The annual meeting of MAHSLIN was held at the Massachusetts Medical Society. The understated elegance of the recently constructed facility added a level of professionalism and panache to MAHSLIN business.

Ann Tomes passed the gavel to Deb Sibley, the new MAHSLIN President. Ann deserves high praise for her diligent service to the organization over the past year. Roger Manahan was unanimously elected Vice President of MAHSLIN for the ensuing year. The best wishes of the membership are extended to both Deb and Roger as they assume their new duties.

Paul Vaiginas was welcomed into the MAHSLIN Hall of Fame by Anita Loscalzo. Paul was instrumental in formulating interlibrary loan as we know it. Yet he modestly gave kudos to multiple colleagues, punctuating his acceptance of the MAHSLIN Hall of Fame Award with the words of W.B. Yeats: "Think when man’s glory most begins and ends; and say my glory was that I had such friends."

Seven new MAHSLIN members were welcomed to the organization this year: Rebecca Berg, Peter Droese, Lydia Ewing, Thomas Gentilella, Kathyrn Noonan, Charles Severens, and Diane Wallace. A hearty welcome is extended to all.

Committees reported their achievements during the annual business meeting. Pat Vigorito recommended three changes to the MAHSLIN bylaws that were unanimously accepted by members. Matthew Eberle of the Technology Committee offered his services and assistance to members of MAHSLIN in tackling their technological challenges. Resource Sharing chair Marybeth Edwards reported that statistical collection of data on borrowing and lending of materials was down. She informed the membership that she would be working on reviewing data collection over the next year, and gave special thanks to Susan Orlando and Cathy Guarcello for their contributions toward her effort. As chair of the Publicity Committee, I reported that we will be working on highlighting the contributions of medical libraries to Massachusetts residents, potentially with one or a series of public service announcements. Ideas and contributions from MAHSLIN members are solicited and encouraged.

Ed Donnald reported on the status of the Regional Medical Library, which was voted upon on May 1. He indicated that NAHSL’s new website, www.nahsl.org would soon be in operation, and that the NAHSL conference would be held October 13-16 in New Haven, CT. At the time of this writing, The RML contract has been awarded to the Lamar Soutter Library in Worcester. I’m sure I am not alone in wishing Ed well wherever the road may take him.

The international IFLA conference will be held in Boston in August, 2001. Tovah Reis encouraged MAHSLIN attendance at the event, and explained that all MLA members are automatically members of IFLA.

In an ironic twist of events, Lucretia McClure presented the Janet Doe lecture for 2000 on behalf of Judy Messerle, who was to have been the honored speaker at MLA 2000. Judy was unable to attend the MLA 2000 conference, thus MAHSLIN invited her to give the lecture at this year’s annual meeting. As it happened, Judy was not able to be at MAHSLIN as scheduled. Lucretia, who had stepped in for her at MLA, gamely stepping in for a second time, giving a flawless and stirring reading of Judy’s thought-provoking piece for the enjoyment and edification of all.

WORCESTER, Mass.-- The Lamar Soutter Library at the University of Massachusetts Medical School (UMMS) is one of eight medical libraries nationwide to be designated by the United States National Library of Medicine as a Regional Medical Library in the National Network of Libraries of Medicine (NN/LM).Its goal will be to provide access to accurate and up-to-date health information to health professionals, patients, families and the general public, with emphasis on outreach to underserved populations to reduce health disparities, especially in rural and inner city areas of the country.

Its designation as the New England Regional Medical Library and the accompanying five-year, $6 million contract is a testament to the commitment of the Lamar Soutter Library staff and UMMS leadership to serve the information and technology needs of health professionals and consumers.

The library will be responsible not only for the exhibition of medical information products and services offered by the National Library of Medicine, but also for the design and implementation of training seminars and presentations that teach health professionals and consumers how to access and get the most out of the information. In addition, the library will be responsible for maintaining regional databases and for facilitating communication between the other New England member libraries.

