[Skip to Content]
Visit us on YouTube View our RSS Feed
Visit us on YouTube View our RSS Feed Visit us on YouTube View our RSS Feed Oct
28
Posted by liaison on October 28th, 2025
Posted in: Funding
This is a guest post written by funding awardees, Ruby Nugent and Maggie Shawcross. They used NNLM Region 4 professional development funds to present at the NDLA/SDLA/MPLA Tri-Conference in Grand Forks, North Dakota earlier this month.
We feel very lucky to be part of the health science librarianship community. We feel that people in this field have always been supportive and kind when it came to sharing information: from getting into the field through helping new librarians onboard. And as midcareer librarians, we both took notice when a librarian helping to plan the Mountain Plains Library Association (MPLA)/North Dakota Library Association (NDLA) and South Dakota Library Association (SDLA) Tri-conference came to one of our Midcontinental Medical Library Association (MCMLA) executive meetings to ask for proposals to provide health librarianship programming for their upcoming conference.
We were both impressed at how this planning committee was determined to bring health librarians to their conference as they saw a need to connect those in MPLA’s region (Arizona, Colorado, Kansas, Montana, Nebraska, Nevada, New Mexico, North Dakota, Oklahoma, South Dakota, Utah and Wyoming) with resources. She stated that many of the libraries taking part in this conference come from smaller, rural libraries and because of this their access to in-person professional development was limited. They were especially interested in providing tools to small, rural public libraries to help them start providing health programming to their communities. As well as information on evidence based practice and critical appraisal skills to those in hospital and academic libraries.
Wanting to do our part, we worked with conference planners to put together proposals to bring these educational presentations to these librarians. We had never really considered traveling to this conference as our limited professional development funds go to presenting and attending national academic or health librarianship-specific conferences such as the Medical Library Association or Association of College and Research Libraries (ACRL).
Together we submitted several proposals. A joint proposal, with Alex Henigman from the University of Missouri, titled “A Librarian’s Guide to Consumer Health” was accepted. This session was a pre-conference session attended by 13 participants from a variety of libraries. For this session, we took previously created Network of the National Library of Medicine (NNLM) materials (Getting the Right Information to Patients Using MedlinePlus Connect and Health Programming) to create a two-hour session. We worked with NNLM to provide participants two Continuing Education (CE) hours that could be applied towards a Certified Health Information Specialization (CHIS) through the Medical Library Association (MLA). This proved to be mutually beneficial as we were able to promote the CHIS program, NNLM and MLA and our participants for credits for a specialization certificate.
Ruby’s poster, “Tell Me More: Demystifying Medical Librarianship,” was accepted. Her session sought to introduce attendees to what the pathway to medical librarianship might look like, provide information about the types of education and training needed and where to find it, and explore examples of potential settings and roles individuals can find themselves in, and to encourage and empower attendees by providing some resources and tools they can use to pursue a career as medical librarians.
Maggie’s presentation, “Think Fast, Search Smart: Finding Quality Articles in a Hurry,” was also accepted. Her session sought to guide participants through a streamlined, practical approach to article retrieval that incorporates critical appraisal and lays the groundwork for evidence synthesis. Maggie had 26 participants attending her session.
Overall, we would say that this endeavor was a success. We have several participants from the three sessions come up to us and thank us for attending and bringing this information to them. Also, we had several conversations with folks who were interested in health librarianship and the many resources offered through NNLM. It was our pleasure to connect them with the resources available.
