Member Spotlight: Amanda Richman

Posted by Margot M on August 14th, 2023 Posted in: Communities of Interest
Tags: hospital librarians, Member Spotlight, National Library of Medicine, Rhode Island

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If you had 25 hours in a day, what would you do with the extra hour?

If I had 25 hours in a day, I would use it to figure out any of Chopin’s nocturnes on the piano,  comb the beach for sea glass with my daughter, go bird watching, or (too obvious?) catch up on my reading list.

Tell us about your position/institution.

I am the librarian for the Lifespan Health System in Rhode Island, and I’ve worked here for twelve years. The library serves staff from all Lifespan affiliates, providing access to e Journals, eBooks, scholarly databases, interlibrary loans, library instruction and literature searches. My favorite part of my job is helping clinicians gather reliable research to improve their practice. This summer I’ve been working a lot with policy committees, performing searches for updated evidence to support clinical policy. I’ve also recently had an uptick in demand for library instruction for Lifespan’s nursing and pharmacy residency programs.

What special projects are you working on?

I’m exploring different licensing and access options to build specialized collections of resources to support our affiliates’ nurse residency programs.

What National Library of Medicine resource is the most useful to your work, and why? (ClinicalTrials, DailyMed, DOCLINE, History of Medicine Collection, PubMed, PubMed Central, MeSH, MedlinePlus, etc.)

I can’t choose just one – it’s both DOCLINE and PubMed for various reasons. The library has faced budget challenges the last several years, so if we  didn’t have such a solid resource-sharing connection through DOCLINE, we wouldn’t be able to give our users what they need to do the great work that they do! It’s also great to be able to reciprocate for other libraries who use the system. And I love PubMed for so many reasons, but I love it most because it’s a free resource that anyone can use to gather reliable information, no matter what their budget. I have a lot of fun searching PubMed and seeing exactly how my search terms were interpreted in the search details section. I don’t get that level of transparency in the library’s paid databases.

What is the coolest thing about your library/organization/county/state?

I’m originally from land-locked Indiana, so I think the coolest part of Rhode Island is that no matter where you go in the state, you won’t be more than 30 minutes from a beach. And RI has the best public library system. You can request materials from any public library in the state (even Block Island!) and have them delivered to your neighborhood library for pickup. Also, Allie’s donut cake.