2015 MAC Award for Professional Excellence by a New Health Sciences Librarian
The Mid-Atlantic Chapter of the Medical Library Association is very happy to announce that inaugural winner of the 2015 MAC Award for Professional Excellence by a New Health Sciences Librarian is Katherine Downton.
Katherine has been a health sciences librarian for about 5 years and is a Distinguish Member of AHIP. From the nomination for this award: “She started working at University of Maryland Baltimore (UMB) Health Sciences and Human Services Library (HSHSL) with years of experience working in academic libraries, but with very little health sciences expertise. Considering the amount of work she has done, and with all that she has accomplished, it might be difficult to believe how new to the discipline she is.
Katherine is one of two librarians responsible for working with the faculty and students of the UMB School of Nursing along with the nursing staff of the University of Maryland Medical Center. The school is very large, and Katherine and her colleague, Emilie Ludeman, are kept very busy teaching classes, offering workshops and consultations for them. The librarians in the Research, Education and Outreach Department, where Katherine works, are also responsible for collaborating with faculty on systematic reviews and providing research impact services, among a variety of other duties. Katherine’s knowledge, leadership skills, and work ethic contribute in large part to our successes.
Katherine’s service to the profession includes serving on two MLA juries, chairing the MLA Membership Committee, serving as secretary for Mid-Atlantic Chapter and chairing the MAC Membership and Recruitment Committee. She is also active in the Nursing and Allied Health Resources Section, where she serves or has served on the Programs, Membership, Honors and Continuing Education Committees. She has presented posters and papers at these organizations’ annual meetings.
Katherine’s work also extends to the professional nursing organizations who have invited her to give presentations. Examples of sessions she has offered include Locating the Evidence: Medical and Legal Literature, via webcast, to the American Association of Legal Nurse Consultants National Educational Conference, and Simply Put: Improving Patient Outcomes through Health Literacy, at the Maryland Nurses Association conference.
At UMB, Katherine served as co-chair of a very successful mHealth Symposium, which was funded by a National Network of Libraries of Medicine grant that she was awarded. As a member of the Steering Committee for the University of Maryland Geographic Information Systems (GIS) Interest Group, she applied for and received a training award from the National Network of Libraries of Medicine that covered the cost of providing a two-week GIS training course for the campus and local public health community.
Katherine’s CV lists her accomplishments, but doesn’t include the praise she receives regularly from colleagues, faculty and students that she works with, or the outstanding performance reviews she receives.”
Congratulations, Katherine!