My Forth Day

Today, Thursday August 7th started off with me meeting two new people. Mary and Kelly which both work in document delivery. Mary does the computer work while Kelly scans the copies of the necessary material. I found them both to be pleasant people who enjoy their jobs. Also Kelly showed me the scanner and it was really interesting. After that I shadowed Janene's EBP class. In the picture here it shows a not so well but hopefully effective demonstrations of EBP format. Janene herself had a better depiction. After the class I as well as Mr. Greenberg walked over to the Library downtown to meet with Diane Turner who is a fascinating Women. I was truly honored to meet her. After Meeting with Mrs. Turner i returned to the medical library to attend a Liaison Meeting/Lunch in which they discussed library matters such as budget and orders for journals. It was all new to me to see the inner workings of the library i found it to be a positive experience. My last meeting of the day and/or week was with Bob, he is the business manager and he is a very easy to get a long with type of guy. He seems really in tact like he knows his business and i felt as if he is one of the kind of people that will help anyone in need.

My Third Day

Today is Wednesday August 6th and it is my third day at the Chili Internship here at Yale's Medical Library. This morning I started off with Mr. Greenberg as he introduced me to the world of RSS. I found this to be very interesting because now I have a way to connect myself to the news feeds I find most interesting. After the RSS lesson I met with Jason the Libraries IT man. We had a discussion about information and how his job even though it effects the library greatly isn't connect like the others. After meeting with Jason i was introduced to Mark in clinical support. He gave me another view of the library as a whole. Daniel and Lynn helped me finish the day. Daniel introduced me to the digital part of the library as Lynn gave me incite on Consumer Health.

My Second Day

Today is Tuesday August 5th and my second day at the internship. This morning

I sat in on a meeting taken place with the people of the department I am interning for. I heard scheduling as well as creative

ideas to keep students interested with the medical library. After the meeting I held

an interview with Toby in the historical part of the library. Toby is in charge of basically all of the medical history the library holds. I found it so interesting how far back the books go.

After meeting with Toby I met with Jan in the educational services. Jan is a very interesting person because she always wanted to be a librarian and I found that amazing. Not to say to be a librarian isn't a great career just after meeting with other people i hadn't met with someone that dreamed of this as a child. After Jan i too a visit to Document delivery and had another more detailed tour of the medical library. So far I am enjoying my time here and look forward to my meetings to come.

My First Day

Today was my first day of the Chili Internship at Yale. This morning I started off with a brief orientation given by Mr. Greenberg. He walked me around the medical library and introduced me to some of the staff. I also held two interviews today as well as made adjustments to this blog. Today I learned a little history about the library itself and increased my interest of medical history.

My first interview was with a woman by the name of Judy Spak. I asked her questions surrounding her life and the career she has chosen and also how it relates to Information technology. She told me how she liked her job because it allowed her to influence so many people, she likes working with others especially students because she feels as if she really teaches them. She finds her job to be more then some "9 to 5" regular job because often she must bring her work home with her. She did not dream of working in a medical library but she has grown to enjoy it very much. Judy is a Curriculum Support Librarian so she makes sure teaches and students are learning what is new and important based on a preset curriculum. She believes her strengths such as good communication and good representation help her perform her job as best as possible. She feels no better then any other librarian in any other department but she does feel her role is more visible. She feels that technology is critical in her career also that it has improved the world of Health information greatly.

My second interviewee was a woman by the name of Robin Featherstone. She is a student in a program which allows her to work in every department the library offers as well as in many different libraries around the country . She feels as if her job is always changing which provides an exciting environment which doesn't lead to boredom. Robin does not see her position as either a career or a job, she finds that at times it can be both. She feels that the information technology is much more exciting in the health field because it is always changing and updating. Her interest in this field was rather new, she basically stated that she just needed a job and that the interest rose after she started. That brutal honesty she titled as one of her weaknesses. She says that technology is everything in her day to day job. She prefers working with nurses for the simple fact that they are friendly and that they are used to working with people all day so there is a sort of comforting feeling.

Both of my interviewees felt that there is a stereotype surrounding the public's view on librarians and one felt it should be changed while the other felt it should be kept the same. Now I am wondering if it could be changed as well as how it will be.

