Section Timelines

Compiled by David Piper
from the Contents of An Unsigned & Undated sheet in HSAG/MLA Notebook

Health Sciences Audiovisual Group (HSAVG): December 1973 - June 1978
- Origins (1973-1978): Brief Chronology
- Origins (1973-1978): Detailed Chronology
Health Sciences Audiovisual Section (HSAVS): June 1978 - May 1988 (no timeline events available)
Educational Media and Technologies Section (EMTS): May 1988 - present

Origins (1973-1978): Detailed Chronology

May 31, 1973	At an informal breakfast at the Kansas City meeting a group of concerned members "discuss the relationship of medical audiovisuals and their effect upon medical librarianship." The group asks Dorothy A. (Dotty) Spencer (AV Librarian, Medical College of Georgia, Augusta) to act as spokeswoman and to request recognition "for this area of vital interest."
August 17, 1973	Dorothy Spencer sends a letter to Sarah C. Brown, MLA President, formally requesting that a Special Interest Group for Medical Media be established. Also enclosed is a list of the persons who attended the May 31 meeting "or sending their regards." Those names are Fred Abrams, Thomas G. Basler, Margaret L. Brooks, Susan Crawford, Ed D'Anna, Wendy Fink, Frances Ishii, Margaret Johnson, David A. Kronick, Nancy Lorenzi, Dorothy H. Mims, Sue Raymond, Mary E. Rinehardt, Jackie Rustigan, Dorothy Spencer and Pauline M. Vaillancourt.
[October 1, 1973]	Dorothy Spencer sends out letters with an attached petition requesting support for the group. Note the handwritten message at the bottom of our archival copy of the letter: "see film on MLA - HSAG recognition petition" (?)] MLA News, v.50,dec73-jan74,p.4 re film on medical librarianship (Rx Information)
November 26, 1973	Dorothy Spencer sends to Sarah Brown a copy of the petition along with the 53 signatures that were collected. She also indicates that the name of the proposed group has been changed to the Health Sciences Audiovisual Group. The petition is scheduled for consideration at the December Board Meeting.
November 30 - December 2, 1973	At the Midwinter meeting the MLA Board of Directors grants official status to the Health Sciences Audiovisual Group. (See February 7, 1974 confirmation letter sent from John S. LoSasso, Executive Director, to Dorothy Spencer.) (No mention found regarding this action of the Board in any of the published reports of this Midwinter meeting (BMLA 1974 "Association News" columns; January 1975 BMLA "Report of the Board of Directors", inter alia, in the Proceedings, Seventy-third Annual Meeting; 1974 MLA News.)
[January 1974]	Original steering committee is made up of Frances Ishii, Cynthia Robinson, Joe Tayor, Pauline Vaillancourt and Dorothy Spencer, as Chairwoman.
[February 18, 1974]	Helene Zubkoff (Chairman, HeSCA Ad Hoc Committee) sends a letter to media librarians inviting them to participate in the formation of a special interest group within HeSCA (Health Sciences Communications Association) devoted to the concerns of librarians in the field of multi-media and audiovisual services.
[March 26, 1974]	Sarah Brown, MLA President, sends a letter to Dorothy Spencer in which, among other things, she writes: "I am sending a copy of a letter that was received by MLA concerning a group of media librarians. I wonder if you might interest these people in becoming MLA members and coming to your particular subject group. The fact that MeSCA [sic] is attracting people with health science interest is of much concern to many members of the Board."
May 12-15, 1974	At the HeSCA's annual meeting in Denver the Biomedical Libraries Section is formally organized.
Tuesday, June 4, 1974, 5:00-6:30 PM	(1) The first meeting of the Health Sciences Audiovisual Group is held at the MLA Annual Meeting in San Antonio, Texas. (2) HSAG's first election is held. (1)The first meeting is attended by approximately 175 people. The guest speaker is Brenda Cross, Visual Communications Specialists with Eastman Kodak Co., Rochester, New York. Her presentation, "The Care and Feeding of Media," deals with equipment and software for various film formats used in audiovisual productions and presentations. (2) Election results: those selected to serve as the 1974/1975 HSAG Committee are Frances Ishii, Bethe Moulton, Joe Taylor, Ellen Todd, Pauline Vaillancourt, and Dorothy Spencer as Chairwoman. Footnotes to (1): Presumably programs presented by MLA groups were, at the time, considered to be CE courses and this very first program of the Health Sciences Audiovisual Group prompts the new president of MLA, Sam Hitt, to ask the Board if it will be prepared to