President's Message
June 28, 20221 Hello AAHSL – I hope you all are having a good start to your summer. I also hope none of you are melting in the summer heat! I want to share updates on a few items related to AAHSL. Most of the items are from the AAHSL Board meeting which took place on Friday, June 10, 2022. On a very positive note, AAHSL continues to be financially stable. This is thanks to great work from a number of people including the AAHSL Office and our Secretary/Treasurer Tania Bardyn. At the June meeting the Board received an investment review from our financial advisor Petricic & Phillips Financial Group. As all of us know, the market has been quite volatile. At the moment AAHSL’s investments are down like the rest of the market. However, when looking at the market broadly, AAHSL’s investments are doing the same or better than benchmarks such as the S&P 500 and the NASDAQ. Since AAHSL’s investments are for the long-term we are staying the course with a few minor tweaks. As I shared back in February, the Board decided to hold the AAHSL Annual Meeting in person on November 11, 2022 in Nashville. At the June 10th Board meeting, the decision to meet in person was revisited due to feedback from members expressing concerns regarding Tennessee’s anti-trans healthcare laws. This led to a discussion about whether AAHSL would want to considering holding its meeting separately from AAMC’s Learn Serve Lead conference so that AAHSL could select the meeting city. There are numerous pros and cons to considering this question and the Board felt they need input from AAHSL members before they would be able to make an informed decision. Nadine Dexter will be working with others to survey the AAHSL membership on this topic in the coming months. On June 24, 2022 the Supreme Court eliminated the constitutional right to abortion and now over 20 states, including Tennessee, are looking to ban abortion. AAHSL members again questioned Tennessee as a meeting location. The Board discussed and decided to continue with the plan for an in-person meeting in Nashville this November. The Board came to this decision because separate from the topic of Tennessee there has been strong member support for an in-person meeting. Nadine will continue with the previously agreed upon plan to survey the membership and include the broader topic of meeting locations and social justice concerns. As the AAHSL Office starts the process to secure a hotel and meeting space they will investigate if hotels actively support social justice and healthcare issues. The AAHSL Office is also working with the Eskind Biomedical Library to plan a reception to be held on the evening of November 11th. A reminder that the Annual Meeting will be a one-day event and there will be no in-person committee meetings taking place. The Program & Education Committee is working to finalize a Matheson lecturer and Education program. Based on a motion from the Future Leadership Committee, AASHL approved creating a new standing committee to focus on supporting the needs of new and interim directors. Nadine Dexter, President Elect, will put out a call for committee volunteers later this summer and when she does this new committee will be included. The charge for this committee is in the process of being finalized and the committee will begin their work in November 2022. Later this summer the AAHSL Nominating Committee will be asking for nominations for our fall election. As President Elect, Nadine Dexter is chairing the Nominating Committee. At the June Board meeting we approved Nominating Committee members Rose Bland (University of Southern Florida) and Kristi Holmes (Northwestern University). The Nominating Committee will be looking for candidates for three positions: President Elect, Secretary/Treasurer, and Member at Large. Start thinking now about colleagues you’d like to nominate for these roles. The Bylaws Task Force, chaired by Zary Kamarei (Arkansas Colleges of Health Education) has been busy reviewing the AAHSL Bylaws for updates. The Board reviewed an initial draft at its meeting and will provide feedback. The Task Force is on track to share suggested edits prior to the Annual Business Meeting. Welcome to new AAHSL members: - Roseman University of Health Sciences (Developing Library Member) - Tiffany Garrett If you have questions about AAHSL feel free to reach out to me, any of the Board members, or directly to the AAHSL Office. Take care, Melissa February 18, 2022 Hello AAHSL - I hope you are having a good start to 2022. The AAHSL Board recently met in Albuquerque, NM for our first in-person meeting since February 2020. It was great to be in person and there are number of updates to share with the membership. Brief committee updates included:
Tania Bardyn, Secretary/Treasurer, shared that AAHSL is doing well fiscally. In late 2021 the Board moved some funds to a managed investment that is focused on growth. The account has been doing well. AAHSL has completed our 990 tax form for the IRS. The Board voted to schedule an independent audit of the organization's finances. The last audit was completed in 2017 for the 2016 fiscal year. AAHSL's Annual Meeting will take place in Nashville, TN on November 11, 2022. The Board decided it will be a one-day meeting consisting of the Matheson Lecture, Education Program, and Annual Business Meeting all taking place on that day. A reception will be hosted that evening by Eskind Biomedical Library. There will not be live streaming for any of these events but there is investigation into recording some of the meeting. Please note there will not be any in-person committee meetings scheduled to take place as all AAHSL Committees and TFs are currently meeting regularly online. A hotel has not been secured yet and the Board will revisit this topic in April. As I shared recently, the vote to amend our bylaws so that academic health sciences libraries at osteopathic medical colleges and schools will be Full members has passed. This change will go into effect on October 1, 2022. Thank you to recent Past President Sandra Franklin for leading the Task Force that investigated this topic and brought it to the membership. I'm guessing all of you have seen save-the-date messages for the upcoming Friends of the NLM (FNLM) Library Symposium "Post-Pandemic Libraries: The Upcoming Era of Change". AAHSL is a co-sponsor of this event. The symposium will take place on Thursday, March 17, 2022 from 10:00 am - 3:15 pm EST. The keynote speakers and panelists will share and discuss how libraries can leverage change to create more agile, informed, and impactful libraries and librarians. In January there was a call for scholarship applications and registration is open now. In case you might have missed it, please be aware that AAHSL is one of the co-signing organizations to the MLA Statement Calling on Hospital and Health System Executives to Fund Libraries and Library Staff. While the majority of AAHSL members are in academic health centers, we often partner with hospital librarians and we are all invested in healthy patient outcomes. As this has been a lengthy update, I'll end here however if you have questions about AAHSL feel free to reach out to me, any of the Board members, or directly to AAHSL HQ. Take care, - Melissa |
Melissa De Santis, MLIS, AHIP