National Medical Librarian Month Impact Story: Molly Knapp

Submitted by: Molly Knapp

Working behind the scenes, it’s easy to be overlooked, but health information professionals play a pivotal role in healthcare, research, and education. Collaborating with medical librarians directly influences the quality of patient care and the advancement of medical knowledge.

This week we have a story from Molly Knapp.

Early in my career I worked on building digital collections at the LSU Health Sciences Center New Orleans. One of the collections was the full run of The Star, a bimonthly newsletter published by the patients of the U.S. Public Health Service Hospital in Carville, Louisiana. (From 1894 to 2005, Carville was the only national leprosarium in the continental United States.) 20 years later, an NPR reporter discovered that her husband’s grandfather was whisked away to Carville in the 1920s or 1930s and wrote a book, Carville’s Cure, which was getting some attention. My colleague Jen Lloyd sent me this screenshot from the author talk. Seeing the pages of the original newsletter that we digitized long ago being transformed into new knowledge and stories still today was really affirming. This is why we do the work.

In honor of National Medical Librarian’s Month, we will share stories about how the work you do has made an impact.