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.