I haven’t written here for some time, and for even longer on a conference, but since the number of conferences I’ll be going to for the rest of my career is finite, it might be worth reviving the practice.
I’m in Dublin, at the 12th International Congress on Medical Librarianship (ICML), held jointly with the European Association for Health Information and Libraries (EAHIL). I’ve been to one ICML before, the 8th in 2000 in London, and to several EAHIL, most recently to Seville in 2016. The very first ICML took place in London in 1953. My predecessor, from the days when I worked at the Royal College of Veterinary Surgeons, the late Molly Raymer, took part, and my immediate predecessor there, Benita Horder, attended later ones, as well as the founding conference of the International Conference of Animal Health Information Specialists. See this paper for an account of the first one:
Prime LM. First International Congress on medical librarianship, London, July 20-26, 1953. Bull Med Libr Assoc. 1954 Jan;42(1):32-5.
Available online at https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC199671/
See the call for hosts for the 2021 conference, which gives a definitive list of the conferences to date. Sadly the websites for more recent ones have not been maintained or archived. The cobbler’s child...
The conference opens today, but the two days before are dedicated to continuing education courses. On the first day I assisted Shona Kirtley of the EQUATOR Network, Isla Kuhn of Cambridge University, Rebeca Isabel-Gómez of the Andalusian Health Technology Assessment Agency and Alicia Fátima Gómez Sánchez of Hertfordshire University in running a workshop on the theme Librarians can help address reporting concerns in the biomedical literature, particularly for systematic reviews. Isla provides a far better account than I could on her blog. We hope the slides and supporting material will be on the conference website soon.
Yesterday was dedicated to catching up with work, and the odd visit to the splendid Chester Beatty library, to Christchurch Cathedral and a small run. I was probably not the first person to search in vain for Jonathan Swift’s memorial in Christchurch (Ubi saeva indignatio), forgetting that he was Dean of St Patrick’s Cathedral a little way away.