MLA’18 has come and gone, and as much as I was looking forward to it, I am so glad it’s over and I’m back home. It was my intention to spend the next day or so after my return to the office reviewing my notes and digging into presentations and posters I didn’t have time to look at in Atlanta. What I didn’t realize was how quickly work sucks you back into your everyday routine; it’s been almost two weeks since I came home, and I’ve barely glanced at any of my conference materials. So here’s a new lesson I’m adding to my list: immediately following your return from a conference, do whatever you have to do to block out a chunk of time to focus on reviewing whatever new ideas you want to explore. Because it will be really hard to find that time later.

So now, two weeks later, I’ve finally blocked out a morning to review my notes. Here’s what I’m most excited about:

Interprofessional book clubs

The idea behind these book clubs are that they promote discussions on common issues faced by people involved in healthcare (both patient and provider) that ultimately lead to greater empathy for those receiving care. I think there’s a great opportunity on my campus for the library to team up with the interprofessional education folks and the student diversity group to create and run such a book club for students from all of our health sciences programs.

The work being done at the NYU Health Sciences Library in research data management

As someone who is trying to build research data management services on my campus, the services at NYU are particularly inspiring. I intend to use their work as a model for the services I will eventually be able to provide (at least, as much as I can for a one-person program).

A library-sponsored spelling bee

The library Quinnipiac University has held a spelling bee for the last two years, to great success. It’s a fun way to bring together students and faculty from different programs while promoting the library.

I’ve set aside the summer to work on some projects that fell to the wayside over the last six months to a year, and some of the things I saw at MLA have made their way onto that list. If I can get it all done, it’ll be a miracle.