Future Plans of the 2011-2012 NLM Associate Fellows
The National Library of Medicine (NLM), the world's largest medical library (www.nlm.nih.gov), in Bethesda, Maryland, is pleased to announce the future plans of its 2011-2012 class of Associate Fellows. The Associate Fellowship Program (AFP) is a one-year postgraduate training program with an optional second year. This competitive program is designed to provide a broad foundation in health sciences information services and to prepare librarians for future leadership roles in health sciences libraries and health services research. In fact, many leaders in those fields, in the US and Canada, point to the Associate Fellowship Program as their career "launch pad." This talented and diverse group will end its first year at NLM in August 2012.
Bethany Harris will soon be starting her new position as Research Librarian for the Health Sciences at the University of California, Irvine in August 2012.
During the NLM fellowship year, Ms. Harris worked on projects that included researching best practices for creating digital training on environmental health and toxicology resources, analyzing consumer health questions to create a taxonomy for new question-answering technology, and investigating and annotating mutation nomenclature to aid in the development of a novel mutation text mining tool.
Ms. Harris received her Master of Science in Information (MSI) degree from the University of Michigan in 2011. While completing her degree, she worked as a University Library Associate at Taubman Health Sciences Library, where she provided instruction and reference services and participated in an inter-departmental chemical informatics research team. Prior to graduate school, Ms. Harris spent several years managing a university genetics lab and had previously worked as a pharmacy technician at Lawrence Memorial Hospital. Ms. Harris received her Bachelor of Science degree in Ecology and Evolutionary Biology from the University of Kansas. While at KU, she participated in two National Science Foundation (NSF) Research Experiences for Undergraduates programs and worked as a research assistant in a quantitative genetics lab.
Michele Mason-Coles will be spending the second year of her fellowship at the Jacob D. Zylman Health Sciences Library at Inova Fairfax Hospital.
Ms. Mason-Coles received her MLS from St. John's University in 2011. She received her BS in Community Health Education from Hunter College, City University of New York. While completing her MLS, she worked as a Cancer Information Specialist at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center and interned at the Myra Mahon Patient Resource Center of Weill Cornell Medical College - New York Presbyterian Hospital. Ms. Mason-Coles also worked as a Patient Advocate at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center and New York University Hospital.
During her first year at NLM, Ms. Mason-Coles worked on several projects including legislative tracking, catalogued journal article reprints of seminal authors, created Structured Evidence Queries for Healthy People 2020 national objectives, and conducted an evaluation of the National Network Office's Web based resource, Public Libraries Community Partners: Working Together to Provide Health Information.
Suzy Roy will be spending her second year of the fellowship at the National Institutes of Health Library on the NIH campus in Bethesda, Maryland.
Ms. Roy's projects during her first year at the National Library of Medicine included researching the impact of NLM funded grants, providing journal recommendations for Medical Text Indexer First Line (MTIFL) indexing, testing and providing recommended methodologies for MEDLINE indexing evaluation, and conducting outreach to scientists by teaching Semantic MEDLINE.
Ms. Roy received her MLS degree from Indiana University in 2011 and a Master of Science degree in experimental psychology from Morehead State University in 2005. She has over eight years of neuroscience research experience, most recently at Purdue University in a molecular and cellular biology laboratory. During her MLS training, Ms. Roy was an intern at the Medical Libraries at Franciscan St. Elizabeth Health in Lafayette, Indiana, where she created online library instructional tutorials, provided reference services, and fulfilled DOCLINE requests. Ms. Roy received her undergraduate degree at Keene State College, Keene, New Hampshire, where she majored in experimental psychology.
Jessi Van Der Volgen will spend the second year of the fellowship at the University of Utah Spencer S. Eccles Health Sciences Library.
Ms. Van Der Volgen's projects at NLM included an analysis of search behaviors in LocatorPlus, development of a taxonomy of consumer health questions, participation in the Disaster Information Specialist program, creating a video tutorial for CHEMM, and research in email newsletter communication strategies for MedlinePlus.
Ms. Van Der Volgen received her Master of Library and Information Science (MLIS) degree in 2011 from University of Wisconsin-Madison. While there, she worked as a reference assistant at Ebling Library for the Health Sciences and as a project assistant at the Limnology Library. She also completed a Library and Information Literacy Instruction practicum at UW-Madison. Prior to obtaining her master's degree, she taught high school biology in Beaverton, Oregon, receiving the faculty-member-of-the-year award in 2008 for excellence in teaching. She was awarded a Partners in Science grant for genetics research at the Oregon National Primate Research Center. Ms. Van Der Volgen received her Bachelor of Science from the University of Portland.
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