2018 Institute Participants
The Research Training Institute (RTI) is held in Chicago at the University of Illinois–Chicago in the summer. Participants selected for the institute are chosen by a selective submission process with an emphasis on a desire to learn, enthusiasm for research, and the quality and promise of their proposed research projects.
Janene Batten, orcid.org/0000-0003-0121-525X, is the nursing librarian, Harvey Cushing/John Hay Whitney Medical Library, Yale University, New Haven, CT. The medical library is the library for the Yale-New Haven Hospital, and Batten can be found helping clinical nurses discover evidence to support their practice. She works with nursing faculty and graduate and doctoral students at the Yale School of Nursing. She has extensive experience teaching evidence-based research principles through course-integrated instruction. Batten is faculty for the annual “Supporting Clinical Care: An Institute in Evidence-Based Practice (EBP) for Medical Librarians,” held annually in Denver, CO. She also is faculty for the “Australian EBP Librarians Institute,” held annually in Australia. Batten’s area of research interest is to discover the information needs and the information-seeking behaviors, of nurse practitioners in school-based health centers (SBHC).
Amelia Brunskill, orcid.org/0000-0003-3266-6678, is an information services and liaison librarian, Library, University of Illinois–Chicago (UIC), where she serves as the liaison librarian for the College of Applied Health Sciences. Prior to joining UIC, she managed collection development and electronic resources at DePaul University and served as the liaison librarian for the sciences at Dickinson College. Her current research interests center around the accessibility of library resources and services for patrons with disabilities.
Kathy Davies, orcid.org/0000-0002-8380-1430, is the associate director of research, Greenblatt Library, Augusta University, Augusta, GA, where she teaches information resources and library services to researchers and serves on the Translational Research Facilitation Committee. She provides embedded services to the medical school, teaching in the student curriculum. Davies has been a health sciences librarian for over fifteen years focusing on teaching evidence-based information research skills. She completed National Library of Medicine (NLM) courses on National Center for Biotechnology Information (NCBI) resources and data management. Davies served as project manager and instructor for NLM’s “Georgia Biomedical Informatics Course.” She has published articles with library and clinical faculty colleagues. Her research interests are health sciences education, embedded librarianship, and research data management.
Helen-Ann Brown Epstein, AHIP, FMLA, orcid.org/0000-0001-6506-7634, is the informationist, Health Sciences Library, Virtua Health, Mt. Laurel, NJ. Epstein delights in her work as the solo informationist of a virtual library with an ambitious clinical rounding schedule. Her more than forty-year professional journey has taken her across the United States and back to the New York City area. Along the way, she has managed a hospital library, trained for the National Library of Medicine (NLM) and a commercial vendor, taught and practiced evidence-based care, was a clinical librarian at an academic medical center, and taught health information at the Pratt Library School. Epstein is extremely proud to be an MLA Fellow. She adores her husband, Larry, and orange tabby, Marmelade. Her current research efforts center on different ways to run a meaningful journal club.
Carrie Grinstead, AHIP, orcid.org/0000-0003-0400-7667, is the regional medical librarian, Library, Providence St. Joseph Health, Burbank, CA. She received her master’s of library and information science from the University of British Columbia in 2014. In 2017, she completed a graduate certificate program in clinical informatics through the Oregon Health & Sciences University. Grinstead loves hospital librarianship and especially enjoys supporting nursing research. When she is not at work, she spends most of her time reading, practicing yoga, and hanging out with Daniel, her partner, and Pickle, their rat terrier. Grinstead’s primary research interests are the information needs and information-seeking behavior of hospital nurses. She is also very interested in the establishment of nursing research infrastructure in community hospital environments, including Magnet and non-Magnet settings.
Margaret Hoogland, AHIP, orcid.org/0000-0002-9932-3605, is the clinical medical librarian, Mulford Health Sciences Library, University of Toledo, Toledo, OH. Previously, she worked in a hospital library, corporate library, association library, and two academic libraries. Her research interests include working with faculty, staff, and students to identify, understand, and, where appropriate, integrate technology seamlessly into lectures and courses to improve the learning experience for participants. Although she has completed a few survey studies and participated in a usability study, she is excited to learn about the proper way to design and conduct research projects, analyze data, and, in the future, publish articles.
