Education and Outreach Librarian
Samuel J. Wood Library
Weill Cornell Medicine
linkedin.com/in/andy-hickner/
“I wasn’t planning to be a librarian.”
Our latest interview features Andy Hickner, Education & Outreach Librarian at Weill Cornell Medicine. Leading education programs for a major NYC institution from his home base in Chicago (extremely unusual, he knows!), Andy prioritizes equipping students with practical skills—from delivering information “at the point of need” during orientation and in the classroom, to teaching a commonsense approach to AI tools. Andy is also wrapping up a three-year term on the Board of Directors of the Medical Library Association (MLA).
Andy understands that getting people to pay attention and retain information is challenging, and he offers tips to help. He also shares his thoughtful approach to the rapid changes in scholarly communication and how he stays positive.
BMJ: Looking back, what initially drew you to library science, and how does that compare to what you find most rewarding about your day-to-day work now?
Andy: I wasn’t planning to be a librarian. The MSI program at the University of Michigan, at the time I went there, was really more focused on industry jobs, user experience, and design. I thought I would just pick up some IT skills and make more money, though I didn’t have a clear sense of how I would get from A to B. However, my work-study job ended up being at the Health Sciences Libraries. I was interested in health informatics, which is quite different from what I do now, but I had worked in libraries previously, so I thought, “Why not?”
The subject matter learning curve was steeper than I expected. It was intellectually stimulating, and I started to meet classmates who were planning to go into libraries, which made me think maybe I would do this. That ended up being my focus for the next year and a half. I mostly took user experience or technical classes like Drupal to get the best bang for my buck since I was paying for the degree. That was great because I was able to leverage those skills in my first job after the degree, which included managing websites. That led to my first job as a Web Services Librarian at Yale. I’m not a webmaster anymore but can still maintain a website. Technology is always changing, which is something I find interesting about being a librarian. There’s always another skill I could be focusing on.
BMJ: You’ve spent the past 16 years in academic medicine. What keeps you passionate about medical librarianship today?
Andy: We wear lots of different hats in my library, which means I get to do so many different things. For example, in the summer, I’m mostly focusing on preparing for the incoming medical students’ orientation as a course director. So, Summer is a very busy time focused on curricular instruction. This past month (March) has been really focused on research, revising manuscripts, and data analysis. Throughout the year, we all have a gazillion systematic reviews, which are revisited randomly when we’re asked for things like uploading full text when the team finishes title/abstract screening, etc.
Each year is really driven by annual goal setting that we have as part of our performance evaluations. This year, obviously, there is a big focus on AI, so I’ve been doing a lot more work in that area.
BMJ: Being Chicago-based while leading education and outreach for a major NYC institution is unique. What remote leadership strategies make this successful for you and your team?
Andy: It is extremely unusual; almost unheard of in academic libraries. It’s really an institutional thing. The library is located within Information Technology Services at Weill Cornell, and ITS has been very remote-friendly since the pandemic for business reasons. They realized they could convert space that used to be offices into patient care spaces to increase billing revenue. I started working there in the middle of the shutdown, so from day one, my teaching for that first year was mostly online. Once we figured out we could do that, it carried over. Even today, for our consultations, everybody is meeting online over Zoom. When our family made the decision to move to Chicago a few years ago, I approached my boss about the possibility of working remotely from Chicago. What we landed on was me coming back three times a year for my core responsibilities in the classroom, like in August for orientation for the incoming M1s. I fly back on my own dime and arrange my own housing, so that being the case, I think this is an arrangement we can all live with. I feel extremely lucky that we could find the right balance.
BMJ: Speaking of AI, is MLA planning to continue its AI-related programming?
Andy: MLA had a big symposium on AI last year, and there’s definitely going to be more. Within the MLA Board of Directors, we’ve had extensive conversations about how the old model of MLA developing webinars and continuing education is a little slower than what we think is going to work, given the rapid pace of change with AI tools. So, there might be an evolution in how CE is prepared and delivered. We are also looking to bring in more external people because, while our members have some expertise, much of it is outside the profession.
BMJ: As the Education and Outreach Librarian at Weill Cornell, how have you adapted your curriculum to weave in fundamental AI topics?
Andy: As someone in the classroom, one thing we’ve been trying to get people to do is to keep clicking through to the actual source, instead of relying on AI-generated summaries. The summary can be very helpful, but it has significant limitations. Personally, I’m not comfortable relying on an AI-generated summary, and I think most librarians would agree. We want to click through and read the abstract at a minimum. The summary is just a way to get to the references. It takes extra clicks, and users are short on time, so we constantly remind them that relying solely on the summary might get them caught with their pants down at some point.
In the first year of the medical school curriculum when we teach, the physician I co-teach with and I decided not to focus on AI at that point. We know students are using tools like OpenEvidence and ChatGPT, so we tell them we will do a deeper dive when they get to their neurology clerkship. My colleague Michelle Demetres at Weill Cornell has taken over teaching in the clerkship and redesigned the assignment to focus on using preferred tools, walking them through an evaluation of the output using a structured checklist and rubric.
I’m also going to start introducing more AI into a course I direct over the summer, focused on information skills. It’s a grad school course for the Master’s in Health Services Research and Clinical Epidemiology program. Up until this year, the focus in literature searching was using PubMed, but going forward, I’ll be rolling in more AI because there are some very promising tools I’ve started using regularly. We are also looking at whether we want to license one of these new academic search tools. We are already meeting with representatives, getting quotes on pricing, and will probably trial one or more of them before making a final decision.
