Meeting John Gallagher/Lecture by Sarah

Yesterday, I met with John Gallagher, the Deputy Director of Public Services for the Cushing Library. John is originally from Ireland and went to a Regional Technical School and received his business associates, while there. He then came to America and attended Southern Connecticut State University where he received his BS in management and his MLS.

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.