It is my pleasure to welcome you to our Journal of the Medical Library Association (JMLA) centennial issue. As I noted in the April issue, 2012 marks the 100th year of publication of the JMLA. This issue marks that event in two very special ways.
First, we are publishing a special supplement that reprints ten of the most important papers published in the Bulletin of the Medical Library Association (BMLA)/JMLA. Selected by T. Scott Plutchak, AHIP, based on readers' nominations, these articles capture the wide variety of issues addressed in these pages over the past century. Be sure to read Scott's introduction to the supplement. It is a fascinating description of the continuing value of these papers to our profession. I hope you will take the time to read some of them now and perhaps save the issue, or a link to it, for future reference.
Second, October is a focus issue, devoted to instruction in health sciences libraries. We had many responses to our call for papers for the issue. The best are presented here, along with four invited papers that summarize the state of the art from various perspectives. Taken together, the papers describe both the challenges we face as we seek to instruct users in information-seeking techniques and the innovations that medical librarians are adopting to meet these challenges.
It seems fitting that we are celebrating our anniversary with these two approaches: one that looks back to the history of medical librarianship and the other that looks ahead to our future. I hope you enjoy the issue.