Yesterday I went over to the Main Library, The Sterling Memorial Library and met with Diane Turner. She is the Associate University Librarian and deals with staff training and development and also community relations. A work day for her may include catching up on emails, reviewing salaries, meeting with supervisors, staff training or dealing with personnel issues. She said that no day is the same but it is always fun booked. She was inspired to choose this career because she loves working with people, solving problems and making a difference. Her job has sent her to many states in the U.S. as well as to South Africa. What she enjoys most about her job is seeing projects start out as ideas and go onto something bigger. Her advice to anyone who is thinking about a job like hers is to be prepared academically, be able to see both sides of a situation and be fair. She also said to make sure that you laugh a lot and don't take life so serioulsy.

Today I met with Jason who is the Desktop Support Technician. He fixes the computers here and over in the classrooms across the street. His job includes taking care of issues with staff PCs, PCs in the information room and repairing and updating classroom PCs. He also deals with MAC computers so he knows how both operating systems work. He has always been working on computers since he was a child and was inspired by his uncle who was responsible for some of the framework that built the internet. He has worked at many companies; AT&T and Ann Taylor's corporate office, to name a few. The Cushing/Whitney Medical Libary is his first educational job and he said it is much different from the other job settings that he has had, organizational wise. His favorite thing about his job is the flexibility because he is not tied down to his desk all the time. He can get up and move around and help others around the building and also across the street. He can also plan his day and choose what he will work on first. His advice to someone who is thinking about choosing his career would be to always keep updated with the new technology and what is coming along, to explore software and take computers apart and fix them so that you know how they are put together and how to solve a problem that someone might have with their PC.

Last Week as a CHILI Intern

This is my last week as a CHILI Intern, thus far I have enjoyed this experience. Yesterday I interviewed Bob Hughes and Hongbin. Bob is the business manager for the library. He deals with the budget of the library and makes sure that the money is used wisely. He is also responsible for library security and the building itself . Each month he gets a report showing how much money was spent and charts how the library is doing. He has been in this position for around a year now and had been working in the insurance industry for about 19 years. The reason why he switched careers was that it bothered him that his company was making so much money but there were still many people who were uninsured. He said that he felt reenergized after the career change. His favorite part of his job is the analytical work, doing a projection and laying out how much money to spend each month then checking to see if the library is on track.

Hongbin is the Web Services Librarian or Webmaster. He is very funny and his job seems to be very interesting since he designs the library website. A day for him may include checking emails, making a to-do list, working on a project, updating the website , and getting imput from people about the website. He recently made a link on the library's website so that people with Iphones can access it on their phone. He is working on a big project now to redesign the whole website. Before this career, he was a journalist and in college he was inspired by his roommate to choose this career and go to library school. He was facsinated how his roommate graduated from libary school and built a website. He used to work in New Orleans until the hurricane came and he moved up here. His newest addition to the website is the picture box and the PubMed updates. He also told me that from July 2007- June 2008 there were over 8 million views of the website. It was very interesting to learn about what he does as the webmaster.

Today was another fun and interesting day. I met Mary and Cindy and got a chance to spend some time with their department. Cindy is the Associate Director of Collection Development and Management. A work day for her may involve sitting at her computer and working on collection development tasks, having meetings, answering questions, helping at the reference desk, and monographic acquisitions. The things that she enjoys most about her job are working with colleagues and collection develpment parts and choosing books and electronic resourses to help students and faculty. She has always liked books and the public library when she was younger, so this seemed to be a good job for her. When I asked her what she thought her job would be like in ten years, she said that the collection would be more electronic and that maybe E books would set up a system or vendor that can load all the records instead of doing them manually one by one.

Today I met Sarah who is the preservation librarian. Her job is very interesting and includes preservation, security for the rare materials, telling people how to handle them and dealing with protecting them from damage. She started as a Art History major and fell in love with libraries. As a child, her father was interested in antiques which rubbed off on her now since she is dealing with books that are very old. Whenever she travels and there is a library or museum that she goes to she gets to go behind the scenes because she tells them where she works and what she does, which is a great advantage. For example, she went to the New York Public Library and the staff let her see what they do. One thing that she enjoys about her job is that it feels good to save cultural history. One goal that she has is to have the collection in good condition. She also enjoys discovering or finding new and cool things while working on a project that she can share with other librarians. She stated that her job is a lot of work, but it is very rewarding.

