MLA 2007 Sunday, 20th May

The MLA conference starts in earnest! That means 7am breakfast sessions, even on Sunday mornings. Mary went to hear about the latest coming up with the EndNote bibliography program and ISI's Web of Science. The next version, EndNote X1, will be coming out in the middle of the year, and includes several improvements on the EndNote X version. EndNote web has been developed for use with the Web of Science - it enables students to start learning about the techniques of researching and maintaining records of their references. For those of you who use / teach EndNote, watch out for the announcements of the new version.Lisa went to the Ovid breakfast (7 am) it gave a general update of developments in store: contextual design - Ovid SP. Watch out for more LWW backfiles; in particular nursing, psychology and psychiatry. CINAHL is definitely going from the Ovid platform. New journal titles to come include Disaster Medicine & Public Health Prepardness to help us deal with the next tsunami, 9/11, Sars etc... American Medical News (health press coverage) (we will need to compile the Australian equivalent) and others! EBM will link directly with Cochrane. Our favourite Anatomy.tv (known in the USA as Primal Pictures) now has Neuroanatomy and Anatomy for Acupuncture. It was worth getting up and I really enjoyed my blue-berry bagel. The plenary session covered peer review. The consensus seems to be that the speaker was good, but covered a lot of ground with which we as an occupational group are already familiar. There were special group / section meetings for most of the afternoon, which meant that we had time to visit some of the other exhibitors' stands.This evening was filled by an International Delegates' Reception, the Ovid party on the banks of the Delaware River and finished in one of the ballrooms with classic rock provided by the Bearded Pigs band. Who? Well, here's a hint. One of the guitars is played by Bruce Madge, formerly of the British Medical Association library and President Elect of CILIP. They're all librarians - and they weren't bad!We're posting this before we turn into pumpkins. There's another 7am meeting tomorrow!