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List of Library Liaisons

• What is the Library Liaison Program?

Click on the liaison’s name to see his/her biographical sketch.

Librarian	Departments/Programs * = Graduate programs ** = Center
Kristi Holmes Bioinformatics Specialist 362-4737 holmeskr@wustl.edu	Division of Biology and Biomedical Sciences (DBBS) * Biochemistry and Molecular Biophysics Cell Biology and Physiology
Reka Kozak Reference Librarian 454-7208 kozakr@wustl.edu	Orthopedic Surgery Surgery Siteman Cancer Center ** Neurological Surgery
Kim Lipsey Reference Librarian 362-4733 lipseyk@wustl.edu	Physical Therapy (PT) Radiation Oncology Radiology Pathology and Immunology Occupational Therapy * Center for Human Nutrition**
Carol Murray Assistant Director for Information Services & Training 362-4736 murrayc@wustl.edu	Medicine Obstetrics and Gynecology Biomedical Engineering
Will Olmstadt Clinical Resources Librarian 362-4734 olmstadtw@wustl.edu	Neurology Pediatrics Psychiatric Epidemiology St. Louis Children’s Hospital
Neville Prendergast Associate Director of Health Information Resources 362-2782 prendern@wustl.edu	Nursing–Evidence Based Practice (EBP) Pediatric Emergency Medicine Research Associates’ Program (PEMRAP) Practice of Medicine (POM)
Cathy Sarli Special Projects Librarian 362-7865 sarlic@wustl.edu	Otolaryngology Audiology and Communication Sciences* Ophthalmology and Visual Sciences Scholarly Communications Specialist
Lilla Vekerdy Rare Book Librarian 362-4235 vekerdyl@wustl.edu	History of Medicine Anatomy and Neurobiology
Lili Wang Bioinformatics Specialist 362-2796 wangli@wustl.edu	Developmental Biology Genetic Epidemiology (GEMS) * Genome Sequencing Center (GSC) ** Genetics Molecular Microbiology

 

Liaison Biographical Sketches

Kristi Holmes

Kristi Holmes received her Ph.D. in Biochemistry from Iowa State University, where she studied conformational changes in 16S ribosomal RNA during 30S subunit assembly. Also while a student at Iowa State University, she was awarded the Iowa State University Teaching Excellence Award from the Office of the Vice Provost for Research and Advanced Studies. Upon receiving her Ph.D., Dr. Holmes remained in the Department of Biochemistry, Biophysics, and Molecular Biology as a lecturer and taught a number of courses including Structure and Reactions in Biochemical Processes, Survey of Biochemistry, and Molecular Genetics.

Dr. Holmes joined the Washington University’s Becker Medical Library in June, 2006, where she is involved in the development and implementation of the Library’s Bioinformatics@Becker program, including the development and presentation of bioinformatics resource workshops for the university community, integration of molecular biology information resources into curricula, and application of bioinformatics resources to research problems through individualized consultations. Dr. Holmes was awarded the Medical Informatics fellowship by the National Library of Medicine to study at the Marine Biological Laboratory in Woods Hole, Massachusetts in September 2007. Dr. Holmes currently teaches a number of bioinformatics courses for Becker Medical Library such as Sequence Similarity Searching, Introduction to NCBI Resources, Structure, and Introduction to RNA Resources. She also serves as a course developer and instructor for the NCBI Advanced Workshop for Bioinformatics Information Specialists offered by the National Center for Biotechnology Information.

Reka Kozak

Reka Kozak earned the degree of Bachelor of Art in Public Education, Masters of Art in History, and Masters of Art in Literature at Kossuth Lajos University in Debrecen, Hungary. She completed her Masters of Library Sciences degree at University of Missouri-Columbia.

Kozak started her librarian career at Olin Library, Washington University, continued in the Biology Library and became Assistant Director of the Learning Resource Center of the George Warren Brown School of Social Work. She joined the professional staff as a reference librarian at the Bernard Becker Medical Library of Washington University School of Medicine in 1985. Presently as a member of the Health Information Resources Department, she is the Librarian at the Rothschild Medical Library of Barnes-Jewish Hospital.

Kozak participates in local and regional professional library groups, and has presented papers to the First and Second Conferences of Librarians of Hungarian Origin in Budapest, as well as published articles in Hungarian professional journals about Washington University Libraries’ collections.

Kim Lipsey

Kim Lipsey is a member of the Health Information Resources division at Washington University’s Bernard Becker Medical Library and has worked here since 1993. In addition to her reference duties, she has developed a number of classes for the Library’s Education Series covering major Internet protocols. She now teaches a popular course on the use of EndNote, a file management program. In 2004, Kim was awarded the Bernard Becker Medical Library Bright Idea Award and she coordinated the Becker Library’s 2005 Open House/Symposium on Managing Knowledge in the Digital Domain.