Today I interviewed Kelly and Rick. Rick is the circulation manager and manages/supervises the workers at the circulation desk. He makes sure that everything runs smoothly and helps people who cannot find a book and gets medical information for people from around the world. He loves his job because it is a customer service position where he can directly help people to find the medical information that they may need. He started over at Sterling Library then transfered over to here. He said that it did not take him long to realize that this is the job he wanted because shortly after he started, he realized that he was good at it and that it was rewarding. His advice to anyone who is thinking about the same career or simular would be to have a good sense of dealing with people, both the customer and the staff and to stay in school and continue to get a good education.

Kelly deals with scanning documents and inter library loans. She started off doing sports medicine, which is what I am also thinking about doing, but she realized that working in libraries was something that she has done all her life and was probably meant to do. Her background has infuenced her also because as a child her parents used to always take their children to the library very often which seems to have had an impact on her leading her to the library setting. Her favorite parts of her job are learning new things , seeing old books and reading about ideas that she never thought people could have. Her advice to someone pursuing this job is simular to the advice that other librarians have given which is to have an open mind and be willing to try new things and learn new things.

On my fourth day as a chili intern, I interviewed two interesting people. One was Kenny and the other was Mark. Kenny is the director and is responsible for recruitment and retension. She told me how she ended up where she is now and it was very interesting. She said that she had applied for a job in archives and manuscripts but it was cancelled and they referred her to another job at the medical library and she decided to take it and ever since has loved it. She gave me a lot of helpful advice about college and life in general. Mark is a traveler who has been to many places to teach for example he has been to Sweden and went to Uganda to train senior doctors. He teaches them how to use the resources to their advantage. His favorite part of his job is solving problems and helping people.

On Monday, I interviewed Lei who is an instructional desingn librarian. He creates online tutorials , modules and online catelogs to help people learn how to better use medical resources. He enjoys his job because he gets to do what he likes and because he can experiment to find better ways to help people. His advice to anyone thinking about this career is to pay attention to technology that is fast growing and be sensitive about what people do and how you can positively impact them.

Today I interviewed two staff members. One was Toby and the other was Mary. Toby is the librarian for the medical history and is the head of the Historical Library. Her job involves helping medical students find sources for their papers, giving tours for classes/special events, buying rare and new books, organizing exhibits , managing collections and the digital library online.

Mary is the manager of document delivery services. She is very funny. Her department deals with getting books for the Yale Medical Library and medical students. They also lend books to people who are not affiliated with Yale. They have something called MACS which serves hospitals by copying articles that are imprinted copies of journals. Doctors may need information right away for a surgery and Vermitta who is a clerical will fill the request as soon as possible. This job sounds very intersting yet demanding. Both Mary and Vermitta gave me a lot of advice that I will use later on. They both also said that their job is never boring because there is always something new to deal with. So far this is what all the librarians have said.

Second Day

Today was my second day as a CHILI intern. Today I went to a meeting with the staff where they were explaining Second Life which is a virtual life where you can look at medical information. It is like a game where you make a character, choose how they look and walk or fly around the virtual world. It looked like a lot of fun and is also informing.

After the meeting, I interviewed two of the staff today, Robin and Lynn. They both are very nice people and told me about their job and what they do here at the medical library. Robin is at the medical library through the Associate Fellowship Program which is run by the National Library of medicine. She is from Canada and was sent here by the program and will be here until August. She works on different projects and writes to authors and writes about books that are really important in the library. She is inspired by mentors who help her to make decisions, professors from library school, library heads and advisors. Her favorite part of her job is that it is always changing and that she doesn't do the same thing every day.

Lynn's typical work day may include sitting at the information desk, helping medical students with questions they may have, meetings, library publications and marketing materials. She also helps with getting books for the library. What she enjoys most about her job is helping students and creating publications online. Her goal is to make it to the next level of librarianship. Both of the staff would agree that to have their jobs you need to be open minded, open to learning new ideas and able to adapt to new technology.

