My last Monday at the Medical Library

Today when I arrived at the Harvey Cushing Medical Library, Mr. Greenberg and I went to the Yale Office of New Haven and State Affairs (ONHSA). While I was there, I met with Ms. Maria Parente. She works in the ONHSA Building on Temple Street. While I was talking to her, I learned that she is associated with several of the programs that I am affiliated with such as the S.C.H.O.L.A.R program, and other high school programs I was not aware of. I asked her "What is the most important part of you job in your opinion? She answered "Helping not only high school students put middle school students get into the programs they need as well as want to get into. I make sure all information is received and delivered to the right person."

Maria Parente at the Yale Science Fair

 After I left ONHSA building, I came back here to the Harvey Cushing Medical Library and continued working on my Health Flick and my Blog. I was able to find a tune to use in my Health Flick that is behind my voice to give it a steady and smooth feeling.

My first internship day at the Cushing/Whitney Medical Library

I'm Ajenae, and today was my first day at the Cushing Whitney Medical Library. I basically did orientation to my next three weeks: Learning how to blog, making interview questions and getting acquainted with people here in the Library. We went over my schedule and the activities and duties I will be responsible for during my time here at the Library. I also interviewed with Mr.Greenberg and I learned a lot as far as his occupation, what he likes to do here; and what courses in school made him want to work in a library. Mr.Greenberg and I also talked about my Health Flicks video. This is the Healthflick done by Emma on Aneurysms.

We discussed what I will be doing and different approaches I can take when doing it. Overall, my first day went phenomenal. My interview with Mr. Greenberg helped me practice the questions I created about career motivation and activity.

Day Seven: Interview with Mrs. Glover and Mr. Gentry

Today I started my Internship day by interviewing Ms. Jan Glover.
 Jan started working at Yale Medical Library in 1977.  Back then, she said that because of the low rate of women working professionally, young women just took any job they were offered. But. Jan went to library school after college and received her Masters in Library Science. Jan is mostly interested in information skills for clinical medicine and wants her students to learn how to look for information in the most effective ways. Even before she became a librarian, she was interested in  medicine, but she never wanted to work with it. So she became a medical librarian!



After meeting Jan, I went to interview Mr. Mark Gentry. Mark told me that when he was 13, he decided to become a rock and roll musician. Then when he was 18 years old, he decided to become a lawyer.  Finally decided to become an anthropologist. Mr. Gentry taught as an ESL teacher in China and other overseas places.
Then he decided to become a medical librarian, which has been a really interesting career for him..

I had great time interviewing Ms.Glover and Mr. Gentry, as I learned lots of things about them and how they found the profession of medical librarianship.  I also learned that you can try different fields on for size and see what interests you. Then you can always change. You don't always have to work with what you love directly.You can work with what you love indirectly,  just like Jan.

Day Four: Interview with Lei Wang

Today after I was done interviewing Mr. Hughes, I went on to interview Mr. Wang, who is an Instructional Designer.
While interviewing Mr. Wang, I learned many new things, as well as some  things that are required for you to become a Medical Librarian. You need a Masters Degree in Library Science focusing on health sciences materials and services. The  reason why Mr. Wang choose to work as an Instructional Designer was because he loved designing with software, and he also loved teaching. So he decided to combine those two passion and became a instructional designer, where he designs new ways to teach students about software and skills. Mr. Wang was interested in  teaching, and he knew that learning can be really hard. To make learning easy he wanted to design demonstrations that would be best to transfer his knowledge to students.
Mr. Wang like lots of things about information technology, which supports his enthusiasm to be able work as an instructional designer. From Mr. Wang, I learned that anyone can make their love and passions for something into a career and make a living out of it. It can be like fairy tale but once you have the will, anything is possible.
I thank Mr. Wang for giving me this wonderful opportunity to learn about his interests and how became an instructional designer in a medical library..

Day Four: Interview with Mr. Hughes

Today I Interviewed Mr. Hughes. Mr. Hughes in the Business Manager at Yale Medical Library.

In the past Mr. Hughes worked at the Athena Insurance company, and he wanted to try a change in his life, which is why he applied for job at Yale Medical library. He appreciated that the Yale Medical library was also part of the acadamic life at Yale. He also considered other alternatives for his career, such as insurance underwriter, high school mathematics teaching, or working as a computer science teacher.

There are three main jobs that he is required to do, including making sure bills gets paid, overseeing the payroll, and the security of the library.

The types of knowledge a person should have in order to become a business manger include mathmatics, knowledge of how to use productivity applications, and also have business background.

The major things that inspired Mr. Hughes to become business mManger are educating people at Yale University and enjoying mathematics. One interesting thing about being a business manger is that you get to meet interesting people everyday. Talents and skills essential to be an effective business manger are understanding finance, good math skills, financial expertise, and know computer systems and databases.

Another prerequisites for being a business manger is to have a Masters of Business Adminstration .

Second day: My Interview with Mr. Bean and Ms. Norton

Today, after interviewing Ms. VanTine, I went on to interview Mr. Bean and Ms. Norton,who both work in Access and Delivery Services department at the Yale Medical Library.

I started my interview with Mr Bean, who used to work in the US Air Force . Eventually he decided to leave the Air Force, and he wanted to work in place which had an academic enviroment . First he came back to United States and worked at Barnes and Nobles for couples of years. Later on, he worked at Yale School of Management for 3 years and at Yale Sterling Memorial Library . He then applied for a position at Yale Medical library and was successful. Mr. Bean has steadily worked his way up to his current responsibility.

Mr. Bean believes that an effective librarian has both personal qualities and professional skills. The personal qualities you should have include being able to "read" people's needs and be friendly. The professional qualities include a Master of Library Science degree . Mr. Bean's day-to-day responsibilities are to oversee his department in the evening, supervise a variety of activities, and solve patron problems.

Mrs. Norton, who supervises the Access and Delivery Services Department , says that she also came to her career indirectly. Mrs. Norton always wanted to work in a museum. If she had not ended up in a health sciences library, she might have sought work in some type of museum or historical society.

When Mrs. Norton was young she used to volunteer at museums.  She has worked as reference librarian, cataloger and eventually as an interlibrary-loan librarian. Eventually her career led  to the position she is in now in New Haven.

Mrs. Norton thinks that librarians should be energetic and have a good nature, always wanting to help people in need of information. Librarians need to have a Masters Degree in Library Science but also believes that a person should seek experiences in the front line of  library service. 

Second Day: Interview with Melissa Vantine

Today after interviewing Mr. Gallagher, I interviewed Ms. Vantine, whose first name is Melissa. Melissa has worked at the Yale Medical Library for 10-years. Melissa is a part of Collection Development and Management. Ms. Vantine originally wanted to become Horticulturist .
Melissa says that she fell into this profession. She partially gives credit for working in Collection Development and Management ; in fact she used to work at the library during her studies. She likes to organizing things.

Melissa likes working at the Yale Medical Library. Also, because she gets to learn new things everyday, it's kind of like a school for her where she is always learning new material related to her job. She loves helping people in general, which also is one of the reasons why she choose the field she works in right now.

Melissa has many duties related to her job, such as, ordering books, cataloging books and paying invoices.

According to Melissa, for a person to become a part of collection development and management, you should have Masters in Library Science, or be a library paraprofessional. In Melissa's job you should Know about call numbers and cataloging rules, as well as know how to be organized.

Melissa loves to be in the library, especially the academic part with conferences she has to attend. Conferences are also very educational. Personal qualities that a person should have are good communication skills, good listening skills and know how to organize.

Second Day: Part One- Interview with Mr. Gallagher

Today I interviewed Mr. Gallagher. He is the Associate Director here at the Yale Medical Library. Mr. Gallagher briefly gave me a description of what his job is about. Mr. Gallagher has been working here for 12 years.