In addition, Kim was a speaker at the Academic Publishing Services Workshop in May 2005, Strategies for Manuscript Publishing 3: Creating Figures, Tables and References, and Considering Copyright and Ethics, EndNote vs Reference Manager.

In 2002, Kim conducted a training session, Using EndNote for Managing a Bibliography at the Health Service Research Methods Seminars which are held in conjunction with the AcademyHealth Annual Meeting. More recently, she presented a session on the Basic Function of Endnote at the workshop: “FROM RESEARCH TO PRESENTATION” sponsored by the Becker Library.

In 1997, Kim co-authored a paper presented at the Internet Librarians Conference in California on Program Design for Internet Training. She also presented a paper at the 2002 Diversity Building a Strategic Future Conference at University of Iowa; Another Dimension of Diversity: Interactions Among Minority Librarians. Previously, she worked as an adjunct faculty member at the University of Missouri-St. Louis, where she taught an information technology class in the Communications Department.

Carol Murray

Carol Murray is the Assistant Director for Information Services and Training at the Bernard Becker Medical Library. She is responsible for developing and implementing training in the use of Library information systems and electronic databases, including internet use, file management, molecular biology resources and biomedical resources. She also serves on the Library’s Collection Management Committee and the Electronic Repository Committee.

Carol teaches the Ovid Medline and PubMed classes offered through the Library Education Series, and has provided Medline instruction for more medical students, residents and faculty than any other Library staff member. She works closely with the office of Graduate Medical Education to provide training for new interns. Carol also participates, along with other reference staff, in the Practice of Medicine, a problem based class for first and second year medical students.

Carol has been a member of the St. Louis Medical Librarians for over twenty years. In 2005, she received the Leadership Award, the organization’s highest honor.

Carol is the liaison for the departments of Medicine, Obstetrics and Gynecology and Biomedical Engineering.

Will Olmstadt

Will Olmstadt is the liaison to Neurology, Pediatrics, Psychiatric Epidemiology and St. Louis Children’s Hospital. He has worked in libraries since 1995. Prior to joining Becker Medical Library, Will was on the library staff at UT Southwestern Medical Center and Texas A&M University, and was also the library director for DeVry University in Irving, Texas.

Will earned an MLS from the University of Kentucky and an MPH from the University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston. He has done research grading the quality of clinical trials for brief interventions for alcohol-related injuries. In 2005 he completed a significant project using GIS to map Medically Underserved Areas (MUA) in Dallas and Tarrant County, Texas, for the DFW Area Health Education Center.

Will has published and presented on diverse aspects of library instruction, including teaching public health informatics courses and providing training for patients in support groups. He is a senior member of the Academy of Health Information Professionals of the Medical Library Association.

Will can be reached at 314-362-4734, olmstadtw@wustl.edu, or in his office on the first floor of the Becker Medical Library. At present, Will is also acting half-time as the medical librarian for St. Louis Children’s Hospital, 314-454-2768.

Neville Prendergast

Neville Prendergast joined the management staff of the Becker Medical Library at the Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis, in April 2001. As the Associate Director of the Health Information Resources division he oversees reference and information services, including library education programs for integration with the medical school curriculum. The position also oversees library outreach to the medical school community and two satellite libraries in the hospital system, where the idea is to “bring the library to the people.” He has guided the library’s evidence-based medicine training, is involved with selection of library resources, and recently orchestrated the implementation and launching of the Library Liaison Program.

A native of Jamaica, he came to Washington University School of Medicine and the Becker Library after working two years as Coordinator of Information and Educational Services at the Hardin Library for the Health Sciences, University of Iowa. Neville spent 11+ years at the Health Sciences Library, University at Buffalo, New York, where he was head of the Information Management Education department at UB’s medical library for his last three years. He successfully started the process of implementing a program to integrate information management and information literacy training into the curriculum of the health sciences schools. Over those years Neville has received Bright Idea (1994), Service Excellence (1993), and Staff Recognition (1991) Awards from the University at Buffalo. In 2006 he received the Bright Idea award as part of Becker Library’s Peer Recognition Program for staff.

He was a fellow, among 21 librarians from minority and underserved populations, in the first Leadership and Career Development Program (1998) sponsored by the ARL with funding assistance from the Department of Education. A program designed to prepare these librarians for career advancement and leadership roles. In 2002, he was a NLM/MBL Medical Informatics Course fellow at the Marine Biology Laboratory, Woods Hole, Massachusetts, and successfully completed the wide-ranging program.

Neville has published eight articles on different aspects of librarianship and training, and has given presentations at local and regional meetings while preparing for tenure, at UB, which he received in 1994. A chapter, “Searching the Literature,” is co-authored with Becker librarian Christina Sullivan, in the book, Translational and Experimental Clinical Research, edited by Washington University School of Medicine’s Daniel Schuster and William Powers, and in print since 2005.

