Funding Recipient Spotlight: Professional Development Grant for the LOEX Conference

Posted in: #CC/Academic List, Funding

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This is a guest post written by funding awardee, Ashley Zmau. She used NNLM Region 4 professional development funds to attend the LOEX National Conference in Naperville, Illinois last month.

In my role as the technical services librarian at Noorda College of Osteopathic Medicine, I handle all technical services duties as well as teaching library courses on health information literacy. I have served as a technical services librarian, primarily working in e-resource management and cataloging, for 13 years. Despite my experience, Noorda is the first professional role I have had where I needed to work extensively with students one-on-one and teach courses. Learning medical reference as my first deep dive into any reference sometimes feels like trying to drink from a firehose. While I have made great strides in developing my information literacy and instruction skills, I sometimes still feel like a novice who could benefit from other perspectives. With this in mind, I was extremely excited when I saw the program for the 2024 LOEX Conference.

LOEX was recommended to me by a fellow medical librarian and is an annual conference focused on instruction and information literacy. I am very grateful I was able to apply and receive funding from the Network of the National Library of Medicine (NNLM) to attend this conference in person. Attending LOEX has increased my confidence in my instruction skills and given me ideas and methods to implement at my library when teaching information literacy to students.

LOEX had a plethora of session topics and seemed to touch on relevant current issues, such as AI, ChatGPT, DEI, misinformation, and text mining for information literacy. One session covered how to conduct interactive activities for student library orientation, such as creating a dedicated video game for presenting the traditional information to students in an escape room format. My favorite session was the interactive workshop simulation focused on teaching graduate students how to read and critically consume systematic reviews. During this session, the presenters Elizabeth Sterner and Alissa Droog, both from Northern Illinois University, taught the workshop as if the attendees were students.

I plan to implement the activities from this workshop, both in the classroom and one-on-one with students. For example, after guiding attendees as they learned about systematic reviews and how to evaluate them, the presenters had us draw our own personal research process on paper. Attendees at the workshop were encouraged to draw whatever shape that came to them using the provided art supplies and then compare notes with their neighbors for new ideas.

Later in the session, the presenters guided attendees as we looked at various printed systematic reviews. The attendees had time to consult with their neighbors to compare the different examples. After this activity, the presenters reviewed how to assess the different systematic reviews for its team composition, research question, and search methods.

I am excited to implement the new activities I learned at LOEX into my instruction. I highly recommend the LOEX Conference to any health sciences librarian with instruction duties as they will be exposed to the latest and greatest trends, tips, and tricks for information literacy and instruction.

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If you are interested in obtaining funding for professional development, we are currently accepting applications for Year 4. Applications accepted and awarded on a rolling basis until February 16, 2025 at 5:00 pm MT or when the funds are depleted.

Please reach out to your state’s point of contact with any questions you may have.

• Arizona, Colorado, New Mexico – Dana Abbey
• Idaho, Montana, Utah – George Strawley
• North Dakota, South Dakota, Wyoming – David Brown
• All Region 4 states – John Bramble