Frances Drone-Silvers, Biomedical Information Specialist at Carle Health and the current HSLI Secretary, is the 2024 recipient of the HSLI Starfish Thrower Award. The Starfish Thrower Award recognizes an HSLI member who has made a difference to the organization. Please see below for the statements of nomination.
As a solo librarian within a “survival” culture, Frances Drone-Silvers always seems to have time for us! She is generous with sharing expertise and is a strong communicator. While fighting battles with administration on the job and fielding everything library in the workplace setting, Frances is an exemplary health sciences librarian. And HSLI should be thankful for her participation.
Frances Drone-Silvers is an HSLI member who definitely makes a big difference and is worthy of the HSLI Starfish Thrower Award for 2024. Over the years, she has been an active member of the annual HSLI meeting planning committees, with duties that included chairing the subgroup with responsibilities for researching, recommending, and coordinating continuing education workshops offered for each year’s meeting. Frances also shared experience in acquiring NNLM grant funds for HSLI meeting CE events and speakers in an HSLI webinar, “‘The World is Full of Genies’: Writing Proposals that Win Grants” (August 23, panel).
Frances currently serves as HSLI Secretary, an elected HSLI position, and actively provides her insights during HSLI Board meetings. Noteworthy is her continuing commitment to hosting the HSLI Coffee & Conversations online, an idea she first conceived. These monthly online informal networking and update opportunities have become a fixed calendar item on many HSLI members’ schedules. When another initiative, an HSLI journal discussion group, did not gain traction, Frances was willing to incorporate that group’s host, Peggy Carey, into the HSLI Coffee & Conversations online. All topics of conversation are welcomed in those meetings.
Frances is a dedicated hospital librarian whose contributions and insights are very much appreciated in any HSLI activity in which she is involved. She inspires others of us in HSLI, and deserves our thanks and appreciation.
For more information on the Starfish Thrower Award, including a list of past recipients, please go here.
Congratulations, and thank you for all that you do for HSLI!