Mr. Gallagher at first didn't know what he wanted to do in future. He had many jobs in the past some of which includes, working for UPS, worked at evening circulation for a public library , Construction worker, FedEx, Head of circulation here and now he is the associate director. Now Mr. Gallagher is in the position that he wanted to be. Some of the things he does around the library includes represent the library on curriculum matters, works with other committees, manages staff, and he is also a research librarian . He is a Personal librarian to the Medical Students here at Yale University.
According to Mr. Gallagher, for a person to become a Medical librarian, a person should have a Master of Library Science (MLS).

It was my Pleasure meeting Mr. Gallagher .

Tour of the Cushing/Whitney Medical Library - Yale University

Today is the first day of my CHILI Intern. My first day as an intern went really well. Mr. Greenberg gave me a tour of the Medical Library. There were lots of interesting things which I did not know about. For instance, I didn't know the history of Harvey Cushing/ John Hay Whitney Medical library. It was very fascinating. the library dates back to 1941 and is very unique in its own ways. It had served the public and the Yale medical students throughout its years. One of the things that fascinating things I saw was the medical tool display located in the medical objects collection of the Library. It was very interesting for me to see the surgical tools that date back to Roman Empire. It was really interesting for me to be able to see the tools that they used to used conduct any kind of medical process. Another thing that was interesting was the special reference books present in the library on consumer health, end of life, medical teaching. The tour of the library demonstrated how technology is taking over the libraries but there is still a place for books.
Later, I interviewed Mr. Greenberg. I learned the importance of a Medical Library and librarianship is general. Mr. Greenberg originally wanted to work in either the library science or education field. Graduated a semester early, he applied first to library science graduate school and was offered a graduate assistance scholarship covering all costs. He took the first job he was offered, which was at a Public library. later, he became a Medical Librarian.
Mr. Greenberg has created two special projects with students (C.H.I.L.I. internship and Healthflicks). Mr. Greenberg is very passionate in his work.

Meeting with Judy and Kenny.

• Around 3:00 p.m, I got to interview, Judy Spak, who is a part of the Curriculum and Research Support. She definitely enjoys her profession mainly because she's able to help people find information, solve problems, and teach patrons how to access and use electronic sources. She has been in this profession for 15 years. Also, she is motivated to stay in her current profession because she is challenged and her coworkers are friendly. The neat thing I learned today from her was that her section administers the Black Board which is mainly training.

• The other half of the afternoon, I meet with the Library Director, Kenny Marone who has been working here for 30 years now. She mentions how her profession is constantly changing in terms of technological changes. For a background, she tells me how she is was always interested in history; in fact that was her initial major in college. She thinks her profession is fascinating because she gets to learn how to work with databases and electronic devices. The interesting thing I learned from her was that the medical library had their own website and last year, it got 9.2 million hits. My favorite part of the interview besides getting the chance to met her was gaining some information about "Anthropology." At first, I didn't know what it meant so I asked, and she told me "It was the study of humans." A cool fact I learned from her: Chimpanzees are known to have 99.4% correlation with human genes. This made me think about evolution and natural selection. So it was nice to be able to learn about new things, and to interview Judy and Kenny. There's a website you can go to find out more information about Anthropology which is http://anthropology.net/.

  
  

Meeting with Rick & First shooting of the concussion video

For today, I had a meeting with Rick, who is charge of Access and Delivery Services in the evening. He's been working at the Yale Library for about 20 years, and for the most part he enjoys it. He is also does customer service. Also, he mentioned the team atmosphere here; everyone is always supporting and interacting with each other. Then, I got to meet some of the staff at the circulation desk. I even got to be a shadow for the people in charge of finding articles and delivering them to library library users or external customers. It was pretty informative and neat because Velma showed me how they deliver these articles using different software programs. After that, I got to work with Jeffrey again on the concussion video. The place where we decided to shoot at was at the Harvey Cushing Center where the brain tumors are displayed. I managed to get through the whole process of rehearsing. The video idea became movie making, because you have do many takes and memorize your script in order to perfect the video. In addition, Charlie showed me a cool website called: http://burn-studios.audiotool.com/. This website allows to make your own electronic sounds or music files. It gave me idea to maybe use that in the concussion video. In concluding, this day was fun becauseI again got to try something new.