Neville Prendergast has a background in biochemistry and chemistry. A trained teacher, with a graduate science education degree, he taught ten years of high school and junior college biological sciences in Jamaica. For this service he received a “Certificate for Meritorious Service to the Field of Science Education” from the Association of Science Teachers of Jamaica in 1983. He also worked with the Scientific Research Council of Jamaica before migrating to the USA to study library and information science.

Prendergast is a member of the Medical Library Association (MLA), Special Libraries Association (SLA), American Library Association (ALA) and the St. Louis Medical Librarians (SLML).

Cathy Sarli

Cathy Sarli, a Central Institute for the Deaf alumna, received her Master’s of Library of Science degree from the University of Missouri (Columbia) and is a certified Archivist. Before joining Becker Medical Library in 2003, Cathy was the librarian for the Professional Education program at Central Institute for the Deaf (now the Program of Audiology and Communication Sciences at WUSM). Her current role as the Scholarly Communications Specialist at Becker Library involves projects to increase awareness among faculty of the various issues that have an impact on scholarly endeavors, developing resources and services in support of authors, and exploring stable means of preserving our intellectual assets. Cathy is also responsible for Becker Library’s historic hearing device collection – the Central Institute for the Deaf-Max A. Goldstein Historic Devices for Hearing Collection at Washington University Bernard Becker Medical Library – and was one of the founding members of the International Society for Historic Hearing Devices.

Cathy is a member of the Academy of Certified Archivists, the Association of Vision Sciences Librarians, the International Society for Historic Hearing Devices, the Midcontinental Chapter of the Medical Library Association, and the Saint Louis Medical Librarians Association.

Cathy is the liaison for the Department of Otolaryngology, the Department of Ophthalmology and Visual Sciences, and the Program in Audiology and Communication Sciences (PACS). Cathy welcomes faculty, researchers and students to contact her to schedule a personal visit to your office or classroom for any questions you may have about the Becker Library or other information needs. Cathy can be reached at 314-362-7865 or sarlic@wustl.edu or stop by her office at Becker on the main level at any time.

Lilla Vekerdy

Lilla Vekerdy earned masters degrees in literature-linguistics and library sciences at Eötvös Loránd University, Budapest, Hungary. She specialized in early prints and manuscripts. From 1986 at Eötvös University, she lectured on paleography and codicology, and with a team of students published critical editions of 16th century Hungarian manuscripts. She moved to the United States in 1991 and shortly after started to work at Becker Library, first as Rare Book Cataloger, and since 1995 as Rare Book Librarian. Vekerdy continued her studies in the doctoral program of Saint Louis University in medieval, Renaissance, and early modern history from 1995-2005.

As librarian, Vekerdy’s responsibilities include developing, preserving and publicizing the rare book collections of Becker Library, as well as assisting researchers in historical scrutiny. Since 1999, she also teaches medical history at Washington University School of Medicine and is instructor at the first year Human Anatomy courses. Her students often return in their fourth year to participate in her Independent Reading Courses. Exhibitions, special events, sometimes media interviews are also part of Vekerdy’s job. She is member of history of medicine organizations, lectures at conferences and at public events, and currently is the Past President of the Archivists and Librarians for the History of Health Sciences.

Vekerdy’s scholarly focus turned toward the history of medicine while curating the rare book collections at the School of Medicine. Her research now is primarily based on the extensive Paracelsus Collection in Becker Library. She also publishes in the history of nephrology and ophthalmology, early modern medicine, and medical book illustration.

Lili Wang

Lili Wang began her career as a M.D. in China. After moving to the United States, she did graduate-level work in genetics and biostatistics at the University of Alabama. Lili has Doctorate of Medicine from Beijing Medical University and a MS in Biostatistics from the University of Alabama at Birmingham.

Lili Wang is the library’s Bioinformatics Specialist and teaches three courses regarding molecular database and genome science: Sequence Similarity Search, Genetic Variation and Human Genome Resource. She also teaches Spotfire, a gene expression data analysis software.

Lili attended the NCBI’s courses “Introduction to Molecular Biology Information Resources” in 2003. The courses include: BLAST, Structure, Genomes and Maps. Lili has been awarded the Medical Informatics fellowship by the National Library of Medicine to do a one week course at the Marine Biology Laboratory in June 2005. Lili is also a regular member of American Medical Informatics Association.

Lili will provide one-on-one training and consult regarding the biomolecular resources for the medical community. Right now, she is working on Function Expression, a microarray software developed by Dr. Rakesh Nagarajan at Bioinformatics Core of Siteman Cancer Site of Washington University School of Medicine.