The Carla J. Funk Health Sciences Fellowship debuted spring semester of 2022, bringing the power of philanthropy, librarianship, and the health sciences together under one umbrella. Donor Carla Funk and inaugural recipient Heidi Yarger have spoken several times, finding delight in their special relationship. But what led up to the fellowship being given? Who is the donor and how did she decide to give money for a health sciences fellowship?
Alumna Carla Funk served as the executive director of the Medical Library Association (MLA) from 1992 to 2015. “I wanted to support the profession that supported me,” Funk says plainly when asked why she established a fellowship. Funk believes medical librarianship is of vital importance, so much so that even in retirement she is active on the board.
“I wanted to donate to libraries in general, and IU libraries specifically because that was the beginning of this; because that's where I started my library journey.” Funk came to Indiana University in the late 1960s after receiving her bachelor’s degree in psychology from Northwestern. She arrived as a student wife and secured a job in the library order department. “I really enjoyed working there,” she shares.
Funk participated in the transition from Franklin Hall, where the old library was, to the brand-new Main Library, as Wells was known then. She decided to work part-time and get her Master of Library Science (MLS); after all, as she points out, “The library school was inside the library, so it was very convenient.” Funk remembers her time in Bloomington fondly and is grateful everything worked out so well.
Graduating in 1973, Funk moved to Illinois, working in several public libraries. In the early 1980s, she started at the American Medical Association (AMA) in Chicago, working first in the library and eventually becoming the director of the Medical Student Services Section. In 1992 Funk became the executive director of the Medical Library Association. As the fellowship page explains, “She was responsible for planning, coordinating, and executing the association’s programs and services, including its educational opportunities, publications, and legislative activities. She expanded and advanced roles for health sciences librarians, she increased scholarships to library school students with a special emphasis on underrepresented minorities, and she expanded research fellowship opportunities.”
In addition, Funk helped create Libraries Without Borders. She won numerous awards both in the United States and abroad. The MLA established the Carla J. Funk Governmental Relations Award, which recognizes medical librarians who collaborate and engage with governmental officials. In 2016, the IU Department of Library and Information Science, which now resides in Luddy Hall, honored her with the 2016 Distinguished Alumni Award in Library Science.
“It’s been a fascinating journey,” Funk says. “Learning the things I’ve learned and interacting with the people I've interacted with -- it really gives me a full appreciation of what my profession does.” Carla J. Funk is proud of the medical librarian profession.
In 2018, Funk was introduced to Pete Rhoda, executive director of development of IU Libraries. Funk thought she would simply give IU Libraries money, they’d buy books, and that would be it. However, Rhoda began sending Funk information on the teaching and research footprint IU Libraries was embarking on, especially in relation to the Sciences Library. Looking back on it, Funk feels learning about the research mission and teaching activities of IU librarians was crucial to the development of the fellowship.
“Pete (Rhoda) was great throughout this journey, connecting me with people, sending me links to things that were going on, and what kind of things were happening as we worked through what it would be that I was donating to.” Rhoda also introduced her to the IU alumni circle in Chicago, which she enjoyed.
When the pandemic hit, they had started formulating the fellowship. “Pete (Rhoda) kept sending me links with all the activities of the library, both national and global.” Importantly, he connected Funk with Jennifer Simms, Head of the Sciences Library. Rhoda would write criteria and send them to Funk who would then comment on the document. Changes would be made, but in the end “It was really very well done.”
The resulting fellowship is open to upper-level undergraduates and graduate students studying at the Luddy School of Informatics, Computing, and Engineering with a focus on health-related fields. The paid, one-semester fellowship fosters collaboration and support between the Bloomington Regional Academic Health Center (RHAC) at the hospital and the schools supporting it. The goal is to facilitate the accurate sharing of information via the lens of an academic library.
What I'm hoping is that the Fellows will make a lasting contribution to the field through their service, research, and innovations. ~Carla J. Funk
“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’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.
