National Network of Libraries of Medicine nnlm.gov	Archives	Search nnlm.gov: nnlm home | About the archives
This page was archived on: May 02, 2008 | View page metadata		Document content is not current. Links may be broken.

Dragonfly Spring - Summer 2002 -- Volume 33, Number 2

Thank You, Nancy!

By Neil Rambo
Associate Director, NN/LM PNR

Nancy Press has been a mainstay in the Regional Medical Library program for the past 23 years. She is the longest serving RML staff member in the country. She has served two regions with distinction.

Nancy began her career in health sciences librarianship as the Medical Librarian at Group Health Cooperative of Puget Sound's Eastside Hospital in suburban Seattle, from 1977 to 1979. She then moved to Boston and found her way to Harvard's Countway Library where she served as Program Coordinator for the New England Regional Medical Library Service, from 1979-1982. Nancy returned to Seattle and has worked at the Pacific Northwest Regional Medical Library ever since-June 1, 1982 through May 31, 2002.

Her first task for the PNRML was to write the proposal for the contract that was then up for renewal, a job not for the faint hearted. She has been instrumental in writing contract proposals ever since -through seven different contract periods! That is a record that is unlikely to be approached, let alone matched, by anyone

Nancy has served in many roles throughout 20 years with PNRML:

• Education Coordinator, 1982-1989 (plus Preservation and Disaster Planning Coordinator starting in 1987)
• Acting Associate Director, 1989
• Network Librarian, 1989-1997
• Acting Associate Director, 1998-1999
• Consumer Health Coordinator, 2000-2002

Some of the classes she developed and taught to colleagues around the country include:

• Interlibrary Loan/DOCLINE/Loansome Doc workshops
• Expect the Worst: Disaster Planning for the Small Library (a preservation class during which she had librarians put books into pails of water)
• Teaching the Adult Learner in the Library Setting (an MLA roster CE course)

A few of Nancy's many accomplishments:

• Helped bring DOCLINE to Canadian health libraries.
• Conducted, tallied and reported the PNC/MLA CE survey for the past 20 years.
• Editor, and mainstay contributor to, the Supplement and Dragonfly newsletters.
• Editor of the Directory of Health Sciences Libraries Pacific Northwest Region.
• Served on committees and as an officer for the Washington Medical Librarians Association, PNC/MLA and MLA, as well as at the University of Washington.
• Brought together a diverse Consumer Health advisory panel to guide development of the NN/LM consumer health program in the Pacific Northwest.

Nancy plans to take the summer off to enjoy her family. Fortunately the library community will not be losing her as she will be Library Director and faculty member-teaching history and religious studies-at the Mars Hill Graduate School in the Seattle area.

The Pacific Northwest Region, and the National Network of Libraries of Medicine, will miss Nancy's brilliance, her energy, and her strong advocacy of all that she passionately believes in. We at the PNRML, and all her colleagues, wish Nancy the best and hope her voice continues to be part of our conversation.

Here are remembrances of Nancy Press from some of her colleagues

Dragonfly, Spring - Summer 2002 - Volume 33, Number 2
(posted on PNRNews on June 6, 2002)

This publication is funded in whole with Federal funds from the National Library of Medicine, National Institutes of Health, under Contract No. N01-LM-1-3516.

NLM | MedlinePlus | PubMed | NLM Gateway | TOXNET | LOCATORplus

NN/LM | UW HSL | NN/LM PNR | Contact us: nnlm@u.washington.edu | Revised: September 5, 2002

URL: http://nnlm.gov/pnr/news/200204/nancy.html