As October's National Medical Librarian Month nears a close, I had the chance to talk with Banner Health Library's own Amy Nadell about librarianship. We hope you enjoy getting to know our wonderful team mates. It's definitely an exciting time to be a librarian!
What aspects of medical librarianship do you find most fulfilling?
I love learning about new things, searching for the needle in the haystack, and providing information to people at their time of need. Being employed in a profession that requires me to explore the vast amount and array of resources available because of the internet is both wonderful and deliciously overwhelming.
I enjoy sharing and making information manageable for our customers. As a librarian and distributor of health information, I feel it is not only our duty to provide verified resources but also to teach our customers to critically appraise the information they are consuming.
How Would You Define a Librarian in Today’s Information Landscape?
Librarianship is one of the oldest jobs in written history. Recently, I was learning about the Dead Sea Scrolls which, according to archeologists, were part of large collection of scrolls intended for use by scholars. Sounds like a library to me! I feel honored to be part of a profession that has been around for centuries.
Librarians have persisted for so long because we continuously adapt to what information is, how it is stored, and how to distribute it. This is exciting and keeps my job lively; however it also means that I struggle to teach customers to look beyond their old assumptions about librarians. The librarians at the other end of your computer screens are different from the librarian(s) from our childhoods or college years in many ways.
I am not a librarian because I love reading. To the contrary, I struggled with dyslexia as a child which kind of takes the joy out of reading; yet I have adapted. I am librarian because I love organizing information and there is no shortage of opportunities in this world to organize information. From this vantage point, librarians have a lot more to offer businesses of all types.
Did you know there is a wine librarian, a textile librarian at Patagonia, a media librarian at Disney, patent librarians, librarians who build taxonomies, and now AI librarians? Librarians set standards for digital information exchange. The message I am trying to get across is please do not pigeon-hole librarians. Our skillsets goes far beyond conventional expectations.
How Do You Spend Your Time Outside of Work?
I love to be outside. I love hiking, biking, kayaking. I love slot canyons and waterfalls. I also love to go mushrooming every summer and skiing every winter. I enjoy alternating between novels and nature books. I would like to develop a few new hobbies and I am taking suggestions! I am preparing for the next stage of my life where I am not monitoring curfew and making family dinners. My kids are almost out of the house (hopefully).
Photo Credit: Librarian, Amy Nadell, pictured holding an Oyster Mushroom in the Sierra Ancha Wilderness
0 Comments.