Concurrent 2B: Chat with Librarians….

M.J. Tooey is Associate Vice President, Academic Affairs and Executive Director of the Health Sciences and Human Services Library at the University of Maryland, Baltimore (UMB) where she has worked in various library positions since 1986. She is also the Director of the National Network of Libraries of Medicines Southeastern/Atlantic Regional Medical Library under contract to the National Library of Medicine. She received her MLS from the University of Pittsburgh in 1982 and her Bachelor of Science degree in Education from Clarion State University (formerly Clarion State College). Tooey served as president of the Medical Library Association (MLA) from 2005-2006 and was elected a Fellow of the association in 2009. She has also served on MLA’s Board of Directors and as the Chair of the 2004 National Program Committee for the MLA Annual Meeting held in May 2004 in Washington, DC. In 1997 she received the MLA Estelle Brodman Award as Academic Medical Librarian of the Year. She has served as Chair of the Mid-Atlantic Chapter ond the Public Services Section of MLA.

Eric D. Albright has been the Director of the Tufts University Hirsh Health Sciences Library since August of 2002. At Tufts he has overseen a complete renovation of the library and redefined the role of the library in the school. Previously, he was the Assistant Director for Public Services at Duke University. He has served as chair and member of panels for the American Library Associations Office for Accreditation. Mr. Albright was the Principle Investigator for the Tufts SPIRAL (Selected Patient Information Resources in Asian Languages) outreach subcontract with the National Network of Libraries of Medicine’s New England Region. He is the author of over 80 reviews of books and journals published in Library Journal and the Journal of the American Medical Association.

T. Scott Plutchak has been Associate Professor and Director of the Lister Hill Library of the Health Sciences at the University of Alabama at Birmingham (UAB) since 1995. He received his Masters Degree in Library Science from the University of Wisconsin in 1983, and was a post-graduate Library Associate at the US National Library of Medicine.

From 1999 through 2005 he was the editor of the Journal of the Medical Library Association (JMLA), and presently serves on the editorial board of Evidence Based Library and Information Practice. In 2001 he received the MLA Estelle Brodman Academic Librarian of the Year award, and in 2009, the Outstanding Alumni Award from the University of Wisconsin-Fox Valley.

He is a frequent guest speaker to publisher and library groups on topics ranging from intellectual property to scholarly communication to the future of librarianship, and leads the international librarian rock band, The Bearded Pigs.

Over Elaine Alligood’s career, she’s worked at the National Library of Medicine, NIH, Johns Hopkins, the University of Virginia, Elsevier, Harvard, and the VA. Currently, Elaine is the Informationista at the VA Technology Assessment Program (TAP), a Boston based national VA program for the VA Patient Care Services director. TAP carries out systematic reviews and effectiveness research on current and emerging health care technologies. Active in the local group, Boston Knowledge Management Forum, Elaines current KM interests lie in the application of semantic search to enterprise-wide knowledge management.

Allyson Mower, MA, MLIS is the Scholarly Communications & Copyright Librarian at the J. Willard Marriott Library at the University of Utah. She provides information, tools, and services related to both publishing and copyright. Previous to this position, Allyson worked at Eccles Health Sciences Library where she served as reference associate, virtual reference coordinator, and institutional repository coordinator.

Allyson spearheaded the digitization of the health sciences theses and dissertations at Eccles Library and was co-creator of a copyright permissions tool called University Scholarly Knowledge Inventory System (U-SKIS). Allyson received her MLIS from the University of Washington in 2009 and holds an MA in Liberal Arts from St. John’s College and a BA in American Studies from Utah State University. She was also a Library Journal Mover & Shaker in 2008.

Jean Shipman is Director, Spencer S. Eccles Health Sciences Library and the Midcontinental Region of the National Network of Libraries of Medicine at the University of Utah. Previously, she was Director, Tompkins-McCaw Library at Virginia Commonwealth University. She served as president of the Medical Library Association for 2006-2007 and became a fellow in 2009. Jean graduated from CWRU and Gettysburg College. She has worked in academic health sciences libraries (Johns Hopkins University, University of Washington, VCU), a hospital library (Greater Baltimore Medical Center) and with the Southeastern/Atlantic NN/LM at the University of Maryland at Baltimore.

Jeff Kosokoff is Director of the Edwin Ginn Library and Information Technology at Tufts University’s Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy. He has a BA in philosophy from the University of California at Santa Cruz as well as Masters degrees in library science and the history and philosophy of science from Indiana University. Jeff has been an active member of the American Library Association, especially in the Collection Development and Management section of ALCTS. Before coming to Tufts, he worked in various collections, technology and reference positions at Connecticut College, DePaul University, Harvard University and Simmons College. Jeff also worked as a MetaLib and Primo Implementation Librarian at Ex Libris.

Amira Aaron is currently the Associate Dean for Scholarly Resources at Northeastern University, where she is responsible for collections, technical services, scholarly communication and library technologies. Previously, she was Director for Information Resources at the Brandeis University Library and also worked at Harvard University as the Manager of Digital Access and Content. In all of these positions, she has directed the management and purchase of information resources and related systems and services in all of their complexity. Amira also worked for several years providing library services at various subscription agencies. Her particular interests deal with the transition from print to electronic resources, new discovery systems, next generation public interfaces, scholarly communication, institutional repositories and library standards in this area. Amira is the former chair of the ALA ALCTS E-Resources Interest Group and currently serves as President of NETSL, the New England Technical Service Librarians.