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.