Assistant Professor, Research & Instruction Librarian College of Health Sciences
Newton Gresham Library, Sam Houston State University, Texas
“There is such thing as a database”
Our latest interview features Lisa Connor, a Research & Instruction Librarian whose passion for open data and science has developed throughout her career in industry and academia. She is also a principal investigator for the NIH All of Us Research Program.
In the interview, Lisa offers practical tips for engaging medical students and introducing library resources. She also graciously shares what inspired her to give a compelling TEDx talk discussing how the tragic loss of her daughter led to the development of rare disease treatments. You can find out more in this BMJ Insider interview.
BMJ: What are your primary responsibilities as the Research & Instruction Librarian at Sam Houston State University (SHSU)?
Lisa: My primary responsibilities are to provide reference and information services to students, faculty, and staff. I am personally aligned to our College of Health Sciences because of my background and professional experiences in health sciences. I build relationships in the university community to aid them in meeting their learning, teaching and research needs. I also participate in professional development, scholarly research, and provide service to the university, department, and profession. My position is a tenure track position which means I am a faculty member eligible for tenure and promotion. To achieve tenure, I am required to do scholarly research and have peer reviewed publications. Not all librarians are tenure track and most faculty do not realize or recognize that we are faculty.
I also collaborate with my public services team to support general reference services in-person, by chat, and by email. Students, faculty, and staff or other library users are supported in finding and navigating the print and electronic resources we offer in support of their research or academic assignment. This requires that I have general knowledge across disciplines to provide reference support and instruction.
As a subject matter expert in health information, I also identify opportunities and integrate health literacy instruction for the faculty and students I support. This typically is one-time instruction where I visit a class and let them know where they can find evidence-based health information from library resources or embed in the learning management systems for a course with recorded tutorials or other information. Another important responsibility of my position is building and maintaining the library collection by recommending and ordering resources and in selecting items for withdrawal from the collection. Along with this I promote our library services, collection, and expertise to my faculty in health sciences.
BMJ: Does the library work with the Academic Success Center to promote its resources, or have you found any other impactful methods of getting faculty and students to understand the wealth of resources provided by the library?
Lisa: The Academic Success Center became part of the library building during the pandemic as the library was renovated on its first and second floors of the four-story building. The Academic Success Center has many resources such as tutoring which we might refer students to. The Academic Success Center brings in students to the building which then exposes students to library resources. I personally do not have a role in collaborating with the Academic Success center, although my director does.
The most effective way I have found to raise awareness of library resources and services is to listen and engage with faculty. I schedule appointments with the dean, chairs, or department heads to let them know I am the health sciences subject librarian and inform them of the resources and services we offer to them and their students.
We are a minority serving institution and many of our students are first generation college students. One way we interact is through a first-generation student mentoring program from our First-Generation center. This center is embedded in the Academic Success Center and is in the library building. This is voluntary on my part, but I mentor one to three students a semester. We are asked to meet with the first-generation students a few times each semester and connect them with navigating resources supporting their individual need. This is a wonderful way to support students in understanding the library resources.
BMJ: Do you have a particular approach to trying to relate to medical students?
Lisa: Generally, students today are different because, as they say, they are born digital, which is amazing but also complex. They are used to looking everything up on their phones because information is so readily accessible in so many ways from social media sites and the internet. I am genuinely concerned they get health information from TikTok influencers or from YouTube. Most have never had library instruction or realize there are resources the library provides that are not accessible from the internet through subscription services. Very few understand the concept of a database or evidence-based medicine.
I ask if they know what a database is, and the majority do not have an answer. When I demonstrate that there are over four hundred databases at our institution, they are simply amazed. I help them understand what a database is in a form they can relate to. I explain that databases are like subscription services that you cannot access unless you are a paid subscriber just as you cannot get access to Netflix content unless you pay the subscription fees. The library offers the same. I emphasize the library offers the information you need that is credible and what professors are looking for and what you need to use to be successful academically. And that all this comes with no distracting pop-up ads! Feedback from instruction is often a statement such as “Wow I didn’t know about the databases the library has.” It is incredibly rewarding when students have this recognition.
