Learning Partnerships

Grace and Harold Sewell

Memorial Fund

Learning Partnerships

The goal of The Grace and Harold Sewell Memorial Fund, Inc. (the Fund) is to increase librarians’ identification with medical and health care professionals. Medicine for the 21^st Century underlines the key role of information resources in raising the quality of health care.⁽¹⁾ Librarians experienced in managing knowledge and teaching informatics can supply quality information by becoming ongoing members of the health care team. Immersion in the health care environment is necessary for librarians to understand how health care professionals solve problems individually and through consensus.

Learning Partnerships: Toward New Information Perspectives

"Wonderful program. There are not enough such immersion opportunities for librarians."
– Neil Rambo, UW Health Sciences Libraries, 9/22/06

The Grace and Harold Sewell Memorial Fund plans to fund two, paid, 12-month, Learning Partnerships placing experienced librarians within leading health care organizations for the purpose of both partners gaining a greater understanding of how best information sciences can be effectively applied in each environment. Host organizations will provide a learning environment, a series of activities, and access to organizational leaders which will allow the fellow to more fully understand the nature of the organization’s work, its decision-making processes, the clients served and the health care issues addressed. The fellow will participate in team settings designed to utilize the librarian’s skills and knowledge in non-traditional ways, resulting in a tangible and valuable contribution to the host organization. Immersion is the goal and expanded knowledge the anticipated result for both partners.

The 2007-2008 Learning Partnerships are well underway! The selections were:

	Emily Glenn at Seattle Biomedical Research Institute
	Hugh Kelsey at Johns Hopkins University

Emily Glenn

Emily, Informatics Librarian at the Seattle Biomedical research Institute, will develop strategies for dealing with volume and complexity of scientific resource information and recommend best practices for using technology to streamline information retrieval and the capture of organizational knowledge. Her main projects include creating a virtual index of most useful scientific reference resources for SBRI scientists; supporting best practices in citation management; refining digital desktop management strategies; providing archives and records management leadership; and recommending best usage practices for collaborative tools to foster scientific information interchange. SBRI's focus is on global infectious disease research, host-pathogen interactions, vaccines, and diagnostics. A non-profit organization founded in 1976, SBRI has more than 200 staff members working in research labs in Seattle, WA and field labs in Tanzania.

Emily holds a Masters in Library Sciences from University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, where she focused on archives and records management. Prior to SBRI, Emily was a fellow at the United States Environmental Protection Agency, a technical services archivist at Duke University Medical Center Archives, and a taxonomist/content editor with Microsoft adCenter labs.

Seattle Biomedical Research Institute (www.sbri.org) is the largest independent, non-profit research institute in the United States focused solely on researching the world’s most devastating infectious diseases. The collaborative nature of SBRI links scientists and staff members in a unique and highly productive environment with one common goal: making breakthrough discoveries to lift the burden of global infectious disease. The Learning Partnership project will design a system to collect, synthesize and share research information among the Institute’s scientists.

Hugh Kelsey

Hugh is a librarian and historian of public health. His background includes 3 years as the archivist for the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s (CDC) Public Health Image Library (PHIL). Before being awarded one of two Sewell Learning Partnership opportunities in 2007, he was a member of the Computer Sciences Corporation (CSC) team that designed and implemented the CDC’s National Electronic Disease Surveillance System (NEDSS) Base System (NBS) application in 16 states.

Hugh’s master’s thesis in history was on the topic of the CDC’s Epidemic Intelligence Service, a two-year field epidemiology training program begun in 1951 as response to the threat of biological terrorism.

Johns Hopkins University The Bloomberg School of Public Health, the first of its kind in the country, ranks first among public health schools in federal research support. The school teaches 2005 students a year from 83 different nations, both on-campus and through a nationally recognized distance education program. There are 485 full-time faculty working across departmental lines in alliances of research and action aimed at solving society’s most pressing health problems.

Dr. Lynn Goldman, the Chair of the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health Interdepartmental Program in Applied Public Health (BSPH IPAPH), is leading a team that strives to create and sustain lasting partnerships with the public health practice community by utilizing the resources and efforts of various centers throughout the School. As a portal to professional development and academic training programs, the APH program provides practitioners with access to the most current public health research and information available that can immediately be applied to their public health careers. IPAPH’s affiliated Centers include the Johns Hopkins Center for Public Health Preparedness, Maryland Association of County Health Officers (MACHO), Mid-Atlantic Health Leadership Institute, and the Mid-Atlantic Public Health Training Center. The Program and its affiliates offer avenues for project-based services and training. This learning partnership will extend training and expert reference services to the broader public health practice community served by BSPH IPAPH and in the process capture the questions typically posed by that community to build a knowledge base linking questions with the resources best suited to answer them.

Anticipated Outcomes from our Learning Partnerships

	Librarians should identify with their clients rather than look at clients’ needs merely intellectually from the library/information services perspective.
	Librarians should be advocates for end users to the traditional library staff, assisting the latter in identifying with the clients and gaining a “We” rather than a “They” perspective.
	Librarians should be prepared to improve or extend their services in a variety of ways such as: a) Developing, promoting, and administering programs to satisfy the client’s needs in libraries or information centers, b) as experienced intermediaries, providing improved services directly to the client in any appropriate setting, c) doing research or development on methods of satisfying those needs, e.g. through artificial intelligence in advanced search engines for the client’s use, and d) becoming more comfortable with the familiar specialty could lay excellent groundwork for showing the import of having an information specialist as a member of the client’s team.
	Becoming an “informationist” (2) in a particular area is valid for those librarians whose personalities and training are “more specialist than generalist.”
	Hosts, besides gaining from the improved perceptions and services of the librarians, should have gained a better understanding of the many ways the librarian can facilitate their work.
	Hosts should be more facile with the newer information technologies,
	Hosts should be better able to formulate queries or analyze problems that require a search for information in their solution.
	Hosts should better understand how to analyze their own information needs as a first step in satisfying them. They should then be aware of when the next step will be turning to the library and/or a librarian.

(1) Institute of Medicine. Crossing the quality chasm: a new health system for the 21st century. [Web document]. Washington, DC; Natiional Academy Press, 2001. http://www.nap.edu/books/0309072808/html/).

(2) Davidoff E, Florance V. The informationist: a new health profession? [editorial] Ann Int Med 2000 Jun 20;132(12):996-8.

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Copyright © 2003 Grace and Harold Sewell Memorial Fund
Last modified: 06/07/08