First Day as a CHILI Intern

Today was my first day as a CHILI intern. I started off my day with a tour of the library by Dr. Greenberg. He showed me where the different departments are and what they do in each of them. He also explained to me where to find certain books and how the books are shelved. I was also introduced to the staff who work in these departments and I am looking forward to learning more about their jobs. I was introduced to the CHILI blog and Dr. Greenberg showed me how to manage the blogs.

I interviewed Dr. Greenberg and learned a lot about what he does daily. For instance, he is a supervisor and meets at least once a month with every staff member. He also programs staff at the information desk and if there is a problem he is the one to solve it or fills in for someone who is not in. He also teaches students, which is one of his favorite parts of his job, and is a personal librarian to many students. He is a part of ASK LIVE which is a real time reference where he can answer questions that people may have. I learned that he earned a leadership fellowship and has traveled to many countries, to mention a few, Scotland, Australia and Germany. It was very intersting to learn that he trained librarians in Hong Kong. I am looking forward to learning more about the staff and what they do on a daily basis to help the medical field improve with health information.

Today was another great day the Yale Medical School Library. I began my day with interviews of Lynn and Liu Hong Bin. Lynn works to make resourcs more easily accessible and she believes that the most rewarding part of her job is being able to help others. Hongbin is the library's webmaster. he is in charge of maintaining the library's website and updating information when needed. He tries to make everything easily accessible and easy to locate on the homepage. He does so by asking medical students to find certain things on the website and then by observing how much difficulty they experience with the task.

After meeting with Lynn and Hong Bin, I spent time working on my independent project. Later that day, I met with Kenny, of administration. Her job is to oversee the other departments and to make sure projects are running smoothly. We talked about her job and her passion for reading. She also left me with a few great words of wisdom. My appreciation for library work has grown immensely.

On Friday, March 4, I met with Lei Wang and Jan Glover. Lei talked to me about his job as an instructional design librarian. In short, he makes onlne instruction modules and he also makes sure that there is online instruction twenty-four hours a day and seven days a week. His background in English/Literature helps him in his current profession. Jan Glover, on the other hand, had an interest in Art/History which is not as relevant to her career as English/Literature is for Lei. Jan Glover is responsible for education services programs. She teaches people how to search for material effectively and she also helped coordinate a personal librarian program. In this program, incoming medical students are split up among the staff and they are given personal librarians on whom they can call in times when help is needed. The program has been running for about 12 years and it may soon be applied to the undergraduate school.

After my interviews with Lei and Jan, I worked on putting my picture on the blog with Mr. Greenberg. I returned to the library on Saturday, April 5, to talk with Janene Batten and to take pictures for my independent project. Janene works with the nursing school and he serves students, teachers, and clinicians, which is a wide patronship. She feels that as a result of the digitization age, her job has changed to more of maintaining the study of nursing and research. She also had a unique idea for libraries of the future. She said that she believes that libraries would be more welcoming and more popular if they had more of a social aspect. I agree that more people would use libraries if they provided a snack and drink area as well as rooms for study groups and social events. After meeting with Janene, I took pictures necessary for my independent program and I added some information to my outline. Until tomorrow.

On Wednesday, April 2nd, I met with Judy Spak of Curriculum and Research Support. I learned about her job in this area and she showed me an interesting computer program that provides step by step surgical procedures, anatomy topic overviews, and quizzes. Spak's job is to make sure that the programs are running well and she also reviews the programs and quizzes to make sure that they are useful for teachers and students. The online quiz that Spak showed me is similar to the quizzes that my anatomy class at Career High School takes after the end of each section. We take quizzes in the lab that test our knowledge of information that the medical students have taught us.

I then discussed my independent project with Mr. Greenberg and interviewed him (using a set of pre-written questions). I also took some time work on an outline of a brochure/guide for high school students on how to use the medical library when writing a research paper or working on a project. My second week as a CHILI intern is coming to a close and as "they" say, time flies.