Most students I support are undergraduates, so they typically do not need an extensive understanding of all available health and medical resources. Across the disciplines I always emphasize access to PubMed, the National Library of Medicine’s biomedical literature and life sciences resource. PubMed is freely and globally accessible, so it is important for them to learn at least one credible source of health information so that no matter what career path they take, they know where to locate trusted information. I do adapt to each discipline by instructing on the use of specific resources that are commonly used by a discipline. For example, CINAHL (Cumulative Index of Nursing and Allied Health Literature) is a primary resource for nurses and nursing students. CINAHL indexes the authoritative literature for nurses and is a resource nursing students should be aware of.
BMJ: You began your career in various science roles with industry leaders, Merck, and Clarivate Analytics. How did this professional experience influence your approach to library science in academia? Do you have any tips for your colleagues regarding how to work better with industry professionals?
Lisa: My professional experiences influence me and my approach in academia. It has been my experience that industry outpaces academia in some ways.
Merck was a wonderful place to work as it was a most admired company as designated by Forbes. I learned about evidenced based medicine as it was my role to understand and support drug development and marketing of cardiovascular medicines. It really was an amazing experience to learn about the drug development process and the complexities of bringing a drug to market. I became an expert of internal and external information resources. I learned about the information required to submit a new drug application and was part of a new drug application that was approved by the FDA. Unfortunately, many believe the pharmaceutical industry has ill intentions and overcharges and does not want to help people get better because they are motivated by profit. This was not my experience. The priority was always to develop a drug that is safe, and that it is going to heal, save, or improve the lives of people with certain conditions.
In the position I had with Clarivate, my role was to educate and train on drug pipeline development information which included data supporting personalized medicine referred to as biomarkers. Think of biomarkers like what your blood sugar level is or what your blood pressure is. The level might indicate whether you need diabetes or blood pressure medicine. Biomarkers, very simply, can also help determine if a drug is likely to be effective in a certain population. This information is important to pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies because if a biomarker were identified for their drug, they would use that information in their new drug applications.
Because of my experiences in becoming knowledgeable about personalized medicine at Clarivate, I realized programs like the All of Us Research Program would help make personalized medicine a reality. This inspired me to pursue applications for grant funding from the NIH and NLM providing education and training about large data sets supporting advancement of personalized medicine.
My tip for colleagues that are librarians is that industry is not out to take advantage of you for profit. Most are just like you, enthusiastic about the work they do and genuinely want you to be successful in your work through understanding and utilizing the products they support and sell to you. Be open to discussions with information providers and understand it is not about just selling a product to you. The industry expert genuinely wants you to be successful by understanding the capabilities of the product or service they are providing.
BMJ: In 2023, you gave a moving TEDx talk at SHSU titled Loss to Legacy Through Research: A Mother’s Story. Your story emphasizes the need for open data and science and illustrates how the knowledge gained through your daughter’s legacy has positively impacted rare disease treatments. What inspired you to share your journey, and what was the SHSU community’s response?
Lisa: I have a unique personal story that I would not wish for anyone because it involved the death of my infant daughter. It is heartbreaking but also a beautiful story about librarianship and research from my perspective. Research scientists that studied my daughter’s tissues made a discovery and the first report of a gene responsible for mitochondria to function. The paper was published in Nature Genetics and is now the unique reference in any genetic resource or reference to that gene. I did not even know it at the time, but now many years later I understand the impact. If I were not a librarian, I likely would not have understood citation analysis or the impact.
I was inspired to share the story because it was the right time and a safe place at SHSU. The talk was the second year that our institution was authorized to host TEDx talks, and I knew I would be supported by people I know. I also wanted to support those who have suffered the loss of a child or had a miscarriage to understand that there is just so very much we do not know about the human body. These losses are often beyond our control as was my loss, but that with time incredible research discoveries can be made.