For the second time, the Massachusetts Board of Library Commissioners awarded to Treadwell Library of the Massachusetts General Hospital the contract to serve as the Consumer Health Reference Center (CHRC) for the state of Massachusetts. The contract provides funding for two years with opportunity for renewal. In this role, the library answers consumer health questions from  libraries across the state. All libraries that are members of one of the six regional library systems are eligible to use the service. The URL for the CHRC web site is http://www.mgh.harvard.edu/library/chrcindex.html

FACES AND PLACES

• Congratulations to Paul Vaiginas, Medical Librarian at the West Campus Library of the Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, for being inducted into the MAHSLIN Hall of Fame at the April 2001 Annual Meeting!

• Eleanor Howard of the Hale Hospital Medical Library will be retiring at the end of June.

• Donna Beales, Medical Librarian at the Lowell General Hospital, was recognized for the digital library she created in the April 1st issue of Corporate Library Update, and in the June 18^th issue of the Lowell Sun.

• Sharon Nordling, Manager of the CME program for the Massachusetts Medical Society, had a baby girl on June 1.

Kate Kelly and Elizabeth Schneider of the Treadwell Library, Massachusetts General Hospital presented a poster: A Digital Information Project (DIP): the Partnership, the Process and the Product.

As chair of NAHSL (North Atlantic Health Sciences Libraries, Inc.) Mary Ann Slocumb was invited to the (MLA) President's Reception. It was held on Monday night at the Orlando Art Museum. Chapter and Section chairs, and Award recipients received a special invitation to this function.

Susan P. Lieberthal presented an electronic poster at MLA. The title was "Going Paperless: The Interlibrary Loan Department, Microsoft Project and ILLiad."

Pat Vigorito would like MAHSLIN members to be aware of www.merckmedicus.com This site from Merck gives free access to MDConsult, Harrison’s and Cecil’s, plus other information. Any health professional can register using their state license number. PT, RN, Med Tech, Pharm, Do, MD, PA, etc., "Just about everyone who works in a hospital except the medical librarian! I just heard about this so I’m sure there will be more discussion about it. Why would I pay for the Reference Desk version of MDConsult if all the staff except me can get it for free?" Pat asks. Good question. If you’d like your voice heard on this issue, Merck can be contacted at: 1-877- 637-2521.

The Southeastern Massachusetts Consortium of Health Sciences Libraries (SEMCO) had their final meeting of the year at Benjamin’s Restaurant in Taunton on Friday, June 8. New officers for 2001-2002 were elected:

President, Denise Corless of Caritas Norwood Hospital; Vice President, Jeanie VanderPyl of Cape Cod Hospital; Secretary, Marian delaCour of Jordan Hospital; Treasurer, Joan Boyer of Tobey Hospital. The next meeting will be September 5 at Cape Cod Community College. An educational program on MassCat is planned for that meeting.  (Submitted by Pat Vigorito, past president of SEMCO)

You can get links to your electronic journals on PubMed. We now have links to 133,602 online articles direct from PubMed citations. 419,118 are linked by the new RML. Let's see some more Massachusetts libraries in the list of providers. If you managed to activate access to your eJournals, this will be a walk in the park:

1) Send an e-mail to linkout@ncbi.nlm.nih.gov requesting to join linkout and provide a e-mail and phone# for a contact person. They'll be sent username and password for the system.

2) Log on to the LinkOut Files Submission Utility and enter basic information on your library including a URL for the icon you want to see in PubMed and holdings for each eJournal you have that has links in PubMed.

3) add your new library information to your standard PubMed URL. For example, ours is: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?db=PubMed&holding=forsythlib

The NLM's information on Linkout is here: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query/static/liblinkout.html

A brief demo for our users on the new service is here: http://www.meberle.com/viewlets/PubMedFulltext_viewlet.html

Feel free to contact me if you want to talk to somebody who's set this up.

FAMILIAR FACE, NEW PLACE

Institution URL change: