I am Matthew Noe – a librarian. What does that mean exactly? Don’t librarians just sit around all day, shushing people, reading books, and being miserable to anyone that interrupts their daily routine? Did you feel the sarcasm there – because that’s a trait of most librarians in real life, outside of the disturbing portrayal we often receive in book and film.
What it means to be a librarian is as varied as any profession can possibly be. Some of us are public librarians, working to ensure that our communities have access to both informational and recreational materials, regardless of social standing. Others are academics, working to both provide support to educators and students in higher education, while pursuing their own research agendas in highly interdisciplinary ways. Then there are the archivists…
Me? I’m a medical – or health sciences – librarian. My primary responsibility is to the community of medical students, practicing physicians, and researchers that make up the University of Massachusetts Medical School – providing them with access to information, reference services, and training on topics ranging from evidence-based medicine to EndNote.*
Like many academics, I also have my own research agenda that relates to my work in medical librarianship – graphic medicine. This research interest is the primary driver for this blog, as it will serve as a place to collect and share news, research, and book (reviews) relating to the use of comics in healthcare – an area that remains relatively untouched by librarianship. My hope in collecting this information is that other librarians will be inspired and build collections, create resources, and engage their communities with comics in medicine. See, the name of the blog makes sense after all!
My intention is to update this at least once a week going forward, though I suspect at the outset there will be posts more regularly than that, as I push out the slurry of ideas that I have been collecting…
…seriously though, my desk looks like a post-its factory exploded.
In the meantime, I spend a great deal of time keeping up with the comics, librarianship, and medical world via Twitter – follow me there to see my shorter, more frequent thoughts at @NoetheMatt.
*There is, of course, much more to librarianship than these quick blurbs – particularly if you acknowledging the inherent political nature of librarianship.
Matthew– I am so glad you are starting this blog. It will be of benefit to others in our field who don’t know much about the topic and will generate interest in a new area of scholarship for medical librarianship. Bravo!
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What do you mean “Then there are the archivists…” whatcha tryin’ to say about me Matthew?
But seriously, super excited for your blog, I’ve been playing around with one that I had to put together for a public history course, hoping to turn it into a nice place aggregate my own thoughts with published literature and articles that combine public history with my specialty of archives/libraries. Look forward to reading what you have going on I think your graphic medicine collection is going to be awesome!
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Hah, don’t fret Morgan. I trailed off with archives because while there are absolutely similarities between libraries and archives, I’m not convinced they are THE same. It’s a topic I want to think more about and post thoughts on down the road – the concept of circulation alone marks a huge difference!
I’m sure you have much more refined thoughts on this subject than I do!
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GOOD START WILL BE USEFUL FOR RESEARCHERS
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