Interview with Laurie Thompson, author of The Medical Library Association’s Master Guide to Authoritative Information Resources in the Health Sciences Friday, Nov 4 2011
Books and General Announcements and Interview and News 1:24 pm
Laurie Thompson, MLS, AHIP, brought over 30 years of health science library experience to her role as Editor-in-Chief of The Medical Library Association’s Master Guide to Authoritative Information Resources in the Health Sciences. She is the Assistant Vice President for Library Services at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center and is active in the Medical Library Association, serving on its Board of Directors from 2006-2010. We asked Laurie to speak to us in the wake of a great review from CHOICE Magazine, which called the volume she edited “an important, useful tool that is both concise and reliable.” Here she explains how a discussion at an MLA Books Panel meeting turned into this comprehensive resource for health science librarians who must differentiate and select from among the many resources available.
• Why did you feel the need to create such a resource?
The concept for the book grew from a discussion during a Medical Library Association Books Panel meeting. We were talking about the demise of the long-time medical collection development tool, the Brandon-Hill lists. The Books Panel felt that MLA should try to fill that gap. I agreed to draft a scope and coverage statement for the Panel to use to recruit an editor. After the Panel approved the statement, I ended up volunteering to be the editor-in-chief.
• Could you give an example of how a health sciences librarian could use this book?
There are many ways a health sciences librarian could use the Master Guide. It can be very useful to help build a new collection or a new subject area, such as when a new academic program is started, or a new VIP researcher is hired. It can be used to identify core resources to enhance an existing collection. As we face budget reductions, it can help identify items that should be kept. It could be used to identify a baseline collection for reports to accrediting agencies. Hospital librarians and public librarians can also use it to help build collections that are appropriate for a clinical collection or one that is used by consumers.
• This 450-page guide that you edited is a huge collection of resources. What was your method for selecting and organizing resources, and what was the biggest challenge?
There were many challenges with this book, starting with selecting the topics for coverage. After trying to create and then discarding several lists of topics, I had one of those “aha” moments. In the health sciences, there is no better thesaurus than Medical Subject Headings (MeSH), produced by the National Library of Medicine. Since it is hierarchically arranged, I was able to use the Health Occupations and the Biological Sciences sections to identify the major categories. Even then, I received suggestions for additional topics, many of which I eventually included. Rather than arranging the topics alphabetically, I kept the organization from the MeSH Tree Structures, enhanced somewhat by the added suggestions.
I think the biggest challenge was keeping everything organized throughout the entire process. That would have been nearly impossible without the creation of an online submission and editing system that allowed me to virtually eliminate paper and emailing of files. I have to give big thanks to my staff at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center library for that. They also wrote the program to extract the records into the format that I needed to submit for the print manuscript. Along with managing the contributions, I had to keep track of all 108 contributors who were assigned the 213 individual topics. I managed all of that in a giant Excel spreadsheet. I received periodic reports from the database about which topics were complete and which contributors still had work to do.
I didn’t personally select the resources; I left that up to the judgment of the expert contributors. I gave them the guideline to select “the best 10 journals and the best 10 monographs and databases” in their subject areas. I also had lots of help with the initial editing from my three associate editors, Mori Lou Higa, Esther Carrigan, and Rajia Tobia.
• What can you tell me about the contributors to the Master Guide and how you chose them?
The contributors were outstanding! Once I had the draft list of topics, I sent a request for volunteer contributors to many different medical library online discussion lists. I asked for them to tell me why they were qualified and how they would identify relevant resources. To be honest, I believed that I would never get contributors for many of the topics and that the project would die for lack of content. However, I was overwhelmed with contributors and had nearly all that I needed within just a few weeks. I was amazed at the credentials they presented; in addition to being expert librarians, many of them had advanced degrees in all sorts of relevant areas. I believe there is only one non-librarian contributor: a physician who is married to one of the other contributors.
[Editors note: In fact, librarian-expert PhDs, RNs, MLISs, JDs, DVMs, BPharms, MDivs, MPAs, MDs, MSs, MALs, MHAs, M. Eds and RDs all contributed to finding resources for the Master Guide.]
• As you have worked in different health sciences libraries over the years, what have you found to be the new or perennial challenges of the profession?
The single biggest challenge in my career has been the shift from the print library to one that is nearly all online, at least for the journal literature. It has affected everything we do. We have had to change both our technical and public services operations. We now have jobs we never would have dreamt of 30 years ago, like link checking or electronic resource management, that require an entirely different skill set than I learned in library school. Our clients now expect to use the library 24 hours a day, but many of them never come through our doors. The use of the physical library has changed. Successfully adapting to these changes continues to be the biggest challenge we face as a profession.
Learn more about The Medical Library Association’s Master Guide to Authoritative Information Resources in the Health Sciences on the book’s Web page.
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