The Levy Library Blog

Levy Librarians Represent at Medical Library Association Conference 2022

Samantha Walsh, MLS, MA (She/her/hers)

Manager of Information & Education Services

Lily Martin, MLIS (She/her/hers)

Reference & Instruction Librarian

In early May, Levy Librarians Lily Martin & Samantha Walsh attended the Medical Library Association Conference 2022: Reconnect, Renew, Reflect in New Orleans. The annual conference was held in person for the first time since the COVID-19 pandemic began. 575 Medical Librarians from around the country met to discuss emerging trends, research, and reflections on medical librarianship. Levy Librarians who did not attend the in-person conference were able to attend virtually and view all posters and research slides from NYC!

Lily & Samantha presented a poster on their work with first year medical students entitled, “Leveraging Google Forms to Promote Student Engagement in the Virtual Library Classroom.” As a result of the COVID-19 pandemic, all library instruction at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai transitioned to virtual. This transition posed a challenge in terms of student engagement during required library classes. Lily & Samantha’s poster documented their efforts to redesign a first year session on EndNote. They created a virtual session that taught Academic Integrity concepts as well as EndNote functionality, organized by a Google Form that students completed throughout the session. The poster focused on the success of using a Google Form to keep students engaged and assess learning in the virtual environment. Many medical librarians who stopped to discuss the poster reflected on the difficulties keeping students engaged with this content and were excited to try the Google Form method!

Overall, the conference was a fun and exciting way to connect with medical librarians from around the country, as well as those local to NYC! Lily and Samantha attended sessions on negotiating with vendors, assessment in library instruction, and critical theory’s applications to library practice.