Name: Stefanie Vartabedian

Institution: Phoenix Children’s Hospital          

Title: Medical Library Manager

Brief description of what you do/your responsibilities at your institution.

Assist all medical staff (including fellows and residents) with research needs such as article retrieval, literature searches and training on how to conduct effective searches. I am also actively working on our online library resources such as a new discovery platform and research guides.

Why is MLGSCA important to you?

I’m a very new solo hospital librarian (was a law/federal court librarian for 6.5 years) and having a network of colleagues is very important for professional growth and development as well as navigating in this complex era for hospitals/medical institutions.

Why did you become a librarian?

I knew from a young age that I really liked libraries and always saw working in one as a dream job. Also, since knowledge is power, I sensed becoming a librarian would be a perfect fit for my skills and interests as I love empowering people to gain knowledge and take that knowledge to improve the world we live in.

What was your first library job or professional position?

I volunteered 2 summers while in college to do a substantial backlog of loose leaf filings in a law library. Actual first professional job though was as an HR investigator after graduating from law school.

What is your advice to someone new to medical librarianship?

Name: Myrna Y. Uyengco-Harooch

Institution: Adventist Health White Memorial             

Title: Medical Librarian

Brief description of what you do/your responsibilities at your institution.

I am an EBSCO employee contracted to serve as Medical Librarian for Adventist Health White Memorial. I assist members of the health care team to locate, evaluate and use information, manage the flow of information on action items identified by hospital committees as needing literature reviews, provide newest guidelines and information to update protocols, new standards and toolkits and maintain the historical archives and artifacts of the hospital and provide information as needed.

Why is MLGSCA important to you?

Joining professional organizations such as MLGSCA offers development opportunities and connection with other members in our field. It shows my commitment to the advancement of our profession and through such connection provide valuable assistance and information in my work.

Why did you become a librarian?

Part of my growing up was spent in the library. I wanted to be a investigative reporter searching for answers to a question, and the next best thing is being a research librarian. I love being able to give the right answers to the right person at the right time.

What was your first library job or professional position?

High School Librarian

What is your advice to someone new to medical librarianship?

Name: Carol Schechter

Institution: Providence St.Jude Medical Center                                                

Title: Medical Librarian

Brief description of what you do/your responsibilities at your institution.

I work as a solo librarian at my hospital campus, but I am part of a team of Providence librarians. My role here is to assist all hospital staff with their requests for articles, literature searches, and certification books, primarily for nursing staff. I sit on the research council at my hospital and I am part of shared governance. I am also a magnet ambassador and one of my roles for magnet is reviewing all the APA citations for magnet documents. I’m part of the education department and work with the educators in providing training for nursing staff.

Why is MLGSCA important to you?

I love that I have a community of medical librarians that I can learn from and collaborate with. It’s a great thing to work for a special library and have a organization that supports special libraries.

Why did you become a librarian?

I became a librarian because I discovered out of high school that I loved being in a public library and assisting people with their requests. I liked that every day could be a different experience with different questions to answer and learn from at the same time.

What was your first library job or professional position?

My first job that I consider a professional role was when I worked at an architecture and engineering firm DMJM in Los Angeles. They had a small architecture library with books and slides of their projects. That’s where I first learned to catalog and process books.

What is your advice to someone new to medical librarianship?

Name: Naomi Bishop

Title: Associate Librarian

Brief description of what you do/your responsibilities at your institution.

I support COM-P students, faculty, and researchers with their information needs. My work includes collection development, curriculum support, research support, and teaching.

Why is MLGSCA important to you?

I love MLGSCA because it gives me a community of medical librarians that I can collaborate, learn, and grow with though my career. It is helpful to learn from other universities and hospitals in the region and have a network of colleagues to share ideas and information.

What was your first library job or professional position?

My first library job was a resident librarian at the University of Notre Dame and I worked in the Kresge Law Library and Hesburgh Library. I also got the opportunity to process some archival collections in the Institute of Latino Studies.

What is your advice to someone new to medical librarianship?

