Hospital Librarian, Brynn Beals

Posted by Carolyn Martin on October 9th, 2024 Posted in: Guest Post, News from Network Members
Tags: hospital librarians, librarian roles, medical librarian, Medical Librarians Month

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October is National Medical Librarians Month. Region 5 is celebrating by highlighting some of the wonderful medical librarians in our region. This guest post is from one of our colleagues in Washington state.

Greetings from Tacoma, WA where I have been a hospital librarian at St. Joseph Medical Center (part of Virginia Mason Franciscan Health/CommonSpirit Health) for (gulp!) 35 years. Time flies when you’re having fun. After college I worked as an accounting secretary in the tech manufacturing field where I was also the accounting “librarian”, which meant I was responsible for updating all the binders of Generally Accepted Accounting Principles. Not having a love of numbers, I explored other options and landed in library school at UW. Medical librarianship was a natural fit having grown up in a family in health care, so I took the one health sciences librarianship class offered. After graduation I worked very briefly at what was once called St. Joseph Community Hospital library in Vancouver, WA before moving to Tacoma. While I have had the same job title for my entire tenure, the environment has changed dramatically. I began serving one hospital, which eventually has grown to 7, and on Day 1 I had never heard of the internet.

I have moved the library twice, most recently last year into a much smaller space so library services are now almost all virtual but I am on site every day (even through Covid). It’s efficient in our screen-based information world, but I rather miss the more frequent face-to-face contact with the wider hospital community. I enjoy the variety of being a solo but am also delighted to have joined forces with Mary Beth McAteer at Virginia Mason after our merger. With literally something new to learn every day I am never bored! Most recently, I am getting more involved with our expanding residency programs and working more collaboratively with the librarians in our national organization (CommonSpirit Health).

There has been a lot of learning along the way. Somehow we have transitioned from a card catalog to a discovery system, from print books & journals to ebooks and journals, and from Microsoft Office to Google.

I’ve seen a lot of change over the years but some things remain the same. One of the best parts of being a hospital librarian is when “that” article you provided really makes a positive difference in someone’s care. Much of the time we don’t know what happens to the information we relay but it’s a good day when a provider says “thanks — a Google search was not getting what I needed”. The other thing that has remained constant is the support of the medical librarian community. Especially as a solo, this is a vital resource. I can’t count the number of times you all have made me look good, so thank you all, and Happy Medical Librarians’ Month!