122nd Annual Meeting Medical Library Association, Inc. New Orleans, LA May 3–6, 2022

The Medical Library Association (MLA) held its 122nd annual meeting May 3-6, 2022, in New Orleans LA. The meeting was entitled "MLA '22: Reconnect. Renew. Reflect" and utilized a hybrid model with some events in person, and some virtually. The virtual meeting was again broken into segments, all available using a variety of online platforms. Total attendance for the meeting was 1,250 with 575 attending in-person, and 675 virtually. Additional meeting content--including the meeting program and various electronic presentations from the business meetings, plenary sessions, poster sessions, and program sessions can be accessed by all meeting registrants via the MLA '22 website.

Introduction

First advanced in the field of psychology by Martin Seligman, positive psychology is the scientific study of what makes life most worth living, focusing on both individual and societal well-being (Seligman and Csikszentmihalyi 2000). [...]since at least the late 1980s, glimmers of the concept of joy have been found in the LIS literature, though these writings employed varying terminology and diverse conceptualizations over the decades. [...]he is the author of a chapter on "Joy" in The Encyclopedia of Positive Psychology (2009). [...]the paper "Informed by Joy: A Christian Librarian's Reflection on C.S. Lewis" sees David Michels immersing himself in the information world of C. S. Lewis and exploring the role of information in both Lewis's and Michels's own lives of faith.

Measuring the impacts of quantity and trustworthiness of information on COVID-19 vaccination intent

The COVID-19 crisis provided an opportunity for information professionals to rethink the role of information in individuals' decision making such as vaccine uptake. Unlike previous studies, which often considered information as a single factor among others, this study examined the impact of the quantity and trustworthiness of information on people's adoption of information for vaccination decisions based on the information adoption model. We analyzed COVID-19 Preventive Behavior Survey data collected by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology from Facebook users (N = 82,213) in 15 countries between October 2020 and March 2021. The results of logistic regression analyses indicate that reasonable quantity and trustworthiness of information were positively related to COVID-19 vaccination intent. But excessive and less than the desired amount of information was more likely to have negative impacts on vaccination intent. The degrees of trust in the mediums and in the sources were associated with the level of vaccine acceptance. But the effects of trustworthiness accorded to information sources showed variations across sources and mediums. Implications for information professionals and suggestions for policies are discussed. © 2023 Association for Information Science and Technology.

The width and depth of literacies for tackling the COVID-19 infodemic

PurposeA wide choice of varied information and data-based tools is reviewed in order to determine their ability treating symptoms of the COVID-19 infodemic. Several literacies and derived literacies, presumably having the ability to fulfil these roles are enumerated. There is also a review of the impact of applying deconstruction, understanding, and anticipation as well as of tools for mitigating overload phenomena, and communication overload.Design/methodology/approachThe article reviews literacies deemed to promise reducing the impact of the information crisis, caused by the COVID-19 pandemic.FindingsA non-exhaustive review of literature, taken from sources of varied disciplines, resulting from reverse snowballing and forward citation mining confirmed that there is a wide choice of solutions from among literacies, derived literacies and other approaches that have the potential to combat annoyance and anxiety, caused by the infodemic.Originality/valueNo other, published research has looked at such a wide range of literacies and derived literacies, as well as other, related approaches linked them to the COVID-19 infodemic.

The Impact of COVID-19 on the Legal Information Profession within Law Firms

The purpose of this research is to understand the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on the legal information profession within law firm libraries in Britain and Ireland. As the pandemic only began the year before commencing this research, few studies had been conducted on the topic, thereby a clear opening for this study emerged. This study uses a survey research strategy comprised of a mixed methods research approach. Desk research in the form of a literature review opens the study. A questionnaire and 5 semi-structured interviews were subsequently conducted. To understand the impact of the pandemic on the legal information profession within law firm libraries, the research objectives break the topic down into 4 areas that give insight into the consequences of the pandemic. The research found that A) working from home was the major impact faced due to the lockdown in spring 2020;B) use and spending on print resources declined;C) the role of legal information professionals has not significantly changed;and D) future legal information professionals will need to upskill due to technological developments and improve the image of the profession. Owing to the recent outset of the COVID-19 pandemic, it is important to compare the findings of this research to similar future studies to determine the validity of the results.