Melissa K. Kahili-Heede, orcid.org/0000-0003-0619-9850, is the information services and instruction librarian, Health Sciences Library, John A. Burns School of Medicine, University of Hawaii–Manoa, Honolulu, HI. Her research interests revolve around medical student and physician information-seeking behavior, education technology, and methods for improving information literacy instruction. She graduated with her master’s of library and information science from the University of Washington.
Liz Kellermeyer, orcid.org/0000-0001-6115-4343, is the biomedical research librarian, Tucker Medical Library, National Jewish Health, Denver, CO, an outpatient research hospital. She is the outgoing president of the Colorado Council of Medical Librarians and the Hospital Information Section editor for Medical Reference Services Quarterly. Kellermeyer lives in Denver with her husband and two sons. Her current research interests focus on the physician’s role in promoting medical library resources to their patients.
Mellanye J. Lackey, orcid.org/0000-0003-0574-7894, is the associate director, Education and Research, Eccles Health Sciences Library, University of Utah–Salt Lake City. In her role, she leads efforts to promote research reproducibility, coadministers a systematic review core, and provides leadership and strategy for her department. Her research interests for the RTI are the impact of health sciences libraries transitioning from physical buildings to virtual spaces. She is excited to learn research methods to address her numerous questions about how to show the value of librarians and libraries. When she is not at work, she enjoys knitting, gardening, and hiking with her partner and their adorable greyhound. Ask her to see the pictures!
Alicia Lillich, orcid.org/0000-0001-8377-0489, is the Kansas outreach and technology coordinator for the National Network of Libraries of Medicine, MidContinental Region. She is based out of A. R. Dykes Library at the University of Kansas Medical Center–Kansas City. Her research interests include emerging technologies, citizen science, and online communities.
Elisabeth (Mueller) Nylander, orcid.org/0000-0003-2621-6080, is an instruction and liaison librarian for the School of Health and Welfare, Jönköping University, Jönköping, Sweden. Nylander is a Texas native living out her happily ever after in Sweden. With over twenty years in the teaching profession and a recent master’s in digital libraries and information science, she is passionate about understanding and encouraging the development of lifelong learning in increasingly complex contexts (e.g., cultural diversity and new literacies). In her current practice, she provides support for both students and researchers. Her current research interests include the digital impact on education and the development of lifelong learning and new literacies.
Robin O’Hanlon, orcid.org/0000-0003-0869-4118, is the head librarian, Krausz Library of Podiatric Medicine, Temple University, Philadelphia, PA. Prior to this, she was the assistant library director for outreach and public services at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai in New York City. She graduated from University of Toronto’s iSchool in 2009. She is currently pursuing a second master’s degree in criminal justice at the John Jay College of Criminal Justice. Her research interests include information-seeking behavior amongst health care professionals, scholarly communications, and the link between incarceration and literacy.
Ariel FitzGerald Pomputius, orcid.org/0000-0003-1731-4666, is the health sciences liaison librarian, Health Science Center Library, University of Florida–Gainesville. She graduated from the Syracuse University iSchool in 2015 and became a librarian at the University of Florida in the same year. Her liaison groups cover several departments in the College of Medicine, the medical class of 2020, and the bachelor of health science students. Pomputius’s primary areas of research include the use of graphic medicine to support medical education and health literacy efforts, new methods for providing access to information resources through emerging technology and library collections, and the role of a library in promoting health sciences professional wellness. When she is not working on research, she enjoys hiking in the Ocala National Forest, kayaking and diving in Florida’s many springs, and playing board games.
Rebecca Roth, orcid.org/0000-0001-8598-6726, is the clinical engagement librarian, Medical Library, Herbert Wertheim College of Medicine, Florida International University (FIU)–Miami. Rebecca Roth joined FIU in October 2017. She earned her master’s of science in library and information science from Drexel University in May 2017 and, while in school, interned at the University of Pennsylvania is Biomedical Library. Since starting at FIU, she has been assisting community-based faculty and residents at FIU’s affiliated hospitals and clinics, helping physician assistant students with their evidence-based medicine courses, updating LibGuides, assisting faculty with literature searches, and teaching patrons about citation management tools. Her current research interests are encouragement of the practice of evidence-based medicine and the usability of information tools in the clinical setting.
