Meeting with Historical Librarian

After my meeting with Jan, I met with Toby who is the head of the historical library. First she gave me tour of the historical library then sat with me to talk. She buys books either old or new, gives exhibits, anwers questions through email, teaches classes, and works on the digital library which is mainly about images. It is a challenge for her to work on so many things at once. She wishes that there was more time to work on collections. Everyday is different and never boring because she never knows who comes through the doors. She communicates with people through the classses that she teaches, letters, telephone, emails, online exhibits, and tour. She also meets and talks with people through meetings like the History of Science and the American Association of Historic Association. Important traits that one needs in her job is flexibity, knowing the materials, patience, and willingness to know new things.

Toby has a Phd in the History of Science and recieved her library degree from the University of Maryland. Some of her achievements are the various exibits she has done and getting them up, the Darwin exibits, and keeping the records of the bibliography of publications that used unique manuscripts of the medical library. Another achievement is being able to organize a lot of things in the past 15 years. She is currently working on the Bicentennial collection, which involves pictures of old doctors, the first building of the Yale Medical School and Medical Library, and donations of a student assistant of Harvey Cushing, who recently died at the age of 91.She is also helping to make changes on the website. She mentioned to me that technology in the future will be widely used in our libraries, but will take a long time for libraries to fully be vitual. Also she mentioned that there will be few librarians in the future. In five years she hopes to be retired but will volunteer at different places.