Rocking Midwest Chapter MLA!

Posted by Elizabeth Kiscaden on October 30th, 2018 Posted in: Conferences and Meetings, General

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Fall is a busy season for staff in the Greater Midwest Region office, this season took our team to exciting locations such as Traverse City, MI (cherry pies!), Springfield, IL (Lincoln!), St. Cloud, MN (Eh…Juno?), and Cleveland, OH (rock and roll!). In particular, our team worked hard to debut two new courses at the Midwest Chapter MLA meeting in Cleveland from October 5-8.

One of these courses was Open Science for Health Sciences Librarians, which was developed by content expert, Erin Foster from Indiana University (not the University of Indiana, I get it, I get it) in partnership with Sam Watson from our office. The course provided an overview of the role of open science and its components in health sciences research, its implementation throughout the workflow of the research process, locating and creating open sciences policies for use at your institution, and assessing open source tools currently available.

The second course offered was Precision Medicine, which was developed by Dr. Colleen Campbell, Assistant Director of the Iowa Institute of Human Genetics, in partnership with office staff Sam Watson, Rachel Gatewood, and NNLM coordinator, Catherine Martin. The course provided participants with knowledge of genomics, an overview of the clinical applications of genomic medicine, an appreciation of the ethical and social issues inherent in the field and a review of NLM resources for health professionals and consumers. A highlight of the course was a role playing game which had course participants choose whether or not to pursue genetic testing.

Both courses received positive reviews – I’m proud of the hard work that our staff and content experts put into developing these! Didn’t have a chance to attend? We are hoping to develop both courses into an online format and to make these available to a wider audience. Keep an eye on our blog and training calendar!

Conference planners gave me a chance to present an update from our office, which I did while sporting my new Rock and Roll Hall of Fame t-shirt (for some context, the conference was rock and roll themed and t-shirts and jeans were encouraged). We exhibited at the meeting, always a great chance to connect with some of our health sciences library colleagues, and passed out Libraries Transform posters and stickers. Thanks to everyone who stopped by the booth! Stay in touch, and we’ll see you at the next meeting.