Medical Center Library interns gain experience in Washington, D.C.

Teresa McGinley and Matthew Noe, graduate student interns in the Medical Center Library, spent their Spring Break in Washington, D.C. gaining professional experience by working at the National Library of Medicine (NLM). Both Teresa and Matthew were part of the Alternative Spring Break program.

Teresa worked within the National Center for Biotechnology Information (NCBI) division reviewing applications for publishers that are interested in adding their journals to PubMed Central, a free archive of biomedical and life sciences journal literature. NLM is working to standardize this process so they can evaluate multiple publisher applications using preset review questions. They need to evaluate the review questions to ensure they are appropriate and logical. This experience provided Teresa with the opportunity to learn about predatory publishers and publication ethics standards.

Matthew worked within the Bibliographic Services Division evaluating and creating documentation for the NLM Learning Resources Database. Upon completion, this database will be the home location for all of NLM’s learning resources ranging from interactive tutorials to Medical Library Association webinars. This experience provided Matthew with the opportunity to create user documentation making use of his reference and instructional experience skills.