Name: Lisa Marks
Institution: Mayo Clinic - AZ
Title: Director of Library Services

Brief description of what you do/your responsibilities at your institution.

I am responsible for the 5 libraries within Mayo Clinic in Arizona. We have 2 staff libraries, 2 patient/consumer health libraries and 1 library for the Mayo Clinic College of Medicine and Science. If you look at the Mayo Clinic logo, the 3 shields represent Practice, Education and Research, the Libraries offer support to all 3 shields.

Why is MLGSCA important to you?

MLGSCA is important to me because it is my local professional organization being a chapter of the larger organization - MLA. I have made many "frolleagues" over the years through MLGSCA and it's been a wonderful opportunity to work with many of them in many different ways.

Why did you become a librarian?

I worked for Los Angeles Public Library (LAPL) throughout college so earning my MLS seemed like the next logical thing to do once I'd earned my Bachelors degree. I had every intention to go back to work for LAPL as a Librarian however, a hiring freeze was in place when I graduated from San Jose State. I needed a job and just fell into medical librarianship and I've been working in this area ever since.

What is your advice to someone new to medical librarianship?

Get involved in this group of terrific folks! MLGSCA is a great place to get your feet wet in a professional association. Ask for a mentor, both locally and at the national level with MLA. Don't be afraid to ask questions - easier said than done, I know - but medical librarians are a great group of people who want to share their knowledge and expertise.

What do you consider to be the most pressing issues or trends in librarianship?

Keeping up with the ever-changing world of technology! Lots of us were concerned about libraries/librarians relevancy when the internet came to be - yes, I've been around that long ;) and now I feel the same about AI as technology is changing again. Having said that, like with the internet, we'll all learn and adjust as we always do and more than likely, down the line, become the place for folks to learn about AI.

What is something you have on your bucket list?

A bit corny I suppose but I'd like to visit all the Presidential Libraries - so far I've been to 6!

What do you do in your spare time for fun, or to relax?

Read, of course, and in the past few years or so, I took up crocheting again. It had been quite a long time but had a good reason to pick it up again - we have a group here making "chemo hats" for our cancer patients so that was my impetus to pick up a crochet hook again.

What is the best thing you have read/watched/listened to recently?

I really enjoy "Somebody Feed Phil" on Netflix. I tend to binge each new season then seem to wait an eternity for the next one! Now waiting on next season of Bridgerton! 

Describe yourself in five words.

Name: Karina Kletscher
Institution: Creighton University, Phoenix, AZ
Title: Health Sciences Librarian

Brief description of what you do/your responsibilities at your institution.

I had the great pleasure -- and challenge -- of launching the Health Sciences Library here on Creighton University's Health Sciences Campus, a satellite campus of our Nebraska-based university. So I do a mix of access services and liaising to our professional programs both here in Phoenix and some in Omaha, Nebraska.

Why is MLGSCA important to you?

MLGSCA has been an important community for me to network with other medical and health sciences librarians. In this role, I started out as a semi-solo librarian (all my library colleagues were in Nebraska!) so it's been fun to learn from and just hang out with other librarians. I never thought I would be in this area of librarianship, so it's been such a great resource to find learning opportunities.

What was your first library job or professional position?

My first paid library gig was as a Research & Teaching Fellow when I was still in my LIS program. It was a training program that solidified my interest in academic librarianship where I learned the ins and outs of library pedagogy, reference and research support, and in-depth reflexive practice on the kind of librarian I wanted to be. I got to work with so many students on a variety coursework or research projects across so many disciplines - it was a ton of fun!

What is your advice to someone new to medical librarianship?

Don't be afraid of what you don't know and never feel silly for asking for help from colleagues in your workplace or associations like this! If you're someone like me who doesn't have a sciences background, starting out or even starting to work with a new discipline can be overwhelming. Librarians poke fun at our own amount of jargon and acronyms, but I think health sciences have us beat! It has been incredibly helpful to talk to other librarians to hear about their journeys, approaches, and resources as well as pay attention to listservs and LIS publications. Honestly, I also love to read other library's LibGuides and watch their YouTube tutorials -- I'm a learner, too!

