MLA '12: Symposium

Saturday, May 19, 2012, 12:30 p.m.–5:00 p.m.

CE800 Managing and Revitalizing Your Career as a Medical Librarian

Sponsored by the Hospital Libraries Section of MLA and Library Leadership and Management Section of MLA
Sponsored by Rittenhouse Book Distributors, Inc

Cost: $250 (nonmember, $460)
MLA CE contact hours: 4
Keynote Speaker
Speakers and Facilitators

Successful medical librarians in today’s hospital and academic health sciences libraries must practice proactive career planning for a rapidly changing profession. Every rewarding career will bring ups and downs, and everyone faces career pitfalls and setbacks. Participants of this symposium will focus on identifying which stage of their career they are in; learn how to develop a balance of job responsibilities versus professional activities; understand the consequences of career derailment, stagnation, and burnout; and work with career coaches to reevaluate their paths and make adjustments to pursue a course that reflects who they are and what they want.

The symposium is organized into four program themes: (1) changing librarians’ roles, (2) balancing and transitioning job responsibilities, (3) dealing with career burnout, and (4) avoiding career pitfalls. The symposium also offers professional career-planning tips and advice for librarians at all stages, including new, mid-career, and senior levels. Participants will learn from an expert in the field about the causes of career stagnation and job burnout and strategies for staying energized and focused. A professional career coach will provide practical approaches to enhancing your professional development, including developing plans for transitioning into new jobs and new roles. A panel of senior medical librarians will share individual vignettes, addressing the challenges of achieving work/life balance, transitioning up and down duties, and training up in complex organizations. Attendees will also participate in an interactive exercise to obtain peer advice for successfully changing roles and mapping pathways to new career opportunities.

Keynote Speaker

Heather Krasna

Heather Krasna is a career coach and recruitment professional with over fourteen years’ experience and the author of Jobs That Matter: Find a Stable, Fulfilling Career in Public Service. Jobs That Matter is the first book to cover meaningful careers in both the nonprofit and government sectors and has been mentioned in USA Today, US News & World Report, New York Times, Houston Chronicle, NPR, Idealist.org, Careerbuilder.com, MSN Careers, and many other prestigious ublications. Krasna produces webinars, workshops, and keynote addresses for audiences of up to 800 participants on topics including “Finding the Right Government Career for You,” “Secrets of the Government and Nonprofit Job Search,” “Transitioning to the Nonprofit Sector,” “Personal Brand and Your Online Reputation,” “Advanced LinkedIn for College Career Centers,” “Crafting an Excellent Internship Program: A Workshop for Employers,” and other topics related to job search, career success, leadership, mentoring, networking, and public service. She is a nationally syndicated weekly career blogger for Career Thought Leaders ( www.careerthoughtleaders.com ) and GovLoop ( www.govloop.com ) in addition to her own blog at www.heatherkrasna.com . Krasna is also director, Candidate Services, for the Nonprofit Professionals Advisory Group, where she provides executive coaching and outplacement services to individuals seeking nonprofit sector careers, and director, Career Services, at the Evans School of Public Affairs at the University of Washington, a top-ranked master of public administration program, where she helps students and alumni find competitive positions in public service. She has helped over 7,000 job seekers to find jobs and internships. Krasna graduated Phi Beta Kappa from the University of Michigan and has a master of science in nonprofit management from Milano The New School for Management and Urban Policy, a certificate in organizational development, and a certificate in adult career planning and development from New York University, and has served on several nonprofit boards of directors. In her free time, she enjoys spending time with family and friends and playing folk music on guitar, mandolin, ukulele, and flute.

Speakers and Facilitators

Elizabeth Atcheson

Elizabeth Atcheson founded Blue Bridge Career Coaching to give job seekers and career changers the strategic and marketing tools they need to find meaningful work in a competitive economy. Blue Bridge offers a variety of workshops as well as customized individual coaching on all stages of career development. Atcheson holds a bachelor of arts degree in psychology and a master’s degree in business administration from Stanford University.

Joyce E. B. Backus Joyce E.B. Backus

Joyce E.B. Backus is the deputy associate director, Library Operations (LO), at the National Library of Medicine (NLM), Bethesda, MD. Previously, she served as deputy chief, Public Services Division, where she led the LO effort to develop and release MedlinePlus Connect, linking patient portals and electronic health records to authoritative health information. She has also served as the head of reference and web services, head of the web management team, systems librarian, and reference librarian. She has been with NLM since her 1985/86 Associate Fellowship. During her career, Backus has received several professional recognitions including the Thomson Reuters/Frank Bradway Rogers Information Advancement Award and the Ida and George Eliot Prize from MLA, the Merit Award, the Director’s Award from the National Institutes of Health, the Roger’s Award from the NLM Board of Regents, and, most recently, the HHS Innovates award from the secretary of the US Department of Health and Human Services (HHS). Backus earned her master of science degree in library science from the Catholic University of America and her bachelor of arts degree in sociology and English from Duke University.