The role of libraries in the fake news era: a survey of information scientists and library science students in Greece

Purpose>Currently, knowing where to seek for reliable information may be one of the most important human skills. Data reliability is a matter of debate. The online dissemination of information has been a field for the reproduction of fake news. International Federation of Library Associations and Institutions (IFLA) states that libraries are part of the answer to this ever-increasing problem. The purpose of the study is to investigate libraries' role in combating the fake news phenomenon.Design/methodology/approach>The study was designed to record attitudes of professionals and students of library science on the libraries' role in the battle against misinformation. The study was conducted through an online survey using a questionnaire consisted of closed-ended, seven-point Likert scale questions. The data collected were subjected to a descriptive statistical analysis. The median was used to present the results. In order to perform analysis between genders, as well as age groups, the non-parametric criteria Mann–Whitney U and Kruskal–Wallis were applied to determine the existence of differences in participants' beliefs. Spearman's rank correlation test was used in order to examine whether participants' replies were interrelated.Findings>Responses by 434 individuals were obtained. Participants highlighted primarily the educational role of libraries and agreed that the fake news phenomenon is an opportunity to promote the libraries' role in society. No clear direction was recorded in the participants' beliefs about the plethora of information and fake news as a potential threat to libraries. The respondents partly agreed that the plethora of information caused work-related emotional disorders and feeling that the respondents were not able to keep track of developments in the field. Finally, the study depicted the participants' need for training on combating fake news, information sources evaluation and recognizing predatory journals.Originality/value>The study's significance lies in the following: the study contributes to the recording of professionals' as well as students of library science views about (1) libraries' role, (2) working environment and (3) training needs, concerning fake news and the overabundance of information in the digital era.

Recruitment in the Legal Information Industry: a Perspective from CB Resourcing

In recent years, the company called CB Resourcing has established itself in the recruitment business and regularly advertises for positions in the knowledge management, business research, legal tech and law librarianship worlds. In this short article one of the Directors of CB Resourcing, Simon Burton, offers some thoughts about the recruitment business, the current state of the market and describes the services that are provided by the company. The article has been written in the form of an interview with questions posed by the editor of this journal and answers given by Simon Burton.

"My Mom Recommended It to Me": Understanding Homeschoolers' Information Practices

A traditional motivation was to educate based on values, beliefs, and pedagogies that were different from what traditional American public schools offered.3 However, there are other, more diversified reasons to homeschool, including ensuring a learning environment protected from violence, drugs, and negative peer pressure;meeting the unique educational or disability needs of each child;offering flexibility and freedom;providing racial protection and racially focused education;reducing distractions;and supporting focused learning.4 Despite the overall small population of homeschoolers in the United States, the population of homeschoolers has grown rapidly due to school closures since the start of the COVID-19 global pandemic in While research on homeschoolers in Library and Information Science (LIS) is scant, these very few studies showed that homeschoolers were traditionally strong supporters and users of their local public library, although usage was to varying degrees.6 In a recent study, Sarah Pannone indicated homeschoolers' need and desire for more programs and curriculum-related resources.7 One of these much-needed programs for homeschoolers is information literacy programs in public libraries, as researchers have shown young people today have inadequate skills to evaluate information on the Web and think critically about their information environment.8 Information literacy is essential in learning in all kinds of educational settings and workplaces, as it involves high-order critical thinking skills and meta-competency, which, according to Annemaree Lloyd, is knowing the strategies of interacting with information effectively in specific contexts.9 Information literacy skills also help people identify fake news.10 The need for in-depth information literacy education is increasingly more urgent in today's information environment. "13 While this way of defining information literacy can be instrumental for educators and practitioners,14 researchers in LIS have challenged this skills-based model of information literacy.15 Prior research showed that when information literacy instructions were focused on these decontextualized skills-such as finding information from a set of specific information sources and using sources in a preferred order-students were not prepared to handle the complex information environment in out-of-school settings and everyday life.16 Students might experience challenges, such as synthesizing information, evaluating sources, understanding the relevance of information, and coping with information overload.17 To overcome the limitation of this traditional skills-based information literacy model, Lloyd argued for a broad view-to approach information literacy as "a way of knowing" that was socially and culturally practiced within a specific community.18 For instance, Lloyd found that ambulance officers who were in training demonstrated their information literacy through their increasingly dynamic use of information sources as they became more experienced, drawing upon not only textual information (e.g., textbooks), but also information distributed in their social networks (e.g., collective professional values) and embodied information (e.g., body senses).19 Using this sociocultural approach to information literacy, Jessica Elmore and Peter Stordy interviewed five parents and children (ages 8 through 17) in the United Kingdom to understand these homeschooled young people's information literacy experiences.20 Their findings showed that for homeschoolers to be information literate, it was a natural and social process embedded in practical tasks, rather than a prescribed learning experience. "21 A literature review on information seeking reveals a lack of consensus among researchers in using the terms of information behavior and information practices in LIS.22 According to Reijo Savolainen, information behavior studies took a cognitive perspective, focusing on how an individual's information needs triggered his/her information seeking and use, and thus focused on active information seeking.23 On the other hand, research on information practices viewed information seeking and use as actions embedded in one's social practices, which were bounded by one's experiences, knowledge, values, interests, tasks, and other sociocultural factors.24 Pamela McKenzie took a constructionist approach to study context-specific information practices among pregnant women.25 Her findings showed information practices involved not only active seeking and active scanning, but also being introduced through other people and by non-directed monitoring (e.g., being informed serendipitously by overhearing from the TV). [...]information seeking included the "seeking of orienting information that can serve the need of monitoring everyday events" and the "seeking of problem-specific information that may be used for solving individual problems or performing specific tasks."

