MEDICAL LIBRARY ASSOCIATION
ANNUAL MEETING
MAY 2-7, 2003
SAN DIEGO, CALIFORNIA

This section contains information about contributed papers and speakers that are sponsored by the Mental Health SIG.
For other resources from MLA '03 click here.

MONDAY, MAY 5
3:30 p.m.–5:00 p.m
Location: Check official program.
Contributed Paper Session

Building Lighthouses on Far Shores: Services to Underserved Health Professionals.

Many health professionals are not directly affiliated with a large university library or do not have access to any library services. These may include health professionals in rural or inner city areas or in stand-alone practices who may be physicians, nurses, public health workers, health department employees, physical therapists, or other allied health workers and allied professionals (for example, athletic trainers). This session will showcase outreach programs-including but not limited to marketing library services, developing Web and virtual library content, or providing continuing education workshops-that bring library and information services to these far shores and research that explores this area.

Presentations:
MaryBeth Schell--The Digital Library as a Lighthouse Beacon Providing Access to Licensed Electronic Resources for Health Care Providers Working with Underserved Populations.

Eric H. Schnell--docMD (Document-Mediated Delivery).

Roger Russell--Selling to Distant Shores.

Dolores Z. Judkins--Taking Your Apple to School: Health Information for School Nurses.

Alexa Mayo--Health Information Outreach to Parish Nurses in Maryland Faith Communities.

Primary Sponsor: Nursing and Allied Health Resources Section
Secondary Sponsors: Public Health/Health Administration Section, Mental Health SIG and Outreach SIG.

TUESDAY, MAY 6
3:00 p.m.–4:30 p.m
Location: Check official program.
Contributed Paper Session

Lifeguarding 101: Avoiding or Surviving Wipeout in the Waves of Health Sciences Librarianship

Mergers, reorganizations, budget cuts, layoffs… Whether dealing with having to do "more with less," experiencing a lack of appreciation, or being shown the door, health sciences librarians do not have an easy time these days. Tales of dealing with stress and stressful circumstances, survival against the odds, and heroic (or quiet) rescues by mentors and tips for those who may be facing shipwrecks or who are treading water will be shared during this session.

Presentations:
Sylvia Contreras--Surviving Wipeout: Planning for a Three-Library Merger.

Wallace McLendon--Surviving Technology's Tsunami: A New Approach to Library Planning.

Gerald J. Perry--Everything that Rises Must Converge: Merging Service Points, Raising the Bar of Expectations for Information Services.

Holly A. Harden--For Fee to For Free: Navigating the Rough Seas of Document Delivery.

Melissa S. de Santis--Medical Library Middle Managers: Perceived Challenges and Opportunities.

Primary Sponsor: Nursing and Allied Health Resources Section
Secondary Sponsors: Leadership and Management Section, Technical Services Section and Mental Health SIG.

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POSTERS

Avoiding mental health searching wipe-out: a mental Health content filter for MEDLINE (Poster #136)
Presenter: Heather J. Wilder, information scientist, Department of Psychiatry, Oxford University, Oxford, United Kingdom.

Purpose: Describe the development of a mental health content filter for MEDLINE.
Setting: The Evidence-Based Journals Group, McMaster University, is updating the Clinical Queries in PubMed with funding from the U.S. National Library of Medicine. The mental health content filter was designed in conjunction with this project.
Methodology: MEDLINE indexing was evaluated against a hand search of the core clinical literature (gold standard) using contingency (2 X 2) tables for analysis.
Brief Description: A gold standard set of mental health articles was collected from twenty-nine journals that were being read for the Clinical Queries update, indexed in MEDLINE, and contributed >1 article to evidence-based mental health (EBMH) during 2000. A formal definition for “of interest to mental health” was determined working with EBMH editorial associate. Kappa >90% (level of agreement beyond chance) was reached between myself and the editorial associate for classifying articles “of interest to the field of mental health.” All articles for 2000 were classified in the twenty-nine journals. A list of >1,200 potential mental health content search terms was developed through a survey of 140 mental health professionals, Cochrane groups, and Medical Subject Headings (MeSH). Analysis of these terms will be done to determine how effective each is in retrieving relevant documents (of interest to mental health), while not retrieving non-relevant documents.
Results/Outcome: Sensitivity, specificity, precision, and accuracy of each search term. The strongest search terms will be combined with Boolean ORs to determine the most sensitive and the most specific searches.
Discussion: The subsets available within PubMed “Limits” are based on a selection of journals pertinent to a subject area (e.g., dental journals) or a combination of journals, MeSH terms, and text words suggested by professional organizations. The mental health content filter will be unique in that all terms in the filter will have been empirically and objectively tested and then optimized to provide sensitivity and specificity measures.

Poster (PDF format)

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