Editor’s Note: Every other month, we publish the profile of a member of Doody’s Library Board of Advisors (LBA). The LBA has guided the development of our company’s library services since our inception. With gratitude, this month we present the profile of Donna O’Malley of the Charles A. Dana Medical Library at the University of Vermont.

DEI: Where do you currently work and what is your position?

DO’M: I am the Interim Director of the Charles A. Dana Medical Library at the University of Vermont.

DEI: Provide a one-sentence description of your library and its services.

DO’M: The Dana Library embraces the education, research, and clinical care missions of the faculty, staff, and students of the Larner College of Medicine, the College of Nursing and Health Sciences, and the University of Vermont Medical Center.

DEI: When did you start in medical librarianship? What was your position? With what institution?

DO’M: I was employed as an intern at the UCLA Biomedical Library in 1984-85. It was there that I realized how much fun it is to have a job where I am actually supposed to interrogate faculty about their research.

DEI: Name two of the most important issues facing medical librarianship today.

DO’M: Institutions and scholars are questioning the traditional scholarly publishing economic model where universities pay to purchase scholarly journals and books and exploring models where producers of scholarship (researchers and institutions) pay to publish their journals articles and textbooks. This disruption currently places additional burdens on library budgets and staffing as we try to balance the different models.

A wonderful problem to have, but nevertheless an issue to address, is the increasing demand for professional literature search services. How do libraries prioritize requests in order to deliver the most valuable services for their institutions, given staffing and other budgetary constraints?

DEI: Why do you volunteer to serve on Doody’s Library Board of Advisors?

DO’M: Doody Enterprises is responsive to the current and anticipated needs of the library community. And they are a pleasure to work with!

DEI: What is one thing you want to make sure all librarians know about Doody’s services?

DO’M: Here at the University of Vermont, we especially appreciate the one-stop-shopping experience that Doody’s Review Service enables. We can evaluate the multiple options for ebook vendors for a particular title all in one place. And we can see if there are additional editions available as well.