Nakia Joye Cook, MSIS
Assistant Director for Administration & Collections 
Quillen College of Medicine Library 
East Tennessee State University 

Editor’s note: This month, we are celebrating Nakia Joye Cook, who has served as a Librarian Selector for Doody’s Core Titles since 2020. Thank you, Nakia!     

Provide a brief description of your library and its services. 

I’m the Assistant Director for Administration and Collections at the East Tennessee State University (ETSU) Quillen College of Medicine Library in Johnson City, TN.  We serve as the library for the College of Medicine and offer support to other graduate health sciences programs as needed. The library has a focus on rural health and outreach. We have conducted many rural health outreach initiatives including providing technology to rural clinicians, providing consumer health support at the Remote Area Medical free clinics, and providing medical books, classes, and consumer health information to a local community center. 

How did you get started in health sciences librarianship? What brought you to the profession? 

I have loved libraries since I was a little girl. In fact, when my mother asked me when I was three what I wanted to be when I grew up, it is written in my baby book my response was “a librarian.” After graduating from library school in 2003, I applied for jobs and found one as a consumer health librarian here at the ETSU Medical Library. I have been here at the Medical Library in various roles for the last 21 years. I have always found a library to be where one goes when one is scared or feels unsure. One goes to the library and looks it up. Once more information is known things are less daunting. This is especially true in health sciences librarianship and one of my favorite parts of interacting with patrons is helping assuage their worries by providing quality health information.    

Share two of the most important issues facing the profession today and why they’re important to address. 

The rising cost of resources paired with stagnant or decreasing budget lines has long been a problem for libraries and continues to be so in this economy. We want to do our best by our patrons, so we often must be increasingly discerning with the resources we choose. This aspect of our field is one of the many reasons resources like Doody’s Core Titles is so valuable. It gives us a guide as well as a reference to justify purchases to our funding departments. Another important issue is the funding concerns taking place at the federal government level. In upper east Tennessee a lot of our work is with rural communities and the resources provided by the federal government are extremely important to providers in low-income areas who cannot afford to purchase a lot of resources. Those resources provided by the National Library of Medicine and the Network of the National Library of Medicine such as MedlinePlus, PubMed, and their education trainings are priceless to equalizing access to information. 

What is one innovation, product, or service in your library that you’re excited about? 

I am most excited about working with the library director to enhance our library’s medical humanities collection. We are looking to broaden the collection with more patient accounts, fiction works, poetry, and even artwork. It is shaping up to be a fun collection development project. 

What aspects of your work keep you most professionally motivated? 

I am fortunate to work with some dynamic librarians. Working with them allows for an amazing collaborative environment that lets us brainstorm research projects and troubleshoot issues that arise in the library. Librarianship is a profession that allows for cooperation and innovation daily. One of my favorite things about our field is how much we excel at problem solving and teamwork as a profession. 

Why have you served as Librarian Selector for the last six editions of Doody’s Core Titles? 

Before I was placed over collections, I served as a clinical librarian as well as co-taught a graduate level nursing informatics class. Serving as a Librarian Selector for pediatrics, medicine, and nursing research is a fun way for me to keep on top of resources in subject areas where I once provided reference support to library patrons.   

Anything else you’d like to share? 

Outside of the library world, I have a ton of hobbies and interests. Currently, I am in the middle of working on my 500-hour Yoga Teacher Training. I am happy to chat about library or yoga stuff so feel free to connect through my email (woodwardn[at]etsu.edu) or LinkedIn.