President, Florence Mercer, Anna Jaques Hospital, (978)463-100 VP/President Elect, Anita Loscalso, Whitaker Cardiovascular Institute, (508)785-1407Treasurer, Sue Dhanjal, North Shore Medical Center-Salem Hospital, (978)741-1215Secretary, Ann Lima, Lemeul Shattuck Hospital, (617)522-8110Past President, Sydney Ann Fingold, New England Primate Center, (508)624-8028

By-Laws, Patricia Vigorito, Morton Hospital, (508)828-7407Education, Howard Silver, Tufts University, (617)636-8469Membership, Marybeth Edwards /Cathy Guarcello, St. Elizabeth's Hospital, (617)789-2177Nominating, Mary Ann Finegan, Brockton Hospital, (508)941-7207Publicity, Terri Niland, Lawrence Memorial Hospital, (781)306-6606 Joe Harzbecker, Boston University Medical Center, (617)638-4205Resource Sharing, Barbara Pastan, Faulkner Hospital, (617)983-7443Technology, Len Levin, New England Baptist Hospital, (617)754-5155

Just a reminder that NAHSL is coming to Boston September 27-29, 1998. The meeting will also celebrate NAHSL's 40^th birthday.

The NAHSL Education, Conference Planning and Programming Committees have developed a stimulating three day event, with thought provoking speakers and a range of educational opportunities. The theme, "Visions of the Future, Reflections on the Past" mirrors the theme of this year's Centennial MLA meeting in Philadelphia.

The Conference Committee has also created a selection of social activities that take advantage of our central location in the walkable city of Boston.

Just a few reminders:

Also, many volunteers are needed for the Hospitality, Registration, and Scholarship tables. The tables will be set up in one continuous row to allow for cross-coverage. The hours of operation will be as follows:

Sunday 7:30am - 5pm, with peak traffic from 11am - 5pm. Monday 7:30am - 5pm, with peak traffic from 7:30am - 8:30am, and from noon - 1:30pm Tuesday 7:30am - 10am

Hospitality will also need volunteers to direct people Sunday night to the Trolley pick-up, from the Trolleys to the buffet in the hotel, and Monday night from the buses to the Top of the Hub elevators at the Pru Center and back to the buses after the banquet.

Please contact:

Anita Loscalso for Hospitality [617/785-1407, aloscalz@bu.edu]

Chris Bell for Scholarship [617/243-6278, libr.belc@nwh.org]

Fran Becker for Registration [413/794-1866, fbecker@library.bhs.org]

We hope to see you all at the conference!!

FROM ETHER TO BILL GATES By Lucretia W. McClure, Francis A. Countway Library of Medicine

These four scenarios are a few of the issues that face the profession of librarianship. We may feel more powerful today because of the networked connections we have established, but we will lose the battle for quality learning if we do not address the issues. We must never forget that librarians have skills that are greatly valued-skills not duplicated by others in the information field. If we do not demonstrate these skills and take the leadership in solving the information issues of today, then we will wither away.

So what do these scenarios teach us? Of course it is tempting to a student to surf the Web and download information, graphs, pictures, data and create a report without leaving his chair. And it is not only students who are entranced by the Web. A physician recently called the library to ask for information relating to medical journals. The data for 1996 was in the library, but when he found the 1994 material on the Web, he said it was good enough. Of course, this does not directly deal with patient care so perhaps if did not matter. But he was willing to accept the older data just because it was there and he did not have to leave his office.

We need to work with, argue if necessary, our professors and clinicians who work with students, residents, and others to make clear that using the Internet is not equal to learning. We mus get faculty to help us make searching for resources tempting and exciting to those coming into medicine. We must define scholarship in such a way that our students are exposed to and acquainted with the great array of resources available. We are in danger of having a population of young people in the health professions who do not know how to think, how to critique what they read, how to make judgements based on the experiences of the past.

Why, I wonder, are librarians not up in arms about this? Why are we not talking and writing and fuming about what is happening to the quality of scholarship. All our lives we have studied and worked with the organization of information and knowledge. We are concerned with the structure of thinking, the hierarchies or subject trees, lists of sources. Now any search word will do and people do not know what they did not find. Every day the value of cataloging is borne in on me. The work of the cataloger is not only recording the essence of a piece in a descriptive way, but of assessing its content and putting it in a relationship to other like materials.

We need to apply the principles of organization to content and knowledge rather than to format. We are capable of an certainly the best qualified people to assess what is in the Web and give it order and evaluation, provide road maps, prove accuracy, document authorship. Anyone can put up a Web page. Maybe you would like to see mine with a famous cure for arthritis. You roll around in a tub of orange peel. It does not work if you drink the juice or eat the peel, you must immerse yourself in it. Ridiculous you say? Somebody will believe it.