BMJ: Orientation for new medical students is critical, but it can be hard to avoid information overload. What specific activities or approaches have you found make this introduction truly engaging?
Andy: I really focus on getting information to them at the point of need. If you try to give them more than that, they don’t pay attention, and they forget it. You have to be really selective about what information you cram into orientation. For example, if you try to teach them PubMed during orientation, it’s a horrible time because they don’t need it yet. You need to get time in the classroom later, once they’ve started classes and need it for an assignment.
At Weill Cornell, we do a team-based competition during the 90 minutes we have with them. It’s been going on for 20 years and is called the Treasure Hunt. There’s a lot of running around the library, and the winners are determined by passing a quiz at the end. It is very complex with lots of moving parts, and the students seem to really enjoy it.
BMJ: Coordinating an email reference service can be demanding. Who are your primary users these days, and have you been able to leverage AI to help streamline the process?
Andy: We handle plenty of literature search requests, and in particular, have seen an uptick in nurses asking clinical questions. These nurses are mainly from the New York Presbyterian nurse residency program and are registered nurses who maybe didn’t get their Bachelor’s and are learning evidence-based practice. They are usually asking a clinical question related to a project they are working on with their team. Less frequently, we get clinical questions from physician faculty or residents, usually when they are looking to do research on a topic rather than for patient care. In addition, our clinical librarians go on rounds and attend morning reports, which allows them to capture questions directly in the room right after the team has seen patients.
I started experimenting with AI tools a few years ago and found them very helpful for searches when PubMed has trouble interpreting the search query or the terminology is ill-defined. PubMed does very well with cut-and-dry clinical searches, like therapy for psoriasis, but not for searches that don’t fall into a straightforward category. In particular, the relevance ranking in PubMed hasn’t been super great. You need to hunt and look through a lot of results before you find the most relevant one. The new AI search tools, in my opinion, do much better than that. Even if it’s just getting you to the most relevant search results really quickly.
BMJ: As a systematic review methodologist, you collaborate closely with researchers. What is the most common misconception researchers have about the SR process, and how do you address it?
Andy: The biggest one up front is, because a lot of them haven’t done one before, they think it’s going to be much faster than it is. Especially with students and resident-led projects, or people who haven’t supervised research teams before, they simply don’t know project management. Doctors learn a lot, but not how to manage a team like that. So that comes as a big surprise; you have to stay on top of people, set deadlines and not abandon a project when someone has a baby or leaves the institution. There are many other things people don’t realize about question formulation, what systematic reviews are appropriate for versus using a different study design. But I find the big ones are time and project management.
BMJ: There have been a number of recent changes at the NIH, from funding and grants to open access policies. How are you thinking about all of this, and how are you helping your researchers navigate these complexities?
Andy: Thankfully, we have a dedicated scholarly communications librarian whom I refer people to for help navigating APCs and getting answers to their more complicated questions. When the public access policy was revised last year, I understood the concerns about the implications, but I didn’t really think about them until very recently. We are currently looking at submitting a manuscript that we’ve written in the library with a physician. I really wanted to target one of the MedEd journals, but a colleague who is the lead author told me we can’t submit to any of our first choice journals because the open access fees are so high. It was surprising to me that we had to publish open access, but she pointed out that we used REDCap for the survey, which at Weill Cornell is federally funded. So we have to comply with the public access policy and are now planning to publish in a different journal with a lower APC we can afford.
In terms of federal funding, last year was very scary. You probably saw Weill Cornell in the news. Grants were withheld, and people way above us on the org chart had to negotiate with the Trump administration to get that funding back. We are still very reliant on it. The library had a grant that we were in the last quarter of, and that was terminated for a while. Eventually, it was reinstated, but the whole thing was very chaotic. It’s hard because there’s no comparable funding source to the NIH. I think we’d all love to be a little less dependent on federal funding, but until some alternative presents itself…
BMJ: As a Director at the MLA, what is your primary focus, and what advice do you have for other health science librarians looking to get involved and make an impact?
Andy: The best way to get the most out of your MLA membership is by volunteering and getting involved. If you just pay your dues every year and wait passively for MLA to give you things, you won’t get as much out of it. It’s not like AARP or anything, although we’re looking into getting more useful discounts. The way you get the mileage out of your membership is by getting involved and stepping up. Everything in the organization gets done because someone volunteered to do it. So, if you think MLA should be doing something specific, you should be the one to step up and volunteer for it or join the committee responsible for that area. The barrier to getting involved is not as high as you might think it is. If you’d told me several years ago that I would be elected to the Board, I wouldn’t have believed that. If your colleagues like what you’re doing, get to know you, and you do a good job, you’ll be asked to come back and step into roles of greater responsibility. If that’s what you want.
BMJ: Tell us something fun about yourself! Do you have any unique hobbies or what is the last book you read?
I’m competing in my first powerlifting competition in a couple of weeks, something I’ve been training for, for over a year. Right now I’m reading a couple of books on how to do grounded theory, which is a research methodology I’m interested in learning more about. It can be very dry which makes it perfect for bedtime reading – a couple of pages and I’m ready to sleep! The last book I tried to read before that was The Age of Innocence by Edith Wharton, but it’s soooo depressing, I confess I had to quit about halfway through.
Interviewed by Lauren Jones, Head of Marketing, BMJ Americas