Tania Bardyn, AHIP

Tania Bardyn, AHIP, symposium chair, is associate dean, University Libraries, and director, Health Sciences Library, at the University of Washington–Seattle. She has organized programs for the American Library Association (ALA) on leadership and building planning topics, most recently on designing specialty commons. She has published articles in Library Leadership & Management, Journal of Hospital Librarianship, Medical References Services Quarterly, and Computers in Libraries. Her research interests include a wide variety of management issues, qualitative needs assessment, practical and innovative uses of social technologies that will improve the quality and efficiency of library service, and library interiors and furnishings. She is a member of MLA and ALA, and chairs a committee in the Library Leadership & Management Association (LLAMA), Buildings and Equipment Section. She completed the Association of Academic Health Sciences Libraries (AAHSL)/National Library of Medicine (NLM) Leadership Fellowship Program. She holds a master of library and information science degree from the University of Western Ontario–London.

Colleen Cuddy , AHIP Colleen Cuddy, AHIP

Colleen Cuddy, AHIP, is the director of the Samuel J. Wood Library and C.V. Starr Biomedical Information Center at Weil Cornell Medical College, New York, NY. Ms. Cuddy received her master’s of library science from Rutgers University and holds a master’s in American and English literature from New York University. She is a Distinguished Member of the Academy of Health Information Professionals and has served as chair of the MLA Medical Informatics Section. Ms. Cuddy is currently the president of the Library Information Technology Association (LITA). She has been a National Library of Medicine (NLM)/Association of Academic Health Sciences Libraries (AAHSL) Leadership Fellow and an NLM Fellow in medical informatics at the Marine Biological Laboratory in Woods Hole, MA. Ms. Cuddy publishes on the use of technology in libraries. She lives with her family in Brooklyn, NY, and considers being a mom her greatest achievement.

Katherine Stemmer Frumento, AHIP

Katherine Stemmer Frumento, AHIP is the director, Library Services, at Greenwich Hospital in Greenwich, CT. Prior to joining Greenwich Hospital, Stemmer Frumento was the library director at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center. She is currently the North Atlantic Health Sciences Libraries chair and the MLA/Hospital Libraries Section Joint Commission liaison. Her other MLA activities include service as Hospital Libraries Section chair (2005), as a member of the Task Force on Vital Pathways for Hospital Librarians Steering Committee, and as the former editor of the Hospital Libraries Section’s newsletter, National Network. Her most recent publication is “The Role of the Hospital Librarian on an Institutional Review Board” in the 2007 Journal of Hospital Librarianship. She also is on the editorial board for Medicine on the Net. Stemmer Frumento is a Dale Carnegie graduate and a Six Sigma green belt.

Charles J. (Charlie) Greenberg, AHIP

Charlie Greenberg, AHIP is the special projects librarian for the Harvey Cushing/John Hay Whitney Medical Library of Yale University. Prior to this recent appointment, he managed curriculum and research support at the Cushing/Whitney Medical Library (1998–2011), as well as reference and media services at the Augustus C. Long Health Sciences Library at Columbia Presbyterian Medical Center in New York (1989–1998). He is currently the secretary/treasurer for the International Cooperation (ICS) Section of MLA and is also a former chair of both the Educational Media and Technologies Section (EMTS) and Public Services Section (PSS) of MLA. Greenberg was an AAHSL/NLM Leadership Fellow in 2002–2003. In 2004, he launched an open access journal, Biomedical Digital Libraries , with the publisher BioMed Central, which was also collaboration with his Association of Academic Health Sciences Libraries (AAHSL)/National Library of Medicine (NLM) Leadership Fellowship cohort. Greenberg was a member of the 2006 National Program Committee (NPC) for MLA ’06 in Phoenix and was elected to the 2008 MLA Nominating Committee. He formerly coordinated the activities of an Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS) medical library partnership grant to introduce underrepresented minority high school students to health sciences librarianship and informatics from 2005 to 2009, and he continues to coordinate high school internships at the Cushing/Whitney Medical Library. In 2010–2011, he was awarded a National Networks of Libraries of Medicine Regional Medical Libraries subcontract for the Cushing/Whitney Medical Library to mentor high school students to produce their own thematic teen health education videos called Healthflicks ( www.youtube.com/healthflicks ). As a part-time professional educator, Greenberg has taught library classes and continuing education for more than twenty years on topics ranging from cognition and interface design to public digital archives. In 1994, he was recruited by the Hospital Authority of Hong Kong to teach hospital librarians how to use Internet health sciences resources. Since 2007, he has taught a medical librarianship course for the School of Library and Information Science at San Jose State University. In 2008, he was added to the roster of Fulbright Senior Specialist educators and was invited to present a medical digital library course to librarians and researchers at Yerevan State Medical University and Republican Scientific Medical Library, Republic of Armenia, June 16–July 1, 2008 ( ysmuvisit.blogspot.com ). Greenberg promotes open access for biomedical resources through his blog ( openbiomed.info ) and contributes regularly to Educational Media Reviews Online (EMRO). In 2011, he was invited to join the Board of Directors for the Networked Digital Library of Theses and Dissertations (NDLDT) ( www.ndltd.org ), having launched and maintained the collaborative project to put Yale University School of Medicine student theses online in an institutional repository. Since 2003, Greenberg has presented papers at the international gatherings of NDLTD in international academic settings such as Australia, Scotland, Germany, Sweden, South Africa, and Peru (September 2012), learning about global academic best practices for electronic theses and dissertations and making many international friends. Greenberg earned his master’s degree in education (1995) at Teachers College Columbia University and his master’s degree in library science (1981) at the University at Albany, State University of New York. He had four-year experiences working in both a public and academic law school library before finding and sticking with his health sciences information career.

