My Experience with the MACMLA Conference 2025
My experience with the Mid Atlantic Medical Librarian Association Conference – October 19-22, 2025:
This was an amazing opportunity to meet my colleagues in a convivial atmosphere, outside of our places of employment, where we could relax and enjoy each other’s company in a collegiate environment of learning from each other, our speakers, and our vendors providing us with information.
I was thrilled to be able to place faces to names of people I had learned about through my colleagues at Inova Health Sciences library, where I recently began work, after a career in K-12 and adult education. Being a career-switcher, I lacked confidence with my skills and ability to perform library tasks in a new field. Medical Libraries are often separated from each other due to hospital and institutional financial constraints, and my colleagues and the constitute the only library of our kind in our immediate area. With these limitations in interaction, I was unsure if I was locating information for patrons in an effective and efficient way, or if I was performing on par with other librarians in this specialized field.
Coming to meet fellow librarians at the MACMLA conference, beginning with our meet and greet, was an amazing opportunity to see my fellow librarians as people, with their own accomplishments and challenges, and achievements, and personalities that they were willing to share with me. This was a great opportunity to see that there is a network of colleagues out there, to encourage and offer ideas going forward in my new career. People I can also help and collaborate with for future events, and gain inspiration from!
The vendors offered materials that would be genuinely useful and utilized in my library. The vendors could offer specific ideas and assistance to us, which allowed me to gather information productively for my institution. Handouts for patient education, documents, and instruction on how to use new products, the vendors had it all. The National Library of Medicine had a booth which presented many opportunities, including a reading club on health literacy, which I am inspired to try, so I can improve my communication with library patrons.
Our keynote speaker was engaging and insightful. A reminder to us all how to manage and work with people, no matter our position in our organization. His calm cadence, reminding us to simply be open to our library patron, to really listen to them and their concerns and needs, is something we all need to remember as we work in our respective institutions. Everyone, from medical staff, to academics and professionals, to the general public, deserve our respect and consideration, when we attempt to find them their information and make our libraries accessible and inclusive.
The lightning talk presentations were inspiring and interesting. I learned about what my fellow colleagues are focusing on with the libraries, and what challenges they are facing in their areas and specific fields. I saw people working with reaching out to marginalized communities, people working with disaster relief, people working with sports injury treatment information, and people even wishing to inform their colleagues of the best ways to manage our various tasks and responsibilities effectively.
The poster presentations were also Posters ranging from curating engagement in medical libraries with puzzles and games, to creating a database of information for patients, families, and medical staff, working with eating disorders, to working models to reimagine instruction with 3-Printers. These presentations were a clear window into the efforts of my fellow colleagues and how much time and effort they put into their tasks and commitment to the communities they serve.
The tour at the end of the conference at the John’s Hopkins Medical History Library, was very engaging, and showed me how long people in this field have been aggregating and curating information. This was a lovely conclusion to the conference, giving me a new perspective on my field, moving forward. The MACMLA conference was a truly inspirational experience, and I am looking forward to more collaborative events with my colleagues in the future.