Hill Regional Career High School interns explore health information careers such as medical librarianship at the Yale Medical Library with the help of Mr. Charles Greenberg and other staff members. The interns are given the opportunity to see how library staff access, manage, and apply medical research and interact with those on the Yale Medical Campus who work hands on with research.
YALE MEDICAL LIBRARY
Thursday, January 28, 2010
Meeting John Gallagher/Lecture by Sarah
He first worked for RPS as a FedEx ground manager. That job was a total of eighty hours a week. The many hours a week were taking away from valuable time needed to be spent at home, so he pursued other jobs. A friend of his got him interested in a job in librarianship and so he applied for a casual job at the Sheldon Library. From the Sheldon Library he obtained degrees in between and then arrived at the Cushing Medical Library. In April of 2000 he was the evening circulation adviser, and then he became head of circulation. He is currently the Deputy Director of Public Services for the Cushing Library. Gallagher is also the liaison to the Department or Orthopedics and a personal librarian.
A typical day for John is meetings, primarily on large scale digitization. A grant was received to digitized books from 19th century medicine, other schools like Harvard and Columbia are part of this project as well. Besides that he has to work on construction projects, do strategic planning for the library, answer questions, help patrons, and get feedback from patrons about the library. He would like to be able to put more medical material online, so that its convenient for doctors, nurses, and other professionals who are extremely busy. Challenging aspects of his job include ensuring that the historical library is relative and visible to people and working with the limited resources he has for the library. John enjoys his work and has fun and feels like he is doing something valuable, and is nowhere near retiring.
I was able to attend a lecture by Sarah, the library preservationist. Sarah had several books out, one of them from the 14th century and another from the 16th century. A page from the Gutenberg Bible printed on vellum was being presented. The Gutenberg Bible is the first example of movable type. There are around 30 whole known Gutenberg Bibles in other libraries. The Cushing Library only has a page of a bible because people would break up the bibles to make money. Around 200 sheets were bound and sold separately. I also learned that the Cushing has one of the largest Vesalius collections in the world. Vesalius is known for his series of muscle men, which blew his competition away. The first book that had medical printing in it was in 1491, as well.
Sarah has a background in art history. To preserve the books she controls the humidity and light surrounding them. She will also go through all of the books and decide which books need help, which ones are emergencies, and what can sit and wait. More money would help in the preservation of these books.
Wednesday, January 27, 2010
Meeting with Mary Angelotti
Today I met with Mary Angelotti, the document delivery manager. She has had this position since 1999. Ms. Angelotti is originally from
Mary Angelotti started at the law school library, binding. The law school library she found interesting. She then went to the Beinecke and from there she went to the hospital library and was a director there. After that she worked at the nursing library in the reference room. Ms. Angelotti enjoyed this because it was small and she was able to get to really know the students. From there she came to her present day job at the Harvey Cushing Medical Library.
The document delivery department has three services: borrowing, lending, and MACS. The borrowing service orders things Yale doesn't own for its patrons. While the lending service will lend books to other libraries and even extends to corporations like law services and pharmaceutical companies. MACS is the Medical Article Copy Service, which is an in-house photocopy service. MACS is available for staff and students of Yale.
A work day for Mary is from 8:30-5:00, though she usually stays until 6:00. A typical day includes seeing if a book is owned by another library, then checking orders, followed by printing and filling, and then telling their user friendly DOCLINE what they filled and reject what they didn't. About eighty or ninety orders come in a day. This department has 48 hours to fill the request because people need these things quickly. If an order is not filled in that time period then it goes to another library. The criteria for judging a library is how fast they get orders out and the fill rate. The fill rate for this library is 75%, which is good.
According to Mary Angelotti the most challenging part of her job is getting work done in the time allotted. Machines will break down and staff will be out, causing the work process to slow. While the easiest part is using the departments programs, DOCLINE and ORBIS, also the online catalog.
Mary Angelotti's goal is to stay sane, considering that she has a very hectic job. Another goal is to get the orders out and develop good training for staff. The document delivery department is currently dependent on the circulation desk because of a shortage in their office, so they will need to be well trained.
Besides meeting Mary Angelotti, I was able to tour the downstairs section of the library and see where the display of a collection of brains will be. The space looks nice and I'm sure the display will be out of this world.
Today was another successfully fun and interesting day.
My first day
While on the tour with Mr. Greenberg I learned interesting facts about the library. One being that, Harvey Cushing, the founder of the Yale medical library, was a medical book collector. Cushing donated his collection to the library. Besides that I learned that there will be a collection of brains in the library very soon. A wealthy descendant of Cushing donated an entire computer section to the library as well. Mr. Greenberg also informed that there are tons of rare books, some even date back to the 13th century! Many are hand written and most are deteriorating. The library has an adopt a rare book program, also.
Overall the day was enjoyable and fun.