First Day at the Medical Library & Cushing Center

My first day at Cushing Center was exciting. I got to meet Charles Greenberg who is the coordinator of curriculum and research support. First I received a basic overview of the chili internship. Then, I got to meet the library staff, and I received a tour of the library which was very informative and interesting. I got to see how books were organized for efficiency. My favorite part of the tour was visiting Harvey Cushing's collection of brain tumors; it was interesting to see actual brain tumors from his patients and to read about these brain tumors. After the overall tour, I had to come up with interview questions. I even had the chance to interview Mr. Greenberg. From my interview with him, I can conclude that Mr. Greenberg is passionate about his career, and he enjoys teaching. Also, he favors a collaborated teamwork because more things can be accomplished. The people he works with is what makes his work more worthwhile as well as the students he teaches. As you can see, my first day couldn't have been any better, I gain a lot of knowledge about the library as well as the staff that worked there.

LAST DAY!!!!!!

Today is my last day at the CHILI Yale Internship. I just would like to thank everyone who took some time off during their busy day to chat with me. This has been a really great experience. Before starting this internship, librarians were just people, boring people, who find books for you, but now I know that librarians are the ones that connect the information to the world. As for medical librarians, they are the ones who connect doctors to the information they need to cure patients. I had a wonderful experience, a special thanks to Mr. Charles Greenberg for this wonderful opportunity.

Diane Turner

Today I had the opportunity to meet with Diane Turner. She is the head of the human resources for the Yale Library. She has been working at Yale for 32 years. Most of her job involves hiring people and providing counseling to the ones that are getting laid off. She is also responsible for staff training and human relations. She loves to learn and interact with people. The difference between the Medical library and the other libraries is the fact that they deal with life and death situations. The characteristics needed for her job are: respect, communication skill, and sound judgment. I really enjoy my time with Diane. She is a wonderful person.

Day with Denise

Today I interviewed Denise. She started out getting a masters degree in American History. Because of her lack of interest in teaching, she earned her library degree and started working at Smith college as a librarian for 3 years. She worked at Connecticut College managing a small department for 1 year. Currently she has a job share position, half time. Now she had been working at Yale Medical library for 5 1/2 years. Denise works as a liaison program coordinator. One of the things she does is write monthly Liaison email messages for the other liaison staff to send to the department they are working with. Denise works with the Cancer Center, the Anesthesiology Department, and Comparative Medicine. One thing she loves about her job is the flexibility and the environment. One of the things that she had learned while working here is that it ok to admit when you do not know something. The characteristics needed for her job are: Self confidence and the art of persuasion.
Today I learned that working with people who like you and that you like can really make your job easier.

15-feb-2011

Today I had a demonstration of how the book scanning works. Kelly and Kristen are working on the Medical Heritage Library project, collaborating with other libraries to get rare old books onto the internet so anyone can use them. One reason that this is a great idea is because it helps students and researchers all over the world. They can also use it when they need to. The book scanner has three cameras ( see the Youtube video below). The special thing about the book scanner is automatic but you need someone to make sure the machine is doing all the pages one by one. In a normal day if all the electronics are working properly the staff can probably do 1800 to 2100 pages an hour depending on the condition of the book. If the book is old and not in good condition, it may take longer.

Matt is the Medical librarian for the School of Public Health and also the director of technology . As a librarian he makes information available to Public Health students and teaches them how to acquire, organize and apply information to health problems. He deals with the administrative aspect of Academic Technology. Throughout the years he had spent working at Yale, Matt has learned a little bit of everything. He believe that librarians are the bridge that connect patients to health providers.