I began my second week as a CHILI intern on Monday, March 31. I first met with Mary Angelotti of Access and Delivery Services. She enlightened me about her job in access and delivery services and she explained thoroughly the process of receiving, copying, and sending text orders. We practiced sending a text selection by scanning the desired text and sending it to the computer, and then emaling the digitized material to her email address. I then interviewed Angelotti who has been working for Yale for 30 years and who loves her job because she enjoys knowing that she helps students, doctors, and patients on a daily basis. Then, I took a trip to the basement where I was taught how to use a unique scanning device. Velma Williams of Access and Delivery Services scanned pages from a book onto a computer, and from there she was able to crop the images and email them. I learned a great deal about access and delivery services.

From there, I was directed to the circulation desk where books can be checked out and returned. I shadowed a young lady named Pamela for a short while and she gave me insight into what she does at the circulation desk. I also took pictures with a digital camera of myself and also of some of the staff members of the library to put on the blog. I will write again soon.

On March 28, my third day as a CHILI intern, I shadowed Sarah Burge who works in preservation. My experience was great and I learned a great deal about old books and works of art. I also learned interesting facts about the preservation of books. While shadowing Sarah, I learned about her life long passion for art and book preservation which led her to her dream job at the Yale Medical School Library.

It was also amazing to see the transformations of medical theories and information over long periods of time. The recordings of medical breakthroughs and old hygenic posters were very interesting and I was also able to see the impact of the Industrial revolution of the United States on the medical books. The older books in the library were carefully and intricately made, while the books produced during industrialization were flimsy and were produced quickly in large quantities. As a result, the older books are able to withstand the conditions of the library much better than the more modern books. Sarah's job is very demanding considering that she not only controls the environment of the books, but she also checks the condition of the thousands of books in the library. Although her job is demanding she finds it extremely rewarding to see the conditions of the books improve as a result of her work.

My first week as a CHILI intern was great and I look forward to the next two weeks.

This week was my first week as a CHILI intern. I began my internship on Monday, March 24 and my first day was great and informative. I began my day with a thorough tour of the library and with introductions to a few library staff members. After my tour I worked on a list of interview questions which I would later use during interviews. Then, I sat in on a class of Mr. Greenberg's and I learned a great deal about using blogs and also about an interesting program called PubMed. I was also introduced to a website by the name of voicethread, which I hope to use for a project in the future.

My second day as an intern was a great deal of fun because I had the opportunity to interview Mark Gentry of Clinical Support and Robin Feather stone of Administration. I learned about their current jobs, their plans for the future, and I was shown projects in which they are currently engaged. Robin Featherstone showed me several exciting projects on which she is currently working, such as licensing and preservation. Mark Gentry gave me an in depth description of his job in Clinical Support. He also told me about his work related trip to Uganda on which he embarked yesterday. I am having a great first week and I will write soon with details of my days as a CHILI intern.

Librarian Specialty: Nursing

On February 8th I also got a chance to meet Mrs. Janene Batten who's been working at the Harvey/Cushing Library for 3 years. She is the librarian that I can personally benefit from the most because she is the nursing librarian who spends part of her time at the Yale School of Nursing. She says that she does alot of teaching to staff and students who have questions aboout software. She loves every aspect of her job but her most favorite thing to do is answering quick questions. She believes that in 5 years from now she will be in the same profession, but her job description will be different, although she would love to still work here. She also believes libraries will exist in the future despite the increasing use of computers because she quotes: "Somebody's got to give it to you," referring to obtaining the correct information and how to use resources. She would encourage me to become a medical libarian by explaining that this could help a specialist because I would have already known the answers to whatever topic or question I was trying to study. Janene was another one of my favorite staff members to interview because she was interested in my educaiton and how I was planning on continuing my education. She attended the college that I have in mind (SCSU) and explained to me that I could come to her with whatever questions I had about the school. Its nice to know that someone else cares about your education and is willing to help you.

