Staff News
PUBLICATIONS
Jonathon Erlen, history of medicine librarian, reviewed Doctor Franklin's Medicine by Stanley Finger, Philadelphia, University of Pennsylvania Press, 2006 in JAMA, 295(11): 1314-1315, 2006. Erlen also published: “Dissertations” in AVISTA Forum Journal Medieval Science, Technology, & Art, 15(1): 78-82, 2005; “Dissertations in the history of pharmacy” in Pharmacy in History, 47(5): 151, 2005; and “Dissertation list” in History of Science Society Newsletter, 35 (2): 11, 2006.
Charles B. Wessel, coordinator of Affiliated Hospital Services, and Nancy H. Tannery, associate director for Information Services, published “Health statistics phobia, part one: the hurdles” in MLA News, Mar;384:1,16, 2006; and “Health statistics phobia, part two: the solutions,” in MLA News, Apr;385:21-22, 2006.
PRESENTATIONS
Leslie Czechowski, curator of manuscripts, presented “What's new at our place: the Thomas Detre collection” on May 4, 2006 at the Annual meeting of the Archivists and Librarians in the History of Health Sciences, Halifax, Nova Scotia.
Nancy H. Tannery, associate director for Information Services, and Charles B. Wessel, coordinator of Affiliated Hospital Services, taught their Medical Library Association continuing education course “Number, Number Who's got the Number, or Who's Counting?: Health Statistics Sources” to 54 participants from the Health Sciences Library Association of New Jersey in Princeton, New Jersey on March 8, 2006.
FAREWELL
June Bandemer, HSLS reference librarian, will retire at the end of June. During her almost 40 years at Falk Library, Bandemer held various positions including assistant director and head of Public Services, assistant director for Access and Administrative Services, and two years as the library’s acting director. She was one of three librarians in the late 1970s to be accepted into an Honors Internship sponsored by the Council on Library Resources and the National Library of Medicine. In the mid-1980s, Bandemer earned a Juris Doctor from the Duquesne University School of Law and is a current member of the Allegheny County Bar Association.
For two years, Bandemer taught the Medical Literature and Libraries course in the School of Library and Information Science at Pitt. She has been a member of the University’s Institutional Review Board for psychosocial research, Faculty Assembly and the chairperson of the Peer Review Committee, University Libraries.
Bandemer is a Distinguished Member of the Academy of Health Information Professionals of the Medical Library Association. She has also been an active member of the Pittsburgh Chapter of the Medical Library Association for almost 40 years. Bandemer was the Chapter’s secretary, Chapter Council Representative and Regional Legislation Chairman.
On June 30, 2006, Alice Kuller ends her 18 year tenure as an HSLS reference librarian. During her time at the University, Kuller initiated one of the first Clinical Medical Librarian (CML) programs in the country. The CML program was designed to provide timely, quality-filtered, knowledge-based information to residents in Internal Medicine and Surgical Oncology. These programs continued until the late 1990s, and the Internal Medicine program has been restarted this year. Alice also served as HSLS liaison to the School of Pharmacy where she provided information literacy instruction to students and assisted faculty with their information needs. At the request of the University’s Institutional Animal Care and Use Committee (IACUC), Kuller has consulted with principal investigators performing database searches required by the U.S. Department of Agriculture.
Kuller has been an active member of the University Senate serving on faculty assembly, four years on the Senate Committee for Elections and one year as its chair, and more recently as secretary and co-chair of the Senate’s By-laws and Procedures Committee.
During her 30 years as a member of the Pittsburgh chapter of the Medical Library Association, Kuller has served as its program chair, chair, secretary, and chapter council representative. In 1995 she received the chapter’s Achievement Award for Role as a Leader and Mentor, and in 1998 she received the chapter’s Librarian of the Year award.
Cecile J. Roberts, HSLS acquisitions manager, will be retiring from the University in June after 32 years at Falk Library.
Roberts came to Pitt after moving to Pittsburgh from Danville, Virginia in 1973. She began in the Falk Library Inter-Library Loan department, and three years later moved into the Acquisitions department where she was responsible for selecting and ordering books and managing payments and relationships with materials vendors. By 1998, she was managing the acquisitions area with a staff of five. Roberts has witnessed the changes in medicine and medical education through the changes in the book collection—“There is more variety now, especially since we became HSLS.” She has also witnessed the growth of technology in the library, with the closing of the card catalog and manual record books and implementation of two automated library management systems.
Roberts is looking forward to some relaxation time with her husband, Clifford, shopping, and perhaps some traveling and volunteer work. She says she will miss her colleagues in HSLS, and the challenge her job offered. Like any good budget manager, she will miss “making it all work out at the end of the year.”
We wish June, Alice, and Cecile a healthy and happy retirement!
