Several Countway Library staff members attended the annual Medical Library Association (MLA) conference in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania in early May. They’ve returned energized and inspired, eager to share some highlights from their conference experience. From engaging sessions and poster presentations to meaningful connections with colleagues across the field, here are a few standout moments from MLA 2025.
Scott Lapinski, MS, ALM
I had the good fortune to be invited (along with our OSRDS colleague Colleen Cressman) to speak on a panel focusing on current trends and challenges in scientific publishing. Along with some great contributions by co-panelists from JHU, Rutgers, Cleveland Clinic and the Providence Health Network, Colleen & I integrated several of the challenges we have observed here at HMS and across the Harvard main campus, specifically with supporting open access policies, scholarly sharing, and journal publishing business models...with a specific lens on how this is connected to NIH research funding. Apart from the panel going off well and having over 150 people attend that session, I think the highlight for me was having the opportunity to (finally) meet directly with a large cohort of health science library leaders from Taiwan—many of whom I have been collaborating with on various scholarly communication projects and presentations since 2020.
Len Levin, MS LIS, MA
I have been attending MLA (not every year, but many years) since 1996. Over the course of these years, I have learned a lot about what others in our profession are doing to promote the availability of quality resources and services to their own libraries. I have taken many of those ideas back to wherever I happened to be at the time, and watched them mostly become successes in their own right at my library. This year, within all of the presentations I attended, I heard a lot of what sounded to me like “Gee, Countway is already doing this!” This confirms what I know about the Countway—the work we do, the services we provide, and the resources we maintain are good. I was also excited to see that the programming contributions made by attendees from Countway were well attended. I look forward to next year’s MLA, where I would like us to be on the program once again, highlighting the exciting work we do and causing other attendees to ponder, “Hey, that’s an idea that I can take back to my library.”
Corey Purcell, MLIS
Countway’s Outreach and Public Services Department (Meredith Solomon, Yasmina Kamal, and I) authored a poster presented at this year’s MLA conference on the service model used for staffing the Information Desk. While most academic libraries with a single service desk have student workers answer questions and “escalate” more time-intensive queries to librarians, Countway’s Information Desk is staffed by library staff from all departments to provide patrons with more in-depth on-the-spot assistance. Survey results showed that staff who work at the Information Desk feel that this model has improved collaboration across library departments. The poster, All Hands On Desk: Cross-Departmental Collaboration with a Single-Desk Service Model, along with supplementary materials, can be viewed on Google Drive.
Tré Quarles, MLIS
Attending the MLA conference for the first time was a great experience, full of opportunities to learn, connect, and grow. One session that truly stood out to me focused on building psychologically safe workplaces, particularly in libraries. It raised an important question: how do we create spaces where people feel comfortable asking questions, sharing ideas, or even making mistakes without fear of judgment?
As an early career medical librarian, I found the session especially insightful. I came away with practical strategies that I can use to support more inclusive, respectful, and open work environments. These skills are just as important in study groups, clinical rotations, and research teams as they are in libraries. Creating space for open and honest conversations, and encouraging questions, can really help build more supportive learning environments and foster better, more effective collaboration.
Meredith Solomon, MLS
I attended a symposium on showcasing your library as a value driven partner. One of the panel members is VP of Finance at an academic medical institution in the southwest and gave sage advice on what libraries can do when speaking with leadership to show how and why the library is valuable to the institution. Sharing stories in addition to numbers is key. Showcasing the impact the library has to the institution as well as how the library workers can save the staff & faculty time is vital to any institution's bottom line.