Meeting with Janene Batten

Today I Interviewed Janene Batten, she went to Southern Connecticut State University. After earning her degree she worked for 3 years at a hospital library. When I asked her how the hospital library was different, she told me it was not that different but the hospital library was inside of a hospital. She later started working at Yale Medical library. She is the Nursing Librarian for the School of Nursing and currently supervising the Medical Historical Library. As a nursing librarian she works with students, teaching them how to find information and she also worked closely with nursing faculty on the Curriculum Committee.
Since November, as the acting Historical Medical librarian, Janene finds information, answers question and works in the administration. She enjoys learning about Harvey Cushing , the father of neurosurgery.

Today I learned that they are many careers within one career. I also learned that sometimes knowing history can help you to understand the modern world.










An old book from the Historical Medical Library.

Afternoon with Jan and Lei

Jan Glover work at the Medical Center in Portland, Maine for 11 years. Then came to work at Yale. She been working there for 23 years. She is the only person so far that I interviewed who decided in high school that she wanted to become a librarian. She went to University of Rhode Island to get her MLS. Jan is a typical public services librarian: her job is to educate new students and staff about the resources of the library. She also works on systematic reviews, when a group of scientists evaluate the accuracy of many research results. Jan really like her job because it teaches her a lot about medicine. One of the things she is doing now is creating a tour for the Cushing Center, and she is surprises about of how much she is learning about brains.

Moments later I chatted with Lei Wang. One of the things I like about Lei was how passionate he is about his job. He is a instructional design librarian. He translates tasks such as accessing library information online into short movies, making them available to everyone. He is also a library liaison for neuroscience and making sure they receive the information they need. One of the coolest things about Lei's father is that he has a library at home in China with more than 10 thousand books, including his own online catalog, to make it easier for him to find books. To be a Instructional design librarian you need to have curiosity, to have the courage to try new things, and have good customer services skills.

Afternoon with Regina and Lynn

Today I interviewed the Yale Medical Library director Mrs. Regina K. Marone. She had been working at Yale for 32 years. After high school she worked for a phone company for 5 years. Then she went to SCSU, where she majored in Library Science. As a library director she gives advice,writes reports, and works with the Yale donors. To work as a medical director you need to have a good sense of curiosity, have good communication skills and also like to work with people.



Later that afternoon I also interviewed Lynn Sette, a reference librarian. Lynn teaches classes and does marketing and liaison activities. She teaches classes to staff and students to make sure they are aware of the library resources. For marketing she organizes events, makes brochures, sends email and online invitations to the students for the events that are being held at the library. In her liaison responsibility she works with two departments: Dermatology and Pediatrics. She sents them information about new library offferings, such as new journals, books and articles that are publish in their fields.

Today I learned that creativity is sometimes required in a profession. Also, always try to make a difference in the world whenever it is possible. Lastly I learned that as a woman make sure you can take care of yourself so you do not have to depend on a man. Becoming a professional with a career can help with that.

Afternoon with John Gallagher

I spent the afternoon with John.He is the deputy director for the Medical library. He said when he started working as an evening supervisor for the library, he only worked with books. Now he works with books and electronic library resources.

The Yale Medical library has about 9,000 journals and millions of articles on library user computers. To find these articles or journals, an electronic index like Pubmed and Scopus is being used. If the library does not have an article or journal, an Interlibrary loan staff would help find it.

Vermetha, one of the Interlibrary loan staff, would use a national catalog of library holdings like docline and OCLC to find it. This is very similar to any kind of library. If someone is looking for a book at a local library and does not find it, the librarian will look at other libraries to find the book that the person is looking for and borrow it. Vermetha stated that when she started working at Yale 14 years ago, she sent all the requested articles via mail; today she sends them through Email. This demonstrates that technology spreads information quicker and faster.

Today I learned that a library is supposed to be a quiet and inspiring place.I also learned that medical librarians have a role in patient care and research. The big problem regarding medical librarianship is lack of recognition for important tasks that are often invisible.