University Times

Far from a career consisting of shushing noisy patrons or spending long hours amid dusty stacks of books, the reference librarians of the Health Sciences Library System (HSLS) are never bored.

Their expertise in research has manifested itself in a variety of ways, from helping a local author get his medical facts straight for a period novel set in the Civil War era, to helping doctors save lives.

HSLS, which has libraries in Scaife Hall, Western Psychiatric Institute and Clinic, UPMC Shadyside and Children’s Hospital of Pittsburgh, has 15 reference librarians on its staff of 65.

They routinely are called upon to delve into the nearly half-million print volumes and electronic books and journals in response to inquiries from consumers, students, faculty members, clinicians and researchers. Their expertise is increasingly relied upon by library patrons — especially doctors — who are in search of information but pressed for time.

“There are a lot more resources available, but people are busy,” said HSLS associate director for information services Nancy Tannery. Because much of the research being done at Pitt involves molecular biology and genetics, the library hired two information specialists with Ph.D.s in molecular biology to offer special assistance to researchers. Only a handful of libraries nationwide offer this service, Tannery said.

Some HSLS searches are simple, some complicated. Others are distressing. “