Getting a Start at HSLS

HSLS routinely provides internships to MLIS students from the University of Pittsburgh’s School of Information Sciences. This semester we welcome two students.

Stefanie Allen, from Philadelphia, Pa., received her BA from Mount Holyoke College. She designed a special major for herself, International Public Health and Development, which included classes such as Medical Anthropology and Health Psychology. With her interdisciplinary interests, Stephanie quickly learned the importance of library research skills and decided to pursue an MLIS. Stephanie is interning in the Reference Department through the Partners Program, a partial tuition scholarship program which matches interests of students with opportunities at institutions such as HSLS, Carnegie Library of Pittsburgh, and KDKA-TV.  Thus far, Stephanie has worked on various projects including weeding the collection at the Moulis Children’s Library at Children’s Hospital and comparing journal overlap between CINAHL and PubMed.  Stephanie hopes to work with consumers looking for health information and is considering applying to graduate school for public health upon completion of her MLIS degree.

stephanie-and-katrina_crop-mod32

Katrina Kurtz, from Reading, Pa., received her BS in Molecular Biology and English Literature from the University of Pittsburgh, with a minor in Chemistry. While completing her undergraduate degree, Katrina worked in a plant lab and volunteered at Magee-Womens Hospital of UPMC, shadowing a genetic counselor. Upon graduation, Katrina decided that she would prefer to support researchers with their experiments rather than carrying them out herself, and enrolled in the MLIS program. Katrina is interning at HSLS in the Molecular Biology Information Service Department, where one of her tasks is to update the Online Bioinformatics Resources Collection (OBRC), which contains annotations and links for bioinformatics databases and software tools. Katrina graduates this April and will be pursuing opportunities in libraries or corporations where she can use both her science and information retrieval skills.

~ Melissa Ratajeski

Posted in the 2009 Issue