Just ask yourself: would you trust your doctor to treat you if all he/she reads is gleaned from the Web? Would you trust your doctor if all he/she ever read was Harrison/s Textbook of Medicine?

Te second scenario points to another arena in which we face issues-not only in the realm of medical publishing but in our own as well. There is no doubt the physician/author was right in assigning two thirds of the articles to the dustbin. We all know that there is a vast amount of useless, inaccurate, and repetitive publishing in all health-related fields. Eugene Garfield says that more than 50% of the published articles are never cited, even once. If you look at citation records, except for those in very narrow specialties such as hand surgery, it is clear the power of journal publishing is in the hands of a few journals. It is evident when you look at the titles where your faculty prefer to publish. About 90% of the papers requested can be satisfied by about 10% of the journals. Studies show that once a paper has been rejected by a top journal, it moves on down the level of excellence until it finds a place.

Librarians have the knowledge to address this lack of quality. First of all we can publish studies to show where our researchers and professors are published. We can speak out about the lack of quality in journals and back it up by canceling subscriptions. We can work in our institutions to make certain that the Deans and Directors see how tenure and grant applications are dependent upon numbers of items published rather than on quality of publishing. We cannot ignore our own field. Here we can demand that only the best be published. If every library mounted a campaign to display good and bad journals, to write about titles that do not meet standards, and above all to publish in journals of science and medicine rather than in the library literature, we could make a difference.

There are all manner of ideas concerning publishing within the university. The idea that authors should retain copyright to their works, publish on the Web, and make their research easily available is being widely discussed. Articles in final form would then be published as the archival record. Perhaps we can get the momentum going by doing this as pilot projects in a number of institutions.

Copyright is but one of the subjects that we must master in the coming years. It is so important to our work and yet I met a recent library school graduate who said she never heard it mentioned during her year of study. There are two parts of the copyright law that make our work possible: the first sale doctrine and the fair use clause.

The first sale doctrine says that once you purchase a book of journal, it is yours. You can lend it, give it away, burn it. That makes the functions of the library possible.

Fair use allows our users and the library to make copies without permission in certain circumstances. That is what gives our users the opportunity to make copies for their study and research. If the present legislation before Congress is passed, there will be no first sale doctrine or fair use in the digital copyright law. If the publishers win this, and they are working very hard to do so, then you will find that licensing will become a way of life. You will not be able to share a piece of licensed digital information or transmit any data without paying a fee.

The lawyers in this scenario were only interested in protecting the institution and gave no thought to the restrictions the guidelines place on students and others. Here is a vital role for the librarian, one that signals the end of our control over materials if we do not succeed in getting the message to Congress. We can and must interest our faculty, scientists, clinicians, legislators, readers, and students in the urgency of getting fair use and the first sale doctrine included in the new copyright law.

Finally, the library without books: is it a library? Is the Internet a library? These are questions we see asked every day, but it is not just a matter of access to the Internet. The question is not whether the Internet is good or bad for we all know its usefulness and its capabilities. The question is does it improve learning? There are educators today who say that students no longer know how to think, how to process the information logically, or to organize their thoughts.

The college administrator bragged that he did not spend any money on books or shelving, but a library is more than books and shelving. The library is:

Librarians think. Machines do not.

The library is a depository for the treasures of the past as well as the link to the outside world. It is the mind of the institution. There is work to be done and work that needs the leadership of librarians. We must make certain that our students do not leave our institutions without understanding how to use all the resources. If you want to know about the distribution of penicillin during World War II, then you must read the journals of that day. They are not on the Internet. If you want to understand the impact that the discovery of ether had on medicine, then you must read the journals, pamphlets, and letters written during that time.

We can and must talk to our faculty and physicians about the quality of materials on the Internet and encourage them to give their students and understanding of what research is and how to do it. We are the only information/knowledge professionals that have the skills derived from our understanding knowledge, how it is organized, retrieved, and disseminated. We have not done a good job of making it known. But, we do have the skills. We do have the stuff. And we do stand for quality.

Endnote: The Fair Use Guidelines for Educational Multimedia were prepared and made available to the academic community by the development committee of the Consortium of College and University Media Centers (CCUMC) in 1996. The guidelines have not been adopted by library organizations, including the Medical Library Association.

The Massachusetts Board of Library Commissioners recently contracted with the Treadwell Library at Massachusetts General Hospital, Boston to be the Consumer Health Reference Center (CHRC) for the state of Massachusetts.

The Strategic Plan for the Future of Libraries in Massachusetts identifies the provision of access to specialized reference, research and information centers as one of the most important value added services to be provided to all libraries that are members of the one of six, new regional library systems.

The Consumer Health References Center is one such specialized reference service providing access to consumer health information resources. Two other specialized services will provide access to business and legal information resources.

