When did you first start working in a health library?
I started as the Faculty Librarian for Health Sciences and Medicine (HSM) at Bond University in January of 2020.
How did you join health librarianship?
The position for Team Leader, Electronic Services at FSS became vacant while I was working in a similar role in the Queensland Police Service library.
What was your previous employment background, prior to health libraries?
I had previously worked as a reference librarian (back when we had reference librarians!) for the Law Library at Bond. Before that, I worked in a few other teams for Bond Library Services. I started in the circulation/document delivery team. I had a short stint in the Copyright & Scholarly Publications team, and I have worked as the project office for the Library-led implementation of Ex Libris Leganto at Bond.
How do you describe your current position?
My current position is very versatile! As the sole librarian for HSM, I get to do a wide range of activities, from maintaining Leganto resource lists, HSM LibGuides and providing literature searching and referencing support to students in undergraduate through to higher degree research programs. Several health sciences subjects have a systematic review project as the assignment, and I give a lot of support to students in those subjects for the design, translation, and execution of their search strategies.
What do you find most interesting about your current position?
The challenges that arise when I am helping students to develop their systematic review searches are very interesting. The student's research topics are so varied, and each has its unique quirks to work through. Explaining information management concepts so that students can quickly understand and apply them is a fun activity in problem-solving. For example, at some point I started referring to subject heading terms as being similar to hashtags. This explanation seems to help bridge the gap between what students are familiar with and the new concept of subject headings systems.
What has been your biggest professional challenge?
I had some pretty big shoes to fill coming into the role after the previous HSM Faculty Librarian, David Honeyman. I wanted the HSM staff and students to continue to enjoy the high level of Library services provided by David. Upskilling in the first year of my role was my main challenge. I was able to find a few good resources to help during that period, and I was lucky to call on David for help.
I took some courses and read books as self-guided professional development. Here is my list of particularly helpful resources:
Courses:
Books:
I have been fortunate to seek guidance from Justin Clark (Senior Research Information Specialist, Institute for Evidence-Based Healthcare, Bond University; Cochrane Information Specialist). Justin has been extremely generous with his time in answering questions I had about systematic review searching and introducing me to his academic colleagues at Bond's Institute for Evidence-Based Healthcare.
What would you do if you were not a health librarian?
I have always been interested in graphic design and web development. If I had not studied librarianship, it would have been interesting to get into software development, as it is an evolving field and focuses on technical skills.
What is your greatest achievement?
It is hard for me to pinpoint the greatest achievement. I have worked hard to consistently prioritise the needs of the HSM Faculty's students and staff in my day to day work, and to me, this is the cornerstone of my role as a Faculty Librarian.
I am quite proud of my work as the project officer for the Leganto project. I was part of the project from beginning to end; from the initial literature review I conducted in digital asset management, creating the Leganto LibGuides, teaching staff to use the software, lots of software testing and juggling project management responsibilities. Being part of that project team was a great experience; I had the unique pleasure of working with many academic staff from each faculty at Bond and professional staff from IT Services and Bond's Office of Learning and Teaching.
Before the library, while studying for my undergraduate and master's degrees, I worked part-time jobs in retail. I think those experiences helped develop my customer service skills.
Do you have a favourite website or blog?
I found a lot of helpful information about searching from Amanda Wanner's blog 'Expert Searching: Not Your Mother's Search Strategy' – particularly around the value of PMIDs to help develop and analyse a search strategy.
What is your favourite non-work activity?
I always enjoy learning how to do something new, and lately, I have been learning about illustration.
I also love playing electric bass. I was part of a local Gold Coast band for a few years, which was great fun, and now I am working on slowly filling in the many gaps in my musical knowledge!
What advice would you give to a new member of HLA or a new graduate information professional?
I think it is essential to attend as many professional development days/webinars/conferences as possible. The HLA organise excellent professional development activities. There are so many roles in libraries depending on the organisation's size and type, whether it is a public, academic or a special library. By joining in professional development activities, new grads may discover an exciting role that, as a student, they didn't even know existed!
I would encourage new grads to say yes to any library-related projects or secondments that come their way - you can learn so much more about our industry through these types of experiences.
My third tip doesn't need to be mentioned, as anyone reading this article has already discovered JoHILA :)