Medical librarian's job is 'just FYI'
Upper Valley Medical Center

Profile: Mary Sutton, Medical Librarian
By KEN MOSIER
For Health Care Today

For Mary Sutton the abbreviation "FYI" is more than an aside in an e-mail message. It is what she does.

"I find information," said the Upper Valley Medical Center medical librarian. "People come to me looking for information on certain medical topics — sometimes it can be a diagnosis or, most of the time, it is therapy-related information.

"I do literature searches in medical and nursing data-bases, so most of my work is on the Internet nowadays — it used to be paper. I print out the results of the search and send it to the person who is requesting it and they mark the articles that they would like to have.

"I get that list back from them and then photocopy (the article) if we happen to have it here in our collection. If I don't (have it), then I get it through an interlibrary loan system called DocLine." She said that copies of the articles come back via e-mail. She then forwards the e-mail to the person requesting the information.

Sutton said the interlibrary systems are all available through the National Institute of Health and the National Library of Medicine. "So, it's your tax dollars at work," she said.

	Mary Sutton checks out recently arrived books in the library at UVMC.

The Dayton native said her love of reading as a child instilled the desire to become a librarian and early on, she decided that she would prefer being a medical librarian. She worked her way through college in various libraries. A graduate of Wright State University, she worked in medical libraries at both Wright State and Ohio State. She has been at Upper Valley for 19 years.

Her patrons run the gamut of medical professionals from doctors to patient-care technicians.

"We have a lot of people working here as PCTs while working on their nursing degree, or who are going back to school to get their bachelor's or working on their master's degree," she said.

She also gets requests from patients and their families and from the public.

"We are open to the general public," she said. "I would like to let the community know I am available to help them in any way."

Sutton loves her work.

"I like to think that the information that I give or gather for someone helps to stimulate patient care in this hospital," she said."I like to help improve the way we do our jobs."