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Health Information Project: Virtual Internships

Program Description

The Universities at Shady Grove (USG), in partnership with the National Library of Medicine (NLM), offer virtual internships to students from USG and the University of Maryland, College Park, College of Information Studies.

These semester-long internships span NLM’s research and development initiatives, social media outreach and historical collections. They allow students to:

  • learn new skills
  • gain hands-on insights into working in the health information field
  • develop leadership qualities.

Because they are virtual, students can tap into the rich and diverse experiences of the world’s largest biomedical library at a time and pace convenient to their lives.

To participate in the program, students must submit application materials, including a resume and cover letter that outlines the skills they would bring to this position and how this experience fits into their overall educational and professional goals. Upcoming opportunities to apply will appear on this website.

Goals of the Project

  • Foster the development of future health information professionals.
  • Provide students with real-world experiences in the field of health informatics.
  • Develop leadership and project management skills in students.

Contact Us

For more information on this program contact Eileen Harrington, Health & Life Sciences Librarian at the Universities at Shady Grove.

e-mail: eharring@umd.edu

phone: 301.738.6127

Fall 2015 Internships

For the fall 2015  semester we have two interns in the USG-NLM Virtual Internship Program.

Ashley Cuffia

Ashley Cuffia expects to receive her MLS from the University of Maryland in the summer of 2016. While completing her degree, she has worked at the National Network of Libraries of Medicine Southeastern Atlantic Regional Medical Library at the University of Maryland, Baltimore Health Science and Human Services Library. She is particularly interested in pursuing emerging technologies in medical librarianship in her career.

During her internship, Ashley will be working on transitioning th Outreach Applications and Online Contract Reports System to a new system, SharePoint. This system includes resources and documents related to the national network of Regional Medical Libraries (RMLs). Currently, it is developed and maintained by NLM’s Office of Computer and Communications Systems. This transition to SharePoint will enable the development and mainatenance of this system to be transferred to National Network Office (NNO) staff, who oversee the network of RMLs. After studying the current system and working with NNO staff to identify future requirements, Ashley will recommend the data elements and the SharePoint schema for the new system. 

Megan Kellner

Megan Kellner expects to receive her MLS from the University of Maryland in May 2016. While completing her degree, she has worked at Baltimore County Public Library and University of Maryland's Special Collections and University Archives and interned with Maryland AskUsNow!, the statewide virtual reference live chat service. She is particularly interested in pursuing reference and user instruction in her career.

During her internship, Megan will be creating a brief online tutorial (in a similar style to Searching Drugs or Chemicals in PubMed, http://www.nlm.nih.gov/bsd/disted/drugs/) that highlights PubMed features and tools of particular interest to nurses and nursing students, including Clinical Queries and the Nursing subset filter.