Two Library Science program students, Teresa McGinley and Matthew Noe, and alumnus Robert Shapiro II were awarded first place by the Medical Library Association Midwest Chapter for their research poster entitled "Information Access and State Public Health: Missed Opportunity or Miscommunication." The poster was presented at the 2015 MLA Midwest Chapter meeting.

Shapiro (far left) discusses the "State Public Health" research poster; McGinley (center) with her poster "Why You Should Be Happy With Modern Medicine;" and Noe (far right) with his poster "Graphic Medicine and Medical Libraries."

McGinley spoke with UK SIS about their research project:

"Matthew and I are graduate student interns at the Medical Center Library at UK; Robert acts as our supervisor, mentor, and sounding board. Robert actually came up with the idea to look at what resources state libraries are offering their state public health departments, but was lacking the man-power to manually scrape each of the state library websites. This is where Matthew and I came in. We divided up the scraping between the three of us, and Robert put together a survey to send out to the directors of each state library. The survey supplemented our findings, as well as providing usage statistics and services we may have missed. Ultimately, we are trying to address the overlap in information access and services between what is provided at the state-run level and what is being offered by the medical library community at large. If state public health departments are being provided all these resources by their state libraries, then the medical library community may be duplicating effort in providing access, services, and outreach. We are hoping to present at the MLA conference in May."

McGinley also commented on the experience of being at the conference and presenting research, saying, " Presenting at the Midwest MLA Meeting was really exciting – it was the first professional conference for Matthew and me. We were both lucky enough to receive the Student Outreach Award from the Greater Midwest Region National Network of Libraries of Medicine, which allowed us to attend the conference at no cost. We also had the opportunity to present our own posters; Matthew’s was titled “Graphic Medicine and Medical Libraries: A New Opportunity“and mine was “Why You Should Be Happy With Modern Medicine: An Inventory of Antique Medical Artifacts from the University of Kentucky’s Medical Center Library.” Robert fielded most of the questions for our "State Libraries & Public Health Information Access: Results from the Greater Midwest Region State Libraries" poster. The conference was an eye-opening to see what other health sciences librarians are doing in their libraries, and it was great to have the chance to network with veterans in the field."

McGinley and Noe are interns at the UK Medical Center Library and  have also instructed courses in the Composition & Communication sequence at UK offered by Instructional Communication & Research. Robert Shapiro II is an alumnus of the Library Science program from 2000 and is the Public Health Librarian and academic liaison to the College of Public Health for the Chandler Medical Center Library at the University of Kentucky.

UK SIS congratulates Shapiro, McGinley and Noe for their recent honor and wishes them the best as they continue their research efforts in the Health Information field.