Grace and Harold Sewell

Memorial Fund

The goal of The Grace and Harold Sewell Memorial Fund (the Fund) is to increase librarians’ identification with medical, pharmaceutical, and health care professionals. Medicine for the 21st 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.

2007 Learning Partnerships Ramping Up!!!!

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

We are currently soliciting applications for hosts for our 2007/2008 Learning Partnerships.  Host organizations will present a learning environment, a series of activities, and access to organizational leaders which will allow the librarian 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 librarian will participate in team settings designed to utilize the librarian’s skills and knowledge in non-traditional ways. Immersion is the goal and expanded knowledge the anticipated result for both partners.    To read about past Learning Partnerships, click here.

Librarian applications will be available early in 2007, with a deadline for application of April 15th.  Please visit our website in January for the application and information on how to apply.

Key 2007 Learning Partnership Dates:
 

    Host Applications Due: November 15, 2006
    Librarian Applications Available: January 2007
    Librarian Applications Due:

April 15, 2007
    2007/2008 Recipients Announced: Late May 2007
 

Host Application Process

Please contact Claire Bishop to initiate the application process or if you have any questions. 

Once contact with The Sewell Fund has been initiated, applications and all attachments must be emailed to <name> no later than November 15, 2006.

Download Host Application for Learning Partnership

The Sewell Fund Trustees anticipate funding one or two Learning Partnerships to begin in 2007. Learning Partnership grants will be announced in May 2007.  Funding is for no more than a 12-month period with no ongoing funding implied.   

After reviewing your proposal, you will be contacted to further discuss the proposal.  If you would like to read about the application process for librarians, click here.

The purpose of the Learning Partnerships is to place experienced librarians within leading health care organizations in order for both partners to gain a better understanding of how best information sciences can be effectively applied in each environment. The Fund believes that this experience will facilitate a bridging of cultures resulting in a more creative and effective application of information science in the health care arena. 

Anticipated Outcomes from our Learning Partnerships

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Librarians should identify with their clients rather than look at clients’ needs merely intellectually from the library/information services perspective.

bulletLibrarians 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.
bulletLibrarians 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.
bulletBecoming an “informationist” (2) in a particular area is valid for those librarians whose personalities and training are “more specialist than generalist.”
bulletHosts, 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.
bulletHosts should be more facile with the newer information technologies,
bulletHosts should be better able to formulate queries or analyze problems that require a search for information in their solution.
bulletHosts 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