This year we have 21 people who will be blogging about activities and events at MLA. Browse through the list and get to know your bloggers. If you will be at the conference and see one of them feel free to say hi.
Ellen Aaronson
Ellen is a solo Hospital Librarian at West Hills Hospital & Medical Center in Southern California. When not working with the best medical staff in the world, Ellen spends her time outside hiking, skiing, and boating. She also enjoys hanging with family and friends, traveling, and reading, and is fully prepared to report on beach activities – and those happening inside the conference venue as well!!
Alison Aldrich
Alison Aldrich is the Technology Outreach Coordinator for NN/LM’s Pacific Northwest Region. Her interests include social media, public health, and scholarly communication. Alison is in recovery from a long Seattle winter, so if you see her at the conference, please remind her to re-apply her sunscreen!
Helen-Ann Brown Epstein
Helen-Ann is the Head of Education & Outreach at Weill Cornell Medical Library in NYC. She spends lots of time being the Clinical Librarian for Medicine. Helen-Ann is an amateur blogger. She plans to send “sidebarlike” items about the sites, smells and special things about MLA2009 and Honolulu.
Shamsha Damani
I am a Clinical Librarian at M. D. Anderson Cancer Center. My day-to-day job involves doing literature searches on various topics in evidence-based medicine, though I try to find every opportunity to sneak in some web 2.0 stuff via Twitter. In my spare time, I do what all librarians do: read!
Melissa De Santis
I work at the University of Colorado Denver Health Sciences Library. I don’t have a blog but I am addicted to Twitter and texting. If I did have a blog, it would revolve around the antics of my two crazy dogs. I recently taught my mother how to send and receive text messages - if she can do it then anyone can do it.
Jacque Doyle
Medical librarian, mom, mom-in-law, grandmom, aunt, sister, sister-in-law, daughter, photography addict, hiker, camper, outdoors-lover, dog owner, reader & book club blogger & member…
Rosalind Dudden
I am the Library Director at National Jewish Health in Denver, CO. I’ve been involved in web activities since 1995 and I love to try new things. I took a blogging course about 5 years ago and they mentioned blogging at conferences, actually sending out information in real time. Or maybe at 11 at night after the parties are over! Now I am getting a chance to try it, thanks to Mark Funk and the Social Networking Task Force folks and of course Michelle Kraft. We’ll see what is new at MLA 09. I’m bringing my wifi laptop and snorkling equipment!
Marcia Francis
Marcia Francis is the Director at the Idaho Health Sciences Library at Idaho State University in Pocatello. When she escapes from work, she enjoys relaxing with her toys (iPod, Kindle, digital cameras, Mac Air, DVD player, but NO cell phones).
Karen Heskett
Pix coming soon - I’m usually behind the lens.
I am the instruction coordinator at the UC San Diego Biomedical Library and surprisingly, my work interests are teaching & learning. I do typical librarian things - enjoy reading, photography, have cats, and like web 2.0 “stuff” - no blog, but I twitter. Newest hobby is repairing/restoring antique furniture.
Annie M. Hughes
Helping anxious dental students search for information is (my) Annie’s first priority, however, once she has escaped from the USC Dental School she enjoys hiking the hills of Los Angeles, playing with her pup Oliver, reading epic novels and in general just hanging out in the Cali sunshine.
Mary K. Joyce
Mary K. Joyce is the 2009-2010 president of HSLANJ (Health Science Library Association of New Jersey). She has a MALS (Master of Arts in Library Science) from Dominican University in River Forest, IL ‘92. She is currently the Library Manager at Morristown Memorial Hospital a large teaching hospital in New Jersey.
Michelle Kraft
Michelle Kraft is the Senior Medical Librarian at the Cleveland Clinic and the author of The Krafty Librarian blog. She has discovered that she was probably born to be a librarian because loves a good game of scavenger hunt, relishes using her mad research skills in fantasy football, and once during a cleaning frenzy she arranged the contents of her storage attic by subject.
Brenda Linares
Brenda Linares is an NLM Associate spending her second year at the Louis Calder Memorial Library at the University Of Miami School of Medicine in Florida. Her professional interests are outreach, reference and training, and consumer health information. She enjoys playing soccer, dancing, and she is a big Mickey Mouse fan. Brenda is looking forward to her experience as an Official MLA Blogger, and she is looking forward to sharing her thoughts and experiences from the MLA conference with everyone who reads the MLA Conference blog. ALOHA!
Laura McLellan
Laura McLellan is an editorial assistant for the Annals of Family Medicine, based at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland. She’s a former pharmaceutical librarian and volunteered at a trio of interesting libraries: zoo, arboretum, and natural history museum. Gardening, hiking, birding, snorkeling and reading are among her favorite activities. Laura is currently addicted to Facebook.
Bart Ragon
Bart Ragon is the Associate Director for Library Technology Services and Development at the Claude Moore Health Sciences Library at the University of Virginia. He chairs MLA’s Task Force on Social Networking Software. In the past, Bart has spoken on web 2.0, web application development, and technology planning in academic health sciences libraries. He received his master of library and information science from the University of South Carolina. While in Hawaii he plans to learn to surf but promises not to blog about catching a tube, tasty waves, or the epic surf of the Oahu beach.
Melissa Ratajeski
Melissa Ratajeski is a reference librarian at the Health Sciences Library System, University of Pittsburgh and the convener of the new MLA Institutional Animal Care and Use Special Interest Group. Melissa is dreading the 18 hours of travel time she has from Pittsburgh to Hawaii…hasn’t anyone figured out teleporting yet?!?!
Gabe Rios
I am the Deputy Director at the Lister Hill Library of the Health Sciences at the University of Alabama at Birmingham. When I am not deputy-directing, you can find me Spinning or microblogging about Spinning via Twitter. Some would say that I am addicted to social networking but I have no idea what they are talking about. Follow me!
Heidi Schroeder
Heidi Schroeder has been a Health Sciences Librarian at the Michigan State University Libraries for the past two years. Outside of librarianship, her interests include: distance running, hiking, biking, reading for pleasure, traveling, music, Detroit, cats, dogs and University of Michigan sports. Heidi is a lifetime Michigander and thinks that Northern Michigan in the summer, partiularly Torch Lake, is one of the most beautiful and peaceful places in the world.
Emily Vardell
Emily Vardell is an NLM Associate spending her second year at the Health Sciences Library at UNC Chapel Hill. She started her own personal blog nearly four years ago to record her adventures while living abroad in Vienna, Austria. Apart from traveling, Emily also loves to go to the musicals and the movies.
Rachel Walden
Rachel R. Walden, MLIS is a medical librarian at Vanderbilt’s Eskind Biomedical Library and a Pitt FastTrack medical librarianship alum. She caught the librarianship bug as a student worker in her college’s science library, and admits to forcing her parents to check out books from her (and pay fines!) as a child. In her spare time she blogs about women’s health issues at her site, Women’s Health News, and for Our Bodies Ourselves.
Beth Whipple
Beth is a Research Informationist/Assistant Librarian at the Indiana University School of Medicine Library, and soon-to-be Chair-Elect for the Medical Informatics Section. She enjoys biking, knitting, The Jerk, and bacon (not necessarily in that order). She’s also accident prone and planning a visit to Hanauma Bay, which probably spells a date with coral (ouch!). She hopes Lappert’s Ice Cream is still around, fond in her memory from a family trip to Hawaii 17 years ago, and is always on the lookout for good (and cheap!) food.
