(via Ramune Kubilius, Galter Health Sciences Library & Learning Center at Northwestern University, on behalf of Courtney Pyche, University of Florida)
I am a librarian at the University of Florida’s Health Science Center Library in Gainesville, FL and a member of the Association of College and Research Libraries. I am conducting an anonymous survey with my colleague, Chris Eaton, on the experiences of public librarians who have transitioned to roles in health sciences or hospital libraries as well as which professional development tools have been most helpful to them. The results will help to inform the profession on ways to prepare public librarians for careers in health sciences or medical/hospital librarianship. The results may also be used in publications/presentations at national meetings and/or academic institutions. This research study has been approved by the University of Florida IRB Protocol #: ET00021915. You can take the survey now here.
- Who can participate? Health sciences or hospital librarians who previously worked in public libraries as a librarian
- How long will the survey take? 5-10 minutes
- When does the survey close? Friday, February 16
Contact me, at cmevans17@ufl.edu, with any questions.
After 7 years as a public systems media librarian, I accepted a position as a nursing school solo librarian, a position I held for thirteen years until the school closed. I had the good fortune to practice in a community in which there was a strong presence of health science librarians (in hospitals and universities) who met monthly and were always willing to share knowledge and experiences. In addition, I simultaneously worked (solo position) during evenings and weekends at a university health-science library, where tools and content allowed me to further educate myself about healthcare in general and I expanded my knowledge by diligently reading the literature of medicine, nursing, psychology, and public health while working. As well, I learned a great deal from “my” patrons – I learned to pair the patrons’ expertise in their specialty field with my (growing) expertise in searching for information, with great results. Adding to all of these factors, I gained a great deal of knowledge from courses offered by various local and national healthcare librarians’ groups. I should add that in the nursing school (a free-standing hospital-based program) we did not have access to online searching, so I depended on print INDEX MEDICUS. I believe that having to use the print version better prepared me to search online; the underlying principles of refining and combining subjects (cross-referencing the headins) made me more precise in my selection of terms and this has been valuable to my strategies for searching online.