Recruiting for Success: Best Practices for Job Interviews

This article is aimed at anyone who is responsible for recruiting staff and discusses how to prepare for a successful job interview. It is written in the context of a competitive recruitment market caused by the increased workload in law firms since the outbreak of the Covid-19 pandemic. The author, Victoria North, is a senior information professional with many years of experience of building successful teams. She shares some of the best practices she has learnt during her career.

BIALL Covid-19 ‘State of the Nation’ Survey 2021: an Introduction

In Autumn 2021 the British and Irish Association of Law Librarians (BIALL) carried out a follow-up survey to the May 2020 ‘Covid-19 Industry Survey'. BIALL President, Catherine Bowl, gives an overview of the findings of ‘State of the Nation' survey which was published in December 2021. The results of the survey are to be found on the pages that follow this introduction.

Library Services during COVID-19 Pandemic: A Bibliometric Analysis and knowledge Mapping

The increased usage of libraries during the Covid-19 pandemic has been well known to science communicators, but scientific communication has not evaluated the distributions of its published findings. Thus, this study intends to identify and map library services in international publishing, particularly the Scopus database during the pandemic. Sixty-four publications in the Scopus database were assessed using the bibliometric approach and fifty-seven documents are considered. To find documents from January 2020-June 2021, the author utilized keywords such as library services AND covid-19. Microsoft excels and VOSviewer software was used to analyze the result and visualize the knowledge map. The results showed that most of the papers are dealt with favorable and adoptive library services techniques, implementation of different users demands during the pandemic. The study found the most prolific authors. Rafiq, M., Batool, S. H., Ali, A. F., & Ullah, M. received a maximum of 20 citations from a single document and Michalak R., Ortiz-Díaz E.M., Pacheco-Mendoza J., Rysavy M.D.T., Saavedra-Alamillas C. published 2 documents each. The United States of America is ranked top to publish the scholarly publication on the Library Services during the COVID-19 related documents with 21 documents. India is in the 2nd rank with eight papers, followed by Pakistan, China, Nigeria, Peru, and South Korea. As a result, publications concerning this topic have a high likelihood of emerging. The most frequent terms used by authors are COVID-19(22.90%), library services (7.01%), academic libraries (5.61%). The shift towards advanced virtual and digital services offers more than just boosting librarians and library patrons;it serves as a move to keep the library relevant in a tech-centered society.

Dispelling Covid-19 Misinformation.