reexamine its policy disallowing commercial sources to teach CE courses (letter of July 23, 1974). (Reading between the lines of Spencer's June 5 report of the HSAG's first meeting to John LoSasso, MLA Executive Director, it can be inferred that she realized inviting a speaker from Kodak would be somewhat controversial. This report ends with the paragraph, "How may the Health Sciences Audiovisual Group help and support the board, Continuing Education Committee, Local Arrangements Committee, and others interested in this common goal?") [Interesting to note, twenty-one of the 33 "educational exhibits" presented at this annual meeting use an audiovisual format (2 videotape presentations, 17 slide/tape presentations, 1 slide presentation and 1 audiotape presentation).] [MLA film on medical librarianship, Rx Information, is shown at this meeting.]
June 1974	A report of the first meeting of the Health Sciences Audiovisual Group appears in the June 1974 issue (no. 55, p. 5) of MLA News.
July, 1974	"Media Notes", a regularly appearing column dealing with medical audiovisuals questions and issues, debuts in the MLA News (no. 55, p. 4-5). This inaugural column focuses on the availability of patient education programs.
[September 19, 1974]	Julie Virgo, Director of Education, sends a letter to Committee on Continuing Education in which she quotes Spencer's "How may the HSAG help...?" question and then writes, "I think that we can expect that in the future, special interest groups are going to become much stronger entitites in the Association, developing some of their own programming."
December 5, 1975	Tony Kwak, Media Specialist at Norris Medical Library, writes a letter to the Chief, Bibliographic Services Division, NLM promoting the idea of indexing audio journals in Index Medicus.
June 4, 1975	Second annual meeting of the HSAG takes place at the MLA Annual Meeting in Cleveland. At the business meeting topics included the importance of coordinating HSAG activities with those of HeSCA and HEMA (Health Education Media Association) and the ongoing issue of whether non-print materials should be included in the MLA Exchange program. The first slate of officers for the group is elected. Officers are Chairperson, Bethe Lee Moulton; Chairperson-elect, Elaine Adams; Nominee for the MLA Nominating Committee, Dorothy Spencer. Until this time the HSAG had been led by committee with Spencer as the Chair of the committee.
July 28, 1975 and January 16, 1976	Carmel Corriveau, TALON Media Coordinator, in letters to Bethe Moulton brings up the idea of compiling a basic list of audiovisual software for hospitals ("The compilation...may be untenable. However, I have not given up completely.")
June 18,1976	Elaine Adams, HSAG Chairperson, reports to Tony Kwak on Lois Ann Colaianni's presentation to the HSAG annual meeting regarding NLM's decision to begin indexing audio journals.
July 8, 1976	Bruce Ardis, Multimedia Librarian at the Chicago College of Osteopathic Medicine and Chairperson of the HSAG Ad Hoc Committee on AV-Line (AVLINE), in a letter to Joseph Leiter, Associate Director of Library Operations at NLM, expresses the dissatisfaction of media professions regarding AVLINE. A more complete file media titles is needed "rather than the present evaluative system which is too small, takes too long to create, and drops a significant percentage of the titles recommended for evaluation. We further recommend that AV-Line make an aggressive attempt to include all media titles in the health sciences on its data base." [full text]
July 27, 1976	...mention of a group beginning to work on drafting bylaws for HSAG...
October 7, 1976	...Leiter response to Ardis' letter re AVLINE... [full text]
June 12, 1978	...first MLA Media Festival...
[August 4, 1977]	formation of HSAG Continuing Education Committee...
April 6, 1978	Fred O'Bryant (Head, Audiovisual Center, University of Virginia Medical Center Health Sciences Library) in a letter to the HSAG Chair, Janette Closurdo, suggests that, as part of the bylaws revisions that are being proposed, the group be called Health Sciences Audiovisual Section of the Medical Library Association. "...the term "section" must appear in our name, as this term is the one used to designate special interest organizations under the proposed new group structure."
June, 1978	MLA Annual Meeting in Chicago. (1) The name change (to Health Sciences Audiovisual Section of the Medical Library Association) was approved as part of the bylaws revision. (2) Plans were made to form a new committee, the Special Interest Group/MLA Audiovisual Exchange Committee.