Funk shares her experience

“We had a lovely conversation via Zoom,” Funk describes her first discussion with Yarger, the first Funk Fellow. “I told her about some of my experiences as a medical librarian. You get yourself into these kinds of situations,” she says, “which makes it fascinating. You also work a lot with public librarians who are trying to do consumer health.” Funk stresses that librarians everywhere – from corporate librarians to law librarians – have partnerships. “We all work well together, collaborating.”

One of the stories Funk tells is about when she was working at AMA. “We're in the reference department when we get a call from one of our members, a surgeon. He had come out of the operating room and said, ‘I want you to look up -- and this was when the internet was just kind of starting to take off -- I want you to look up for me in this particular journal, this article, and I want you to read me the findings.’ We did that, and he thanked us. He said, ‘This will help,’ and he hung up the phone,  went back to the operating room, and completed the surgery.”

She offers scenarios as evidence of how medical librarians provide essential information to health professionals.  In another situation she shared with Yarger, a doctor doing clinical trials failed to utilize the medical librarian and a patient died. “The reason being -- he missed the article that was in print only format that would have told him what would happen if he gave certain medication to this type of patient.” Instead, the doctor did his own research. Funk shares, “I was director of the Medical Library Association at that point, and it had a huge impact on the profession. The institution the doctor was at lost its federal funding for a year. That institution was required at that point thereafter to have a health sciences librarian as part of any clinical trial, any study like that. They had to be consulted so that that would never happen again.”

Funk emphasizes that every kind of librarianship has important moments and epiphanies, but with the health sciences, there are lives on the line. “People think they can simply go on the internet for answers, but it’s not that simple,” she states. “They aren’t trained. You've got to be able to filter information.” She uses COVID information as an example. “I think COVID has hopefully been a reminder to people how important your sources are. It takes somebody who knows how to find good information, accurate information, and for people to listen to them.”

Another example Funk gives is of a colleague from another library association. He was working on a presentation and became ill. Sick at home, he decided to do his own medical research. He told Funk that he didn’t find the critically important information until about the 100th entry. She asks, “How many times do you do a search or go on to the web, and you come up with the first 30 things or 10 things or 15 things?” Like her colleague, you must be persistent as an information specialist.

Funk shares her hope

Funk’s hope for The Carla J. Funk Health Sciences Fellowship is to attract students into the field of health information sciences. “I hope the fellowship encourages others to come into this field,” she explains. Noting that it is an evolving and dynamic field, she adds, “It’s going to be renamed 100 times given that the profession is ever-changing, but still people need quality information for good healthcare.” With Yarger and Rhoda, she spoke about the need to be flexible. “I'm hoping that this philanthropy will bring in different people with different kinds of backgrounds to the profession.” She continues, “The fact is people need information, and in the health sciences they are going to rely on health information specialists.”

“What I'm hoping is that the fellows will make a lasting contribution to the field through their service, research, and innovations.” To make her point, Funk describes an example using COVID: “A lot of the publishers don’t have open access. Doctors and researchers have to pay money to get information. The National Library of Medicine brought the medical publishers together with the library during COVID, and they all agreed any COVID research would be open access no matter what their journal policy was.” Their innovation and willingness to open up to everyone made a difference, according to Funk. “I think they helped us combat the virus and come to some kind of resolution and vaccine faster by freely sharing their information,” she adds.

Funk exclaims, “What a great information exchange! So that's another thing the profession can do by bringing this information together and getting it out in a variety of ways. And don’t forget, this particular branch of librarianship can help save lives.” Knowing that the profession will continue to grow and adjust to the constantly changing environment, Funk hopes to show people that health sciences librarianship is worth it in a myriad of ways. “I’ve never met a more service-oriented group of people in my life.”  

As for the fellowship, Funk looks forward to seeing it grow. She enjoys working with Rhoda, who has already reached out to other health sciences librarians from IU. Funk says her IU colleagues are “incredibly bright and have far more ideas.” The momentum and interest expand as we prepare for more health sciences fellows in the future.