CHCR services are available to library staff at all regional member libraries and include a mediated reference service which is intended to supplement local and regional resources when local or regional resources have been unable to meet the needs.

Other services include a quarterly newsletter, a series of continuing education workshops, and a web page of evaluated consumer health Internet sites. For full details of all services look out for the first issue of the CHRC News in July.

CHRC contact information :

Toll Free: 1-877-MEDI REF 1-877-633-4733 Tel: (617) 726-8600 Mail: Tread well Library Bartlett Hall Extension 1 Massachusetts General Hospital 55 Fruit Street, Boston, MA 02114 Fax: (617) 726-6784 Email: askus@medex.mgh.harvard.edu

Len Levin, Chair

The 1998-1999 Technology Committee, consisting of Len Levin (chair), Ronna Archbold, Kate Benning, and Nancy Fazzone, conducted its first meeting in July. On the agenda for the upcoming year are: 1) following the improvements/changes in PubMed 2) monitoring the anticipated move of Docline (and QuickDoc) from dial-up/telnet based access to client-server based access 3) studying how librarians can take a more active role in the development of Internet and Intranet services within their institutions 4) keeping tabs on developments in the electronic offerings from the Massachusetts Regional Library System

Watch for further information on these topics in future editions of the Mahslin Network News. For questions or comments, please contact Len Levin at (617) 754-5155 or at LLLNEBH@world.std.com

BBLC News:

The 1998-1999 officers for the BBLC are: Len Levin, Chair Cathy Guarcello/Marybeth Edwards, co-secretary

New England Baptist Hospital, Woodard Health Sciences Library has a new fax number:

(617) 754-6414

Check out the article in the April 20, 1998 (Vol. 2, no. 8) Nursing Spectrum called "Shhh! Nurse on duty in the medical library" by Ellen Fulton, RN, MLS-AHIP. Ellen is a member of Phi Beta Mu, International Honor Society for Librarians, and is the Health Sciences Library Manager for Deaconess-Waltham Hospital. Congratulations, Ellen.

"Technology sparks demand for cyber-librarians" by Maura Rurak. The Wall Street Journal, January 16 - February 22, 1997.

"Are you into analysis : remember to emphasize the value you add!" by Sara van der Voort. Online, January/February 1998. http://www.onlineinc.com/onlinemag

A new Board position was recently created to help the organization maintain a sense of our own history and, thus, to provide a vision of our future. At a recent Board meeting, it was decided that an archivist is needed to sort, organize, and preserve the various documents and records that are currently kept by the Secretary.

If you are interested in joining the Mahslin Board and contributing to the organization as Archivist please contact Terri Niland, (781)306-6606 or at tniland@shore.net

MLANET : Evidence-Based Health Care in Action

Evidence-Based Health Care in Action is MLA's first multi-level distance education program. This education opportunity includes a satellite teleconference on September 16, 1998, Journal Clubs, CE courses at the 1999 MLA Annual Meeting, and more.

Learn from experts in the field, including Rosanne Leipzig, M.D.; Ann McKibbon; Jean Sullivant; David Slawson, M.D. Carol Scherrer; Robert Mrtek, PhD; and Gabriel Rios.

To find out more information about EBHC in Action and to register for the teleconference, please check MLANET at http://www.mlanet.org. If you have questions, please contact Kathleen Gaydos, MLA Continuing Education Coordinator at mlapd1@mlahq.org, (312)/419-9094 x29, Fax: (312)419-8950.

The August 1998 issue marks my second round as editor of MAHSLIN Network News, but my first attempt at editing a web-based document. It was a little different ten years ago - just type it up and send it to the printer. And, while it is still almost as simple, thanks to state-of-the-art word processing programs, I am still learning a slightly new way of doing things. So, please bear with me as an old dog learns some new tricks. I am always looking for news and comments from the membership and encourage your input. Consortia information is always welcome so, keep in touch consortia chairs. If you would like to submit information to the newsletter, please contact:

Terri Niland, Fahey Library Lawrence Memorial Hospital 170 Governors Ave. Medford, MA 02155 Tel: (781) 306-6606 Fax: (781)306-6655 Email: tniland@shore.net

Deadline for submissions is September 30 for the October 1998 issue.

MAHSLIN-L is the mailing list of the Massachusetts health Sciences Library Network. Notices of publication of the Mahslin Network News are posted to this list.

To subscribe, send a message to: LISTSERV@LIBRARY.UMMED.EDU

with one line (only) in the message: JOIN MAHSLIN-L Your name (i.e., Jane Doe)

It is not necessary to put anything on the message line. You will receive a confirmation message that you are signed onto the list by return e-mail. You will receive information back about how to use the list and confirmation that you are on.

If you have any questions or problems contact Debbie Sibley or call (508) 856-2435.