About the MIRL Symposium

About the Medical Institutional Repositories in Libraries Symposium (MIRL)

In February 2021 a group of medical librarians from institutions and hospitals around the United States began putting together the inaugural Medical Institutional Repositories in Libraries (MIRL) Symposium, which was held on November 17, 2021. The goal of this event was to gather together IR practitioners and those with an interest in IRs at hospitals, academic medical centers, and other health settings for discussions and sharing of case studies and best practices for digital archiving of institutional content.

The inaugural symposium consisted of 31 presentations including a keynote presentation by Kathryn Funk, Program Manager, PubMed Central, National Library of Medicine entitled "A CAPTivating Future for Repositories: The vital need for curation, access, preservation, and transparency in scientific communications." Over 230 people attended the 2021 symposium.

The second annual event took place on Thursday, November 17th, 2022 and featured a keynote by Dr. Lisa Federer, NLM Data Science and Open Science Librarian entitled "The NIH Data Management and Sharing Policy: Roles and Opportunities for Libraries and Institutional Repositories."

The third annual event was held on Thursday, November 16th, and featured a panel session titled, "IRs in the Medical Landscape: A conversation with library leaders".

This year's event was held on Thursday, November 21st, and featured a keynote presentation by Dr. Jennifer Beamer titled "Breaking Down Silos: USRN and the Future of Repository Networks."

For more information about the history of MIRL, see our July 2023 JMLA case report The Medical Institutional Repositories in Libraries (MIRL) Symposium: a blueprint designed in response to a community of practice need.