Stacy Brody MI ’18, who earned a fellowship in the Associate Fellowship Program at the National Library of Medicine, an opportunity she discovered through the Master of Information Program at SC&I, said she continues to benefit from her experiences as an NLM fellow today, in her role as a reference and instruction librarian at Himmelfarb Health Sciences Library at George Washington University in Washington, DC.

“Through the fellowship, I learned more about structured literature review methodologies, medical informatics, scholarly communications, and medical information resources, all of which helps me better serve my community and lead my own research!” Brody said. 

Brody said after she saw the description of the role on the SC&I email listserv, she was fascinated by the opportunity.

At the time, Brody said, “I was working on a libguide for Dr. Joyce Valenza’s class, Search and the Information Landscape. The guide was focused on providing health information for new mothers, so I was growing more and more interested in health and information resources.”

Brody, who earned her bachelor’s degree in agriculture and plant science from the Rutgers School of Environmental and Biological Sciences, said one of the main projects that sparked her interest in medicine and health information focused on the uses of plants in treating malaria. The literature research she conducted to align with laboratory work interested her and motivated her to learn more about the distribution of information and the creation of knowledge.

The NLM fellowship opportunity, Brody said, provided her with top-tier leadership development skills, one of her favorite aspects of the program. She said she also enjoyed collaborating with her colleagues in a Wikipedia edit-a-thon, an event in which librarians improve the content on Wikipedia by providing more credible sources to readers on any given topic. Further, Brody said, she was able to develop her skills and understanding of the data and code sharing aspect of scientific publishing during the fellowship. 

“I got a sense of the wide range of work to which librarian skills are incredibly relevant!” said Brody.

During her time as a SC&I graduate student, Brody worked at the Science and Engineering Library, specifically on scholarly communications, which complemented her later work on policy work and the data and code sharing project she completed during her fellowship. 

She notes that the “bread and butter” of her current role are reference and instruction, which she is grateful to have learned in her Master of Information classes taught by Part-Time Faculty Member Emily Drabinski and Professor and Chair Marie Radford.

Discover more about the Master of Information on the Rutgers School of Communication and Information website. 

Photo: Courtesy of Stacy Brody, MI'18