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.

On March 28, my third day as a CHILI intern, I shadowed Sarah Burge who works in preservation. My experience was great and I learned a great deal about old books and works of art. I also learned interesting facts about the preservation of books. While shadowing Sarah, I learned about her life long passion for art and book preservation which led her to her dream job at the Yale Medical School Library.

It was also amazing to see the transformations of medical theories and information over long periods of time. The recordings of medical breakthroughs and old hygenic posters were very interesting and I was also able to see the impact of the Industrial revolution of the United States on the medical books. The older books in the library were carefully and intricately made, while the books produced during industrialization were flimsy and were produced quickly in large quantities. As a result, the older books are able to withstand the conditions of the library much better than the more modern books. Sarah's job is very demanding considering that she not only controls the environment of the books, but she also checks the condition of the thousands of books in the library. Although her job is demanding she finds it extremely rewarding to see the conditions of the books improve as a result of her work.

My first week as a CHILI intern was great and I look forward to the next two weeks.

This week was my first week as a CHILI intern. I began my internship on Monday, March 24 and my first day was great and informative. I began my day with a thorough tour of the library and with introductions to a few library staff members. After my tour I worked on a list of interview questions which I would later use during interviews. Then, I sat in on a class of Mr. Greenberg's and I learned a great deal about using blogs and also about an interesting program called PubMed. I was also introduced to a website by the name of voicethread, which I hope to use for a project in the future.

My second day as an intern was a great deal of fun because I had the opportunity to interview Mark Gentry of Clinical Support and Robin Feather stone of Administration. I learned about their current jobs, their plans for the future, and I was shown projects in which they are currently engaged. Robin Featherstone showed me several exciting projects on which she is currently working, such as licensing and preservation. Mark Gentry gave me an in depth description of his job in Clinical Support. He also told me about his work related trip to Uganda on which he embarked yesterday. I am having a great first week and I will write soon with details of my days as a CHILI intern.

Librarian Specialty: Nursing

On February 8th I also got a chance to meet Mrs. Janene Batten who's been working at the Harvey/Cushing Library for 3 years. She is the librarian that I can personally benefit from the most because she is the nursing librarian who spends part of her time at the Yale School of Nursing. She says that she does alot of teaching to staff and students who have questions aboout software. She loves every aspect of her job but her most favorite thing to do is answering quick questions. She believes that in 5 years from now she will be in the same profession, but her job description will be different, although she would love to still work here. She also believes libraries will exist in the future despite the increasing use of computers because she quotes: "Somebody's got to give it to you," referring to obtaining the correct information and how to use resources. She would encourage me to become a medical libarian by explaining that this could help a specialist because I would have already known the answers to whatever topic or question I was trying to study. Janene was another one of my favorite staff members to interview because she was interested in my educaiton and how I was planning on continuing my education. She attended the college that I have in mind (SCSU) and explained to me that I could come to her with whatever questions I had about the school. Its nice to know that someone else cares about your education and is willing to help you.