Embedded Librarian to Join College

July 29, 2016

Katherine Eastman, MLIS, will join the College of Community Health Sciences as an embedded librarian on August 1. An embedded librarian works in a clinical space, which will allow the College’s Health Sciences Library to integrate itself into direct patient care and collaborate more frequently at the point of care with physicians, students, residents and researchers. Eastman will attend morning rounds and rotate through clinics at University Medical Center, says Nelle Williams, director of the Health Sciences Library. Eastman will also provide on-call or one-on-one research services, provide services and instruction in clinic while faculty, students and residents see patients, complete literature searches, fulfill health information needs of patients or families that may be discovered during rounds, develop library subject guides and collaborate with the College’s Institute for Rural Health Research. Eastman received her master’s degree from The University of Alabama. She served as library director at Brown Mackie College in Birmingham, and was a librarian at the Alabama College of Osteopathic Medicine. The embedded librarian position is supported by a $50,000 gift from Dr. and Mrs. John and Cindy Markushewski. Dr. John Markushewski graduated from the College’s Family Medicine Residency in 1983. The CCHS Embedded Librarian Fund also allowed the College to join the Family Physicians Inquires Network, which supports evidence-based medicine and clinical scholarship for family medicine physicians. In addition, the College recently invited Dr. Brenda Seago, MLS, director of libraries at Augusta University in Georgia, to visit the College’s Health Sciences Library as a consultant. Much of the consultation was centered around the new embedded librarianship, Williams says. This is the second CCHS project that the Markushewskis have supported. Their first gift enabled the Health Sciences Library to create a physical and digital special collection. “The College of Community Health Sciences gave me a well-rounded residency education,” Dr. John Markushewski says. “It provided the foundation and experiences to prepare me for Air Force family medicine and emergency medicine in remote areas. Cindy’s love of the library tipped our interest to fund this project.”