What do you consider to be the most pressing issues or trends in librarianship?

Vocational awe is always on my mind; I might describe feeling "called" to this work, but I'm always trying to avoid the pitfalls of a helping profession that include scope creep, emotional labor, and burnout. I'm also usually thinking about the invisible labor in our profession, from the processes and labor required to make information and materials discoverable and accessible to health sciences' heavy teaching and/or performing complex searches. As much as I like being compared to a wizard, I have been squeezing in more education to faculty/staff/residents/students during interactions and have actually had some great conversations about it!

What is something you have on your bucket list?

My top two bucket list trips are to 1. backpack throughout New Zealand to visit my favorite fantasy production filming locations, take part in the adventure tourism, and visit their wineries and 2. reverse my immigrant ancestors footsteps to visit the cities and towns they came from along the Baltic Sea, starting in northern Germany and Poland and getting up to Denmark and Sweden.

What do you do in your spare time for fun, or to relax?

I love to read; I'm usually simultaneously reading fantasy and a non-fiction title in whatever has recently piqued my curiosity. I also love to explore vintage markets and have been very slowly teaching myself furniture restoration. I don't have a workshop or a dedicated garage space, so I really have to timeblock these projects and their inevitable messes.

What is the best thing you have read/watched/listened to recently?

I just finished listening to "Why We Sleep: Unlocking the Power of Sleep and Dreams," by Matthew Walker, PhD. I'm fascinated by the neuroscience of sleep and dreams, and this book was an excellent deep dive into the historical and updated research. Walker's arguments and ideas for improving sleep hygiene are so compelling. I also loved his style of writing, which was approachable and a bit snarky. Highly recommend!

Name: Sarah Tillery
Institution: THMEP/TMC Health, Tucson, Arizona
Title: Medical Librarian/CME Administrator

Brief description of what you do/your responsibilities at your institution.

I run our fully online library--I pull articles for healthcare professionals, run literature searches on topics they are researching, and maintain our library website and database. I also handle tracking CME credit and CME applications for our hospital system.

Why is MLGSCA important to you?

I am incredibly new! This is my very first library job out of grad school, and so I am so happy that there is an incredible organization like MLGSCA with many wonderful folks whose wisdom I hope to learn so much from.

Why did you become a librarian?

Miss Coughlan was the librarian at the Bahrain School where I went to first and second grade, and she had an after school library club where we would read, do arts and crafts, and write and perform plays--that club was everything to me, and I still have lots of the books and crafts we did. I had to move a lot as a kid, and one of the consistent things in my life was always the library--everywhere we went, there was a library, and everywhere we went, the library was a safe haven, some place where I could explore everything my heart desired. I pursued art first, but after a bit of growing, I realize that what I really wanted to do with my art and love of writing and stories was doing things like Miss Coughlan did. I want to share my passion, and libraries are the perfect place to do that.

What is your advice to someone new to medical librarianship?

Ask a lot of questions! Connect with people--there are so many cool aspects to medical librarianship I never knew about. I am interested in comic books, and there is a whole world of Graphic Medicine I am just now learning about and exploring. Whatever your passions are, there's a world for it in medical librarianship, I guarantee!

What do you consider to be the most pressing issues or trends in librarianship?

Information literacy. I am incredibly passionate about educating and making sure people understand the information that they are getting, and know how to get that information, and how to vet it. I think that connects many of the big issues in librarianship.

What has been the most interesting project you have worked on?

I have been working on incorporating Graphic Medicine and Medical Humanities into the work I do at my hospital--its still in early stages, but I'm very excited! Currently it just looks like a colorful binder on my desk, but I'm hoping to do very cool things with it.

What do you do in your spare time for fun, or to relax?

Draw, write, play dungeons and dragons and video games, cook, and overanalyze media.

What is the best thing you have read/watched/listened to recently?

Cyclopedia Exotica--a graphic novel about Cyclops living in the real world. Highly recommend!

What are you most proud of?

Even though they are on hiatus currently, I am most proud of my webcomics that I made with my husband, one of which received a positive review from a comic book website we both enjoy--it's silly and small, but it was a great day!