The Winding Career Path of One Medical Librarian

As many of us know, it’s medical librarian month, and a colleague said to me, “You’ve had a pretty winding career path— you should write a post about it!”  So, here goes… My first medical librarian connection wasn’t officially as a librarian at all, but as the data request epidemiologist for Public Health – Seattle & King County.  People from all walks of life and for all sorts of purposes would contact me to get help with finding data… and those consultations included teaching, consulting, exploring, and sometimes a lot of laughter.  From the gentleman who wanted to know his own life expectancy (luckily he had 10 more years) to other health departments who wanted analytic software trainings, the work was never dull! But it also didn’t generate revenue for the health department, so as that job contracted, I looked for ways to keep connecting with people around their information needs. Reader, I went to library school! And loved it!  What took me so long?  But also, how could it take so long to find a job?  Because I needed to stay in Seattle, I was ready to take any librarian job, but was really glad when a medically-focused one opened up at Group Health (now Kaiser Permanente- Washington).   The three years I spent there were invaluable and exciting— I got good at clinical searching, I came to understand the information clinicians needed and the constraints they operate under, and I also managed a small library as a solo librarian...
Source: Dragonfly - Category: Databases & Libraries Authors: Tags: Blog career consumer health medical librarian Medical Librarians Month outreach Source Type: news