Elizabeth Suelzer, orcid.org/0000-0002-1809-8080, is the Application Support Analyst for Advocate Aurora Health. In this role, she implements, maintains, and looks to improve the technologies used by Advocate Aurora Library to ensure that library users can get access to the information. Prior to this, she was in the roles of Scholarly Communications at the Medical College of Wisconsin Libraries in Milwaukee, WI. She graduated with an MLIS from the University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee. Her research interests include retractions and citation analyses, and systematic reviews. Suelzer is a Fellow of the 2018 MLA Research Training Institute where she performed a citation analysis looking at the characteristics of articles that cited a retracted publication. Her research was published in JAMA Network Open.
Holly Thompson, orcid.org/0000-0003-0795-2699, is the information services librarian, Wilson Dental Library, University of Southern California–Los Angeles. She graduated from the Palmer School of Library and Information Science in 2011 and went on to become the inaugural health sciences library fellow at the New York University (NYU) Health Sciences Library from 2012–2013. Thompson was an NLM associate fellow from 2013–2014 and spent the second year of her fellowship at the Welch Medical Library, Johns Hopkins University, from 2014–2015. She went on to be an informationist at the National Institutes of Health (NIH) Library from 2015–2018. Her current research interests include assessing long-term learning outcomes, instructional strategies for adult learners, and teaching in an online environment.
Whitney A. Townsend, orcid.org/0000-0002-4749-9369, is an informationist, Taubman Health Sciences Library, University of Michigan–Ann Arbor. In addition to working in medical education and with clinical departments, Townsend has been a member of numerous systematic and scoping review teams; instructs on systematic review searching and methodology for residents, fellows, and faculty; and is an instructor for the systematic review workshop funded by the Greater Midwest Region of the National Network of Libraries of Medicine, “Systematic Reviews: Opportunities for Librarians.” In addition to her instructional roles and systematic review integration, Townsend’s research interests include the effectiveness of librarian-developed systematic search strategies, instructional interventions for systematic review skill development, and competencies for librarians involved in systematic and other reviews.
Mary White, AHIP, orcid.org/0000-0002-5318-4224, is the global public health librarian, Health Sciences Library, University of North Carolina–Chapel Hill (UNC-CH). White provides consultation, training, and research support for students, faculty, and staff affiliated with the UNC-CH’s Gillings School of Global Public Health. White is also a part-time doctoral student in the UNC-CH School of Information and Library Science. She has held adjunct lecturer positions in health informatics at Johns Hopkins and Drexel Universities, and worked as a knowledge management librarian with the North Carolina Translational and Clinical Sciences (NC TraCS) Institute. She has volunteered and worked in local and federal disaster response. White’s general research interests include public health, health communication, health behavior, global health, disaster management, mobile health and electronic health, and public health informatics. Her doctoral research interests include public health student education and information behavior, information search processes, and information use.
Natasha Williams, AHIP, orcid.org/0000-0003-4033-7436, is the user services librarian, Harriet F. Ginsburg Health Sciences Library, University of Central Florida–Orlando. She is responsible for creating various library promotional and informational displays and materials, marketing and promoting library events and services, and assessing the needs of and the services provided to the different groups of patrons that utilize the library space. Williams holds both a bachelor’s degree in studio art and a master’s degree in library and information studies from Florida State University, as well as a certificate in information architecture. Her current research interests include outreach efforts in medical and academic health sciences libraries.
Laura Zeigen, AHIP, orcid.org/0000-0003-2008-0565, is a liaison librarian, OHSU Library, Oregon Health & Science University (OHSU)–Portland. Zeigen’s work currently focuses on research and instruction, particularly ways that information literacy skills and development of evidence-based practice competency can be integrated into health professional curricula. She previously worked for a number of years as both the OHSU Library systems librarian and web manager/web developer, during which time she conducted many rounds of usability testing of the website and investigated users’ experiences with library services and resources. She currently works closely with programs in public health, nutrition, and OHSU’s physician assistant program. Her current research interests include investigating what curricular interventions most strongly support development of information literacy, health professionals students’ lifelong learning and evidence-based practice habits, and how curricular instruction in these areas can be best be aligned between academic and practice, particularly for graduate students and practitioners in public health.