit people who would like to run for office. A call for nominations will be issued.

Adjournment

A motion to adjourn the meeting was submitted by Pat Gallagher at 9:00 a.m. The motion was seconded by Stephen Greenberg.

Minutes submitted by Dee Jones, Secretary/Treasurer, History of the Health Sciences Section

6/17/2010