At the writing of this article at the start of November 2021, 247,416,351 persons have died of COVID-19 worldwide and 46,815,210 have died in the United States.1 Along with the tragic loss has come an infodemic-the widespread of misinformation in social media and published literature. Infodemiology is the study of analyzing the relationship between channels of health information demands and health information supply. Healthcare providers have an important role to quash this misinformation at all information access points. Hospital Librarians and other health information professionals also have a role to play to work with other health professionals, to dispel this misinformation. This article speaks to those two subjects and highlights Dear Pandemic.org and "Those Nerdy Girls."

Of Responsibility and Resilience

The American Nurses Association (ANA) (2015) Nursing Code of Ethics, Provision 8 clearly states "The nurse collaborates with other health professionals and the public in promoting community, national, and international efforts to meet health needs." [...]any nurses who publicly refuse the vaccine and promote misinformation about it violate the ANA code of ethics, and negatively affect the perception of all of us who have continued to work toward keeping our patients, families, and communities safe during the pandemic. Strategies to Promote and Preserve Resilience * Seek support from family, colleagues, friends. * Trust your beliefs and values. * Act on behalf of patients. * Identify personal stressors and triggers. * Promote personal health and well-being, in self, patients, communities. * Be confident in your knowledge. * Take quiet and reflective time for self-care. * Develop strategies to maintain objectivity in difficult and challenging circumstances. * Seek a mentor. * Pursue effective problem-solving strategies. * Know and support the ANA Code of Ethics. * Recognize the impact of one's own actions. * Support others in their own resilience. * Maintain membership in professional organizations, as a platform for discussion and support.

Editorial

Kay Tucker is the Faculty and Institute Liaison Manager, HASS at the Monash University Library and Becky Batagol is an Associate Professor in the Faculty of Law and the Monash Sustainable Development Institute. The article looks at the architecture in the context of the many iconic buildings across Cambridge, considers some of the challenges of modern design for a library and sees a bright future for the building as a centre of excellence for learning and research in law. Erin Gow's article is entitled ‘Identifying Red Herrings in American Legal Research’ and, finally in this section, Greg Bennett's piece describes the process of ‘building an academic law library from scratch’ at Goldsmiths, University of London where a new LLB law degree was recently established.

INKAD COVID-19 IntelliSearch: A multilingual search engine for answering questions about COVID-19 in real-time from the scientific literature

Thousands of research papers on COVID-19 have been published since the start of the pandemic. To find relevant information in this vast literature, researchers and healthcare information professionals, spend increasingly more time per search query. In this paper, we present INKAD COVID-19 IntelliSearch, a multilingual search engine that we built to help researchers and healthcare information professionals in finding precise and relevant information from the COVID-19 literature in real-time, while considerably reducing time spent per search query. We used the COVID-19 Open Research Dataset as the main source of papers. The search engine has a BM25 based document retrieval component, and a neural question-answering component returning the exact answer span. The overall system is evaluated against a COVID-19 question-answering test set with different information retrieval and question-answering models. We have made INKAD COVID-19 IntelliSearch accessible online for broader use by researchers and medical information professionals. © 2021 IEEE.

The Role of Library and Information Professionals in Creating a Smart learning Environment using Modern Technologies and Innovations in the COVID-19 era: Introducing Individuals' Uniqueness Consideration

With the spread of COVID-19 across the globe, a lot changed, diversified, abruptly halted or modified. Different sectors of the different countries were not left out in these changes. Nigeria learning system was also greatly affected and as such learning institutions across the nation had to be shut down till further notice. This begged to answer the question if the Nigeria learning situation has been improved enough to accommodate the technological changes that came with it. There was also the need for Library and Informational Science (LIS) professionals to step in to save the learning situation by creating a smart learning environment for the individuals while considering their uniqueness. The needfor learning environments to grow with the technological changes around the globe is on the increase and Nigeria is not left out at all. With the advent of modern technologies on the rise, learning environments have been developed and made flexible and efficient enough for learners to learn effectively in. Learners make use of smart technologies and have access to digital resources through wireless network and to immerse in both personalized and seamless learning. With the exponential technological advances, anything could be instrumented, interconnected, and infused with intelligent design, so is learning and the learning environment. This study was conceived to examine how the Covid-19 pandemic affected learning and brought about the need for upgrades in learning environments. It considers the roles of LIS professionals in creating a smart learning environment. It seeks to examine the technologies and innovations used in creating a smart learning environment as well as challenges associated with the establishment of a smart learning environment by LIS professionals. Finally, the way forward is proffered on how Nigeria can create this smart learning environment as the onus lies on the LIS professionals in the information society.

