Tom Roper, HLG Representative to the Medical Library Association
HLG members can take advantage, thanks to our Memorandum of Understanding with the US Medical Library Association, of member rates for MLA courses. The MLA course catalogue contains 168 sessions at the time of writing, available at MEDLIB-ED, their online learning platform. No login is needed to browse the courses available, though to enrol on a course you will need to create a free account.
Sessions cover a range of topics, such as AI pedagogy, expert searching for systematic reviews, statistics for critical appraisal, data services and management, disaster management and many more. Some are offered as live webinars, some as recordings, some as self-paced study.
The member discount also applies to registration for MLA’s Annual Meeting, the organisation’s annual conference which in 2025 takes place in Pittsburgh, PA from 29 April to 2 May. Further support for HLG members wanting to attend international conferences is available through our Leslie Morton bursary, which offers up to £1,000 to support a member attending a conference abroad, while the MLA offers the Cunningham Memorial International Fellowship which supports attendance at the Annual Meeting and a period of observation and work in medical libraries in the USA and Canada. Over the years several British medical librarians have been awarded the fellowship and used it for study tours of North American libraries.
Health Libraries Group 