BMJ: You are deeply involved with the All of Us Research Program and received an NIH grant to be a Principal Investigator. Please elaborate on your experience with the program and how you directly support its goals.
Lisa: As I mentioned previously, in my corporate experiences I learned about personalized medicine. The program began as the Precision Medicine Initiative (PMI) in 2015 as part of the 21st Century Cures Act. PMI defined all the parts of the All of Us Research Program. I had been following various updates about the program over the years and noticed that the NLM was going to host an online seminar providing information for librarians. I reached the organizers and introduced myself asking for more information. Resulting from that I was awarded a trip to New York for a train-the-trainer event on the use of the data, and then offered the NIH funding as one of ten academic libraries from minority serving institutions tasked with creating programs to engage minority researchers with the All of Us Research Workbench.
Access to this data requires an institutional agreement and training for individual users. The data uniquely supports personalized medicine because data are from multiple sources considering the biological, environmental, and lifestyle factors that influence our health. The goal of this program is to get a million or more participants contributing data representing the diversity of the population of the United States. Data on the workbench is analyzed in a cloud computing environment in notebooks. Coding programs like Python and R can then be used to analyze the data.
I directly supported the funding award by creating a team to define what was the best approach for our institution to engage with the data, and then hosted programs supporting individual researchers. We provided scholarships for students and stipends for faculty that were research pairs that created a workspace on the researcher workbench.
BMJ: What sparked your interest in a library science career?
Lisa: It is kind of funny because I did not even know what a librarian did. Honestly, I have often said I am an accidental librarian. I am a first-generation college student. I had no guidance about what college was other than high school advisors and following what my peers were doing. My older brother was diagnosed with cancer, and I found myself thinking that nutrition was important for well-being. I did well academically in high school and was on an academic track. I do not think I really know what that meant other than my peers were applying to college. So, I applied to and looked for colleges with nutrition degrees. I got to my junior year and learned to be a registered dietitian I would need to do a one-year unpaid internship to qualify to take the registration exam. That was not possible for me to do. Ultimately, I went to pursue my master’s degree in nutrition in the hopes of an alternative way to registration. At the same time, I was employed at the university as a food service supervisor for the faculty dining room. In this role I met a tenured faculty member from the school of library and information science. He told me about being a corporate librarian and that with a nutrition sciences undergraduate degree combined with a master’s degree in library science, I could be a corporate medical librarian for a pharmaceutical company. That is how I decided to be a librarian.
BMJ: What is the most rewarding aspect of your career?
Lisa: By far the most rewarding aspect of my career is the interaction with students when they realize that there is such a thing as a database, and that information is available to support their academic success that is not found by a Google Search.
BMJ: What is the most challenging aspect of your career?
Lisa: The position I am in is a tenure track position which means I need to do research and publish scholarly work in peer reviewed journals. This seems simple, right? However, it is challenging and complex and takes a lot of time. The projects you undertake do not always work out or get published.
BMJ: You recently completed the Advanced Interprofessional Informationist Certificate through Simmons University. What is novel about this program, and would you encourage other librarians to consider it?
Lisa: That was a novel and wonderful program. In collaboration a Simmons university professor and a Harvard medical library director were funded by Institute of Museum and Library services (IMLS) to help mid-career librarians bridge the gap between traditional and emergent skill sets. Ten librarians were selected from across the United States which included graduate courses (21 credits) in Informatics, Research Design, Data Management, Statistics, Leadership and Collaboration, Foundations of Interprofessional Informationists, and a Capstone Experience. This was the only opportunity to consider the program since it was grant funded. The experience was at the same time as the pandemic, so the entire program was entirely online which was not the original intention. Of the ten librarians selected to participate only seven completed the program to earn the certificate from Simmons University. If it were offered again, I would recommend it, but it was an incredible amount of work on the part of the instructors and students!
The skills I gained were especially important for healthcare and my current role. I really did not know much about research design, big data, statistics, or data management before this opportunity. The experience has greatly impacted my ability to support research at my institution.
Interviewed by Lauren Jones, Head of Marketing, BMJ Americas