Finances

On February 8th, I met with Mr. Bob Hughes who is the man in charge of the library's finances and security. Bob considered himself to be a "math geek" who thought he'd become a teacher while he was in high school. Bob has a teaching certificate and used to teach math classes. Although Bob has only been working here for about 9 months, he seems to have corrected some of the library's previous financial mistakes. He likes his job alot and says that he wouldn't be suprised if he was still working here 5 years from now. Like others, Bob says that this job is "laid-back" and that his co-workers are very nice. He stays interested in his work because everything is always new to him. I believe Bob's job is the most important job because he manages the library's budget. He controls and knows how much money goes to which department. He is the essential key to how the library pays for their rare books and online resources.

CDM Overview

On February 7th, I had a rather "easy-going" day. I met with Mrs. Cynthia Crooker who has been working at this medical library for 20 years. She does data harvesting, and she decides which electronic resources to buy, such as journals and books for the library. She finds her job interesting be cause it changes so much and says that she will still be working at this library 5 years from now but her job description will probably change. I also got the chance to meet with Mr. Daniel Dollar who says he "fell backwards" into working here. He is the manager of the CDM department, but before coming here he worked in the Library of Congress. He has been working at this medical library for 7 years and likes the fact that he gets to spend money on resources for the library. These two individuals help my favorite depatment: preservation, exist becasue without their management, this library would probably not have all the priceless rare books they have now.

Week Two: Visuals

So far this week I've met with the people who create visual learning in this library. Mrs. Lynn Sette, who has been working here for 26 years, is in charge of what I will call "visual information showcases" which include posters, brochures, and holiday set-ups. She also does consultations and consumer health informing. Lynn loves her job and quotes : "Librarians do a lot of good and are needed for more then just the circulation desk." This statement is one that I personally have believed in until interning here and the staff that I've met thus far have changed my perspective. Mrs. Toby Appel has been working here for 13 years and like many others, initially thought she'd be an elementary school teacher. She received a scholarship for Tuff's University and says that the only way she wouldn't work here 5 years from now is if she's retired. Toby is in charge of the displays in the rotunda, buying books to add to the medical library's collection, giving tours of the library, organizing the collection, and informing students on how to use data bases. Toby quotes: " Libraries control unique copies of literature," which I believe is true. Computers can almost never be as accurate as the unique source it came from. With the mention of computers, I was also granted an interview session with Mr. Jason Reinstedler, who is in charge of the hardware and software in the library. Although Jason has only been working here for 1 month, he has a history of desktop support that steered him in the direction of the Cushing/Whitney Medical Library. Jason quotes: "There will always be a need for desktop support, so there will always be potential for plenty of work." With that statement, we can conclude that Jason, like many others here, enjoy what they do and they don't plan on leaving anytime soon.

A Day Of Preservation

Today was one of the most interesting days I’ve spent at the medical library so far. Sarah, the person in charge of preventing the books from deteriorating actually made me want to do her job. She brought me to the books kept in the basement, and through every isle, explained when the books were made, which material they were made from, and how they were designed. The way Sarah protects these books are very affective and beneficial. Although she thought she was boring me or giving me an unnecessary amount of information, I was definitely attentive. While interviewing her, I realized some of the staff had no clue they'd be working here, seeing she has no medical background. Today I had fun while learning and that’s what makes learning easier. I hope I get the chance to spend another day with her.

My First Week

My first week as a CHILI intern at the Harvey Cushing/John Whitney Medical Library was spent learning. On my first day Dr Charles Greenberg gave me a brief tour of one of the biggest libraries I probably will ever see. He explained to me that because I attend Hill Regional Career Magnet High School, I had access to these pieces of literature whenever I needed them. He has introduced me to several bits of technology and software that are more than essential to learning. Beneficial programs such as GoogleDocs were attainable to me, but until this experience, I was unaware. As part of my interning, I get the chance to interview some of Dr. Greenberg’s colleagues. I was privileged to meet Administrative Assistant Mrs. Judy Spak who’s been working at the library for 11 years but had no idea she’d be working there. I also got to interview Mr. Lei Wang who never even knew medical librarians existed. When asked how he would persuade me to work in a medical library, he questioned back: “Do you possess the quality to help and teach?” Both of these individuals encouraged me to follow my dreams and become whatever I wanted to be. The knowledge of all three of these people is not to be wasted. It is to be applied so I can become as successful and content with my occupation as they are.