Pat Hawthorne

Pat Hawthorne is director, Library Organizational Development and Human Resources, for Emory University Libraries in Atlanta, GA. She is currently serving as vice-president/president-elect of the Library Leadership & Management Association (LLAMA), one of the divisions of the American Library Association. In 2002, she co-chaired the Association of College and Research Libraries (ACRL) ad hoc task force that produced the white paper, Recruitment, Retention & Restructuring: Human Resources in Academic Libraries. She was a selected participant in the 1994 Texas Accelerated Library Leaders (TALL) Texans Leadership Development Institute and the 2001 University of California–Los Angeles (UCLA) Senior Fellows Program. She has written, presented, and taught on topics such as strategic human resources management, career planning, and succession planning and management. She holds a master of science degree in library science and a master of arts degree in adult and higher education, and is certified as a senior professional in human resources (SPHR) by the Society for Human Resource Management.

Lorri Zipperer

Lorri Zipperer, cybrarian , is the principal at Zipperer Project Management, in Albuquerque, NM. Zipperer has been in the information field for more than two decades, the majority of which time she has been in the alternative librarianship area as an embedded information professional, project manager, and consultant. She held several non-library-centric information positions at the American Medical Association prior to joining the founding staff at the National Patient Safety Foundation (NPSF) in 1996 as its information project manager. While there, she applied her expertise to the structure and scope of the NPSF’s Clearinghouse, discussion list, literature awareness, media, website, and publications initiatives. Zipperer currently works with clients to provide guidance on patient safety information, knowledge sharing, project management, and strategic development. She has recently led projects in patient safety educational tool development, publication evidence identification, and organizational knowledge access improvement. Zipperer currently serves as the cybrarian for the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality's (AHRQ’s) Patient Safety Net . She published an article in Quality and Safety in Health Care on opportunities for librarians to partner with clinicians to improve patient safety. She was recognized with a 2005 Institute for Safe Medication Practices “Cheers” award for her work with librarians, libraries, and their involvement in patient safety. She has initiated and published two national surveys of librarians on their roles in patient safety work to map the evolution of those roles over time. Zipperer's expertise was highlighted in the June 2009 Medical Library Association policy on the role of librarians in patient safety. She has launched blogs , online groups, and communities of practice to enable sharing of information and knowledge to facilitate safety and quality improvement among her peers.

Zipperer’s workshop development and facilitation efforts focus on bringing multidisciplinary teams together to explore vision and create action to support it. Her commitment to understanding how systems thinking affects knowledge and information management culminated in several outputs to generate innovation and improvement in the melding of these disciplines. Zipperer was a 2004–2005 Patient Safety Leadership Fellow, and in that fellowship, she explored how information and knowledge transfer behaviors affect a learning culture. She has participated in research to explore the process of knowledge sharing both at the bedside and with clinical research teams. She has designed and co-facilitates an interprofessional workshop on knowledge sharing in hospitals. In 2011, Zipperer contributed chapters to core library management publications on knowledge sharing work for medical librarians and systems thinking as a strategic development approach. Next on the horizon are two collaborative texts for multidisciplinary audiences to explore the impact of knowledge, information, and evidence on patient safety and how tacit knowledge can be reliably shared to improve health care quality.

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