Welcome from the Chair – Highlights from the 2011 Annual Meeting and Looking to the Future
The 2011 Annual Meeting held in Richmond on October 10th – 12th, offered something for everyone, and was both fun and energizing. The opening reception at the State Capitol provided an opportunity to say hi to old and new colleagues and learn some Virginia history in a beautiful setting. The invited speakers gave us plenty of ideas to take home. We learned about opportunities for librarians to serve as facilitators in the patient/physician/technology information exchange triangle, we spent time doing some self reflection on our leadership abilities, and we also learned several pointers on how to improve our persuasive speaking skills.
The variety of CE courses, contributed papers, posters, choices for dine-arounds, and exhibits provided numerous additional opportunities for learning and networking. The Student Vision Program, now in its second year, continued to successfully provide support for the next generation of librarians. Annual Meeting Co-Chairs Shannon Jones and Barbara Wright are to be commended on this year’s meeting, along with the numerous others that contributed towards its success. Thank you one and all for a job very well done!
Planning is well underway for next year’s Quad Chapter meeting in Baltimore, MD, at the Tremont Plaza Hotel, on October 13 – 16, 2012. The meeting is a collaborative effort of the NY/NJ, Philadelphia, Southern, and Mid Atlantic chapters. Steven Douglas is the MAC representative on the Meeting Steering Committee. For 2013, the MAC annual meeting will be held in Pittsburgh, PA. Nancy Tannery and David Nolfi have graciously volunteered to serve as co-chairs this meeting.
Lastly, I would like to briefly discuss MAC priorities for the upcoming year. We learned a lot from both MAC and non MAC members from the recent Needs Assessment Survey about what programs and activities are most important and how well we are doing to meet expectations. The major conclusions from the survey are listed below:
- The annual meeting, continuing education, and networking continue to be the most important activities for members – as was the case with the 2007 and 2001 surveys.
- Continuing education is the top priority for Non Members followed by networking and career development/mentoring.
- Email, the listserv, and the website continue to be the preferred methods for communication.
- Expanded use and promotion of virtual technologies especially for continuing education continues to be a high priority for both members and non members.
- Numerous opportunities exist for recruiting new members
The complete survey results are available on the password protected MAC Members Intranet, which is accessed from the Intranet link on the MAC Website header. The Intranet can also be directly accessing using the following link
http://macmla.org/intranet/index.html
Login information was distributed to members last year and will be mailed out again soon. In the meantime, if you need help logging on, please let me know. In addition to following up on what we learned from the survey, we will be working to streamline and improve the behind the scene workings of MAC by updating our policies and procedures and transitioning to a Wiki for our internal documentation.
In closing, I look forward to the year ahead, and welcome any ideas or suggestions you may have on how we can improve MAC to better meet your needs.
Rick Peterson
2011-2012 MAC Chair
Rick.peterson@duke.edu
(919) 660-1147