Organizacija informacija i katalogizacija: temelj obrazovanja informacijskih stručnjaka

Apart from that, the skill of exceptional cataloguing is being acquired over the years of working in the field. Since according to our syllabi, the sufficient knowledge and skills should be successfully transferred to students through courses that teach information organization and cataloguing, educators have been trying for years to find the best ways to make the process of transferring it to students as successful as possible. The present paper addresses the purpose and the manner of teaching and learning the information organization as well as the importance and place that future information science professionals have in the contemporary online environment. The paper presents the implementation of the practical classes and the teaching of the process of cataloguing through the courses Organizacija informacija (Organisation of Information) and Teorija i praksa organizacije informacija (Theory and Practice of Organisation of Information) at the Department of Information Sciences of the University of Osijek. An additional aim of the paper was therefore to present the results of a survey conducted among undergraduate and graduate students on the experiences and attitudes based on working with COBISS, as well as their opinion on the virtual practical courses on descriptive cataloguing.

Entrevista: Maria Cristiane Barbosa Galvão

Maria Cristiane Barbosa é professora do Departamento de Medicina Social da Faculdade de Medicina de Ribeirão Preto da Universidade de São Paulo. Doutora em Ciência da Informação pela Universidade de Brasília, realizou estágio na Universidade de Montreal. Além disso, foi pesquisadora associada da Universidade de Campinas e professora visitante do Departamento de Medicina de Família da Faculdade de Medicina da Universidade McGill e da Universidade de Málaga. Pesquisadora na área de informação em saúde, nesta entrevista, traz reflexões sobre a importância de pesquisadores e profissionais da informação na área da saúde no contexto da pandemia de Covid-19. A entrevista foi realizada em outubro de 2020.Alternate : Maria Cristiane Barbosa Galvão is Assistant Professor at the Department of Social Medicine at the Ribeirão Preto Medical School of the University of São Paulo. She has a PhD in Information Science by the University of Brasilia, with an internship at the University of Montreal. In addition, she was an associate researcher at the University of Campinas and a visiting professor at the Department of Family Medicine at the McGill University and at the University of Malaga. Researcher in the area of health information, in this interview, she brings reflections on the importance of researchers and information professionals in the health area in the context of the Covid-19 pandemic. The interview was conducted on October 2020.

Book Alert

The book focuses on the immediate practicalities of service provision under COVID-19;considers longer-term strategic responses to emerging challenges;identifies key concerns and problems for librarians and library leaders;analyses approaches to COVID-19 planning;presents and examines exemplars of best practice from around the world and offers practical models and a useful framework for the future. The book provides guidance on organizing, storing, preserving and sharing research data using RDM;contextualizes RDM within the global shift to data-intensive research;helps researchers and information professionals understand and optimize data-intensive ways of working;considers RDM in relation to varying needs of researchers across the sciences and humanities;and presents key issues surrounding RDM, including data literacy, citations, metadata and data repositories. Boosting the knowledge economy: key contributions from information services in educational, cultural, and corporate environments has a particular interest in learning services, exploring principles and strategies for their implementation - from marketing strategy to analytics - and covers implications for the LIS profession. Presents an overview and analysis of cutting-edge practices in information services, with a particular focus on learning services and their particular contribution to LAMs (libraries, archives, and museums) brand awareness and to social capital building.

Global responses of health science librarians to the COVID-19 (Corona virus) pandemic: a desktop analysis.

The COVID-19 pandemic has posed significant challenges for health science librarians. During this pandemic, librarians are playing an active role by increasing the public's awareness of the virus, maintaining document delivery services and providing research support. This paper uses the method of desktop analysis of the websites of selected library associations to identify the responses of health science librarians to the COVID-19 pandemic. The study highlights significant initiatives taken by some health science librarians which can be replicated by others to meet the needs of library users in the COVID-19 health crisis.J.M.