INSIGHT


‘‘ Health Libraries Group Stars align for health group anniversaries C


ILIP Health Libraries Group (HLG) members and members of the Medical Library Association (MLA),


the membership body for health librarians in the USA, may now attend each other’s conferences and continuing professional development activities at the discounted member rates under a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) between the two. In our anniversary years, the MoU commits us to, in the words of the preamble, “promote cooperation, collaboration, effective communication and reciprocal facilitation”. MLA, the oldest professional organisation of medical librarians, was founded by four librarians and four physicians in the office of the Philadelphia Medical Journal in 1898. In that same year CILIP’s precursor, the Library Association, achieved its Royal Charter, steered towards that goal by its secretary, the medical librarian John Young Walker MacAlister, the “incomparable Mac”1


. Both


organisations organised celebrations of these events, our own CILIP125 and for the MLA, as MLA 125. And in 2027 it will be the one hundred and fiftieth anniversary of the founding of the Library Association


That conjunction of anniversaries would be remarkable enough, but last year HLG itself celebrated its 75th anniversary. After a false start before the First World War, in October 1947 a group of London-based medical librarians founded the snappily-named the Medical Subsection of the Library Association’s University and Research section. It soon established itself as a Library Association group in its own right.


That post-war period must have been an exciting time. The National Health Service (NHS), was founded the year after HLG, 1948, though we should note that the professional hospital-based


44 INFORMATION PROFESSIONAL


librarian of nowadays was effectively non-existent; the new group was made up principally of medical school university librarians, and librarians from the medical royal colleges and other learned bodies. In the same year the Royal Society’s Conference on Scientific Information laid the foundations for much of modern information retrieval theory. The growth of the new organisation is told by Valerie Ferguson;2


membership


quickly grew, an annual conferences began in 1951, and many of the leading figures in it were also key in the organisation of the first ever international conference on medical librarianship (ICML) in London in 1953. It returned to London in 2000, and we were delighted to learn that the 14th ICML will be held once more in Britain, in 2026 in Glasgow. Probably the most tangible result of the MoU is the reciprocal offer of member rates for conferences and events. MLA’s continuing education programme may be found on the MEDLIB-ED website, while HLG’s may be found in the CILIP events directory. The experience of attending the MLA annual meeting, to be held next year in Portland, Oregon, can be at first overwhelming for a British delegate. At HLG conference we count our delegates in hundreds, while the MLA annual meeting regularly has over 1,000 attendees. The MLA annual meeting has taken a hybrid format since the pandemic, so can be enjoyed without the need for transatlantic travel, but for those who do wish to experience the conference atmosphere in person, there are grants available from MLA, while HLG offers the Leslie Morton bursary, named after the man who did so much to develop health librarianship and the study of medical history in this country, and who was a frequent attender at MLA events, fostering co-operation long before we ever thought of an MoU. Discounts on professional educational opportunities alone would make the


Tom Roper is an HLG/MLA International Allied Representative.


The experience of attending the MLA annual meeting, to be held next year in Portland, Oregon, can be at first overwhelming for a British delegate.


MoU worthwhile, but it has much wider potential. In future, we have a way to have HLG’s voice heard internationally, and we will have the opportunity to be involved in initiatives such as the 2021 letter to the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE),3


signed


by several organisations of medical librarians worldwide, though not HLG, which called on editors to improve the quality of published knowledge syntheses by ensuring the involvement of librarian and information specialists in their preparation and conduct. Just as for the doctors, nurses and others health librarians work with, our professional theory and practice gain from discussion and debate with our colleagues around the world. MLA, the oldest medical library association in the world, has much to teach us, and we may presume to be able to offer them some lessons from our experience. IP


References


1. Godbolt S, Munford WA. The incomparable Mac: a biographical study of Sir John Young Walker MacAlister (1856-1925). London: Library Association 1983.


2. Ferguson V. The professionalization of health librarianship in the UK between 1909 and 1978. Health Information & Libraries Journal. 2005;22(s1):8-19.


3. Iverson S, Seta MD, Lefebvre C, Ritchie A, Traditi L, Baliozian K. International health library associations urge the ICMJE to seek information specialists as peer reviewers for knowledge synthesis publications. J Med Libr Assoc. 2021;109(3):503-4.


October-November 2023


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