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Librarians tell their story
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Holly Willis
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Beth Whipple
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OC Tom
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I obtained my MLIS degree specializing in health
sciences and medical informatics from the University of Pittsburgh in 2000. I earned a B.S. in Biology from Randolph-Macon College in Ashland VA. After I graduated from RMC in 1995, I worked in a clinical laboratory at Riverside Regional Medical Center in Newport News VA. It was there that I was attracted to medical libraries. I knew the library assistant in the medical library
at Riverside and she informed me she was leaving and thought I might want to apply.
With my extensive science and medical terminology background, I wanted to put my knowledge to better use, so I applied and
was hired.
I grew to love
the job, and my boss, Joan Taylor, really helped me to gain more knowledge about customer service, databases, and organizing
information. I just soaked up the information like a sponge. I wanted to learn
more and she encouraged me to apply to library school. She had heard about a great program at Pittsburgh from a library meeting. I applied, was accepted, and drove myself across Virginia to Pittsburgh. This was a big move for me and has since proven to be well worth it.
Sometimes working
2-3 jobs, I managed to get my way through library school with all As and only one B on my transcript. That was the Cataloging class, and it was a B+. I was very active in campus organizations at Pitt,
and the student chapters of MLA, ALA, SLA, and ASIS. Getting involved with
student organizations is a valuable networking resource for library school students who are pursuing jobs.
After graduating
from Pitt in August 2000, I worked as a Liaison Librarian with the Welch Medical Library at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, MD. It was there that I learned a lot about academic librarianship and forming relationships
with clinical departments. I was the chair of the liaison committee and was responsible for outreach to 11 departments, one
of which, the Department of Medicine, had over 15 divisions. I sure had my work cut out for me, but it was the one-on-one work with my patrons that really made
my days special.
After 5 years
at Hopkins, I have returned to my hospital roots, and am the Director of the
McGlannan Library at Mercy Medical Center in Baltimore. I oversee all the major functions of the library including budgeting,
policies and procedures, acquisitions, electronic resource management, collection development, outreach and marketing, as
well as library instruction. I also supervise one library assistant and sit on the medical affairs committee. I love my job
now and have learned quite a bit here in only one year. I have become very active in the hospital’s campaign for patient
education and patient safety.
Since the beginning
of my library career, I have been active in medical library organizations and have presented papers at several conferences. I have formed great relationships with colleagues both online and offline. Librarianship is a very dynamic profession with lots of roads to take in today’s job
market. Librarianship is not a place I thought I’d be after college, but I have been thankful
for all the little steps I have taken along my path to get where I am today.
Holly
A. Willis, MLIS
Director,
McGlannan Library
Mercy Medical Center, Baltimore | | |
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While
in library school, one of the first responses I got when telling people that I was going to be a librarian was, “You
know librarians have to be quiet, right?” ‘Quiet’ has never been a word used to describe me, but I wasn’t
worried. The idea of having a plethora of information and making sense of it, of creating order out of chaos, is what
appealed to me about librarianship. As I continue in the profession, I see that there is a lot going on within librarianship
that I didn’t know about, such as intellectual property rights, usability of websites, online information retrieval,
health literacy, and outreach to high schoolers, medical students, residents, and health professionals.
I
grew up always interested in the sciences, and my undergraduate degree is in mathematics. While some people may think
that math and librarians don’t appear to go together, the organizational aspects of information and analytically thinking
about projects and situations struck me as a nice blend of library science and mathematics. When I begun library school,
I starting looking at job ads so that I knew what skills I needed to acquire in library school. This was the first time
I heard about health sciences and medical librarians, and that sounded like a good fit for me. I tailored my experiences
throughout library school (both through classes and job experience) to enhance my skills for the field of medical librarianship.
I volunteered at a life sciences library, and later was able to work there as a graduate assistant (and get paid!), and did
an internship at a hospital library. All of these work experiences, as well as class time, really helped to prepare
me for life after library school and to get ready to enter the field of health sciences librarianship.
I
enjoy what I am doing now because I get to work with different groups of people: I get to collaborate with other librarians
at my library, as well as throughout our system and throughout the state, I’ve gotten to travel a good bit and interact
with medical students, and I’ve been able to go to national conferences and see and hear what’s going on around
the country and around the globe. One day I may be teaching a class, and then working on updating information on our
website, working on a grant, discussing the future of the library and librarians with colleagues, and doing some reference
and research work for professors and students.
While
a lot continues to change within the field of librarianship, the same dedication to access to information, service, and collaboration
exists. Whether or not our physical building and answering of reference questions happens (and exists) the same way
it did 20 or 30 years ago, librarians continue to play a vital role in medical education, technological advances, the implementations
of electronic systems and helping people find just what it is they are looking for and what they need.
Beth Whipple
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I’m a third
generation librarian. However, I didn’t grow up thinking of being a librarian. My plan was to become a teacher. I realized
during college my personality and disposition did not lend themselves to a teaching career.
With further reflection I determined that since I wanted a career where I could help people and indulge my love of
learning – librarianship could be the natural option for me.
I received my Masters
of Library and Information Science (MLIS) from the University of Pittsburgh. My
first professional librarian position was as a reference librarian at Nova Southeastern University in Florida. There, the library serves as both an academic and public library.
I was involved primarily with library instruction, collection development and web page maintenance.
During my tenure at Nova
Southeastern, I developed an interest in medical librarianship. An opportunity
to become a National Library of Medicine Associate Fellow was presented to me at a professional conference I attended on behalf
of Nova Southeastern. As a National Library Fellow, I received exposure to many
of the concepts, skills and technologies that are shaping the future of the biomedical library and information fields.
What I find most
enjoyable about medical librarianship is the ability to serve society by finding and disseminating information to improve
people’s health. As an information professional, I feel that I have a responsibility
to promote awareness of library services and developments in information management to cultivate partnerships with health
practitioners.
My hope is to be
a part of the process whereby library services are fully integrated into the health sciences environment. The end result of this effort will be the improvement of education, research and patient care.
Lisa Massengale
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I became a librarian by
accident. Most people grow aspiring to be doctors or lawyers, but never librarians. I worked as a library assistant at a law library during my undergraduate career. It was there I became aware of the intricacies of working within a library.
I was astonished that not all librarians pushed carts and shushed patrons all day/everyday. After graduating with a Bachelors degree in Communication, I was inspired to attend library school by a
program called Knowledge River at the University of Arizona. It’s a program
that recruits Native Americans and Latinos to join the high-ranks of being information professionals.
Upon completion of graduate school, I was fortunate to participate in the Associate Fellowship program at the
National Library of Medicine. My participation in the program allowed me to learn
more about cutting-edge technology that is being used to disseminate medical information.
The continuing innovation and implementation of technologies to distribute information has captured my attention
and ensures that I will always have fun at work.
OC TOM
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Why I Became Interested in a Health Information Career
Historically, minorities and especially African Americans have been denied access to libraries and
often times the right to literacy. The denial of these basic rights has fortunately been corrected. Unfortunately, what has not changed is how people
perceive a career in librarianship.
This is one of the reasons I chose to enter the library field. Not just because of a past injustice, but to help ensure
that there is not only a visible presence, but a cultural knowledge base as well.
There is a certain amount of responsibility and power that comes with managing information, especially in the medicine
and health fields. Physicians and other health care workers rely on you for critical and timely information. In addition to
the urgency of the information, the librarian’s additional cultural knowledge base could have the possibility of assisting
a health care worker in delivering better care to the patient.
It is vitally important to acknowledge the cultural issues that come along with medicine.
In certain communities in the US, there are glaring amounts
of health disparities. The skills of a librarian can and do make a difference
in health care. With the appropriate health information, the people
of these communities and the healthcare workers can be able to better address the ailments and issues surrounding them.
A career in health sciences librarianship and librarianship in general is valuable. The skills that you learn open
up doors to a variety of career options.
You will not sit behind a desk in a stereotypical view of a librarian, but you will be managing information, knowledge
and resources that hold power.
At the end of the day, you may not know everything, but you will know how to find it—and that knowledge is powerful
and priceless.
Lonelyss Charles
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During the first semester
in McGill
Library School , I had no idea of what kind of libraries (i.e., special library, public library, academic library, and hospital library)
I should set my feet on in the future. By the end of the first semester something happened that changed my career life. I
failed in Information System Design, a required and core course for all Masters of Library and Information Science (MLIS)
students. I lost 3 credits! I had a gloomy Christmas for the year 1999 pondering and reflecting how to be more effective and
efficient in coping with the Winter 2000 required courses. I was told I must take another course to make up for the lost credits
as soon as possible. The earliest chance I could have was Spring 2000 and the only available selective course was Health Sciences
Information. I had no choice but to register for the course in order to get the 3 credits back. It turned out to be the turning
point in my life. I pictured my career goal from vague to crystal clear by the time I competed the course. I knew what I wanted
to be, a medical librarian, a health sciences librarian. I started building my career path by looking for any kind of part-time
job or volunteer work or anything that would lead me in achieving my career goal. My every first experience was working as
a volunteer in the Nurses' Library in Montreal General Hospital
in Canada, part of the McGill University Health
Center (MUHC). Another step I took was to take a Practicum and worked at Royal Victoria Medical Library. The Practicum gave me the opportunity to create current awareness program for doctors and physicians. Working 2-3 hours
a week in the Nurses' Library, slowly and gradually, I touched almost every aspect of the library's functions from shelving
to cataloging. The then librarian, Lynn Kiraly-Batist, was nice and professional, who inspired me and trained me to be a professional
medical librarian. She showed me many of the things that were not taught in the library school.
By the time I received
my MLIS degree in 2001, I was offered a part-time position as a research librarian working for McGill University School of
Nursing . It was there I was given a lot of chances to conduct literature searches on medical literature for nursing faculty
members. In 2002, after Mrs. Kiraly-Batist moved to another hospital library, I was hired to work solo and manage the Nurses'
Library and worked on every aspect of the library including collection development, acquisitions, serials, cataloging, interlibrary
loan services, reference and instructional services, training volunteers, recruiting and hiring library research assistants.
These experiences helped me understand many of the health science resources either print or electronically and greatly
enrich my professional knowledge as a medical librarian. They also laid a solid foundation for me to grow the field of medical
librarianship.
Being a reference librarian in a health sciences library is very challenged and this is the part I like
most. Challenges always motivate me and inspire me to keep pursuing for career advancement. I have been active in serving
on professional committees of the Medical Library Association (MLA) and Southern Chapter of the MLA, presenting posters and papers at professional conferences, writing and researching related to reference
services, and networking with medical librarians across the country. Looking back, I'm grateful and happy for every little
step and effort I have been taken to lead me to where I am today. I always believe working persistently towards one's goal
will eventually lead you to what you want to be.
Lin Wu
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