Vacation update from VS

Dear Friends of QMed

I am right now in the US on vacation AFTER a hectic two weeks. The first week – I was at the Annual Conference of the Medical Library Association. During the 2nd week, I visited the National Library of Medicine, the National Institutes of Health Library (both for formal visits) and then a quick tourist visit to the Library of Congress.

This is a quick update from a vacation spot (am sneaking in some time!). I will write more details posts as I can

Annual meeting of the Medical Library Association, USA

The Medical Library Association (MLA) of the United States is more than 100 years old. They hold an Annual Conference (or Meeting as they call it) in different cities every year. After attending the event in Seattle last year, I was lucky to be able to attend it again this year, in Boston.

The first two days – I attended Continuing Education (CE) sessions. Both were about using technologies in today’s medical librarianship. The next three days were filled with plenary sessions, parallel sessions, poster sessions and more. It is really difficult to pick and choose, because most sessions sound so promising. Luckily, new attendees can pair up with experienced mentors and these mentors (mine was Rex Robison from the NLM) really help one with useful advice! This year, I chose to attend more sessions about developing countries and gained lots more insights. I also got to attend one session on literature searching and evidence, and figured that what we are doing is on the right track!

The best part for me this year was the Awards Ceremony. It was grand, glorious and had many things that I felt we could learn from. The photographs were taken an hour earlier. The ceremony was preceded by a sit down formal lunch. And then the actual ceremony was a smoothly executed one – obviously meticulously planned.

I was the first one to receive an award (Sriganesh kiya!). The citation described QMed’s work in detail and it felt very significant, being announced in a large International audience. I now know that I have tons to do, to leverage the significance of this award.

More details later… as I can sneak in some time during the vacation. (I am enjoying this sneak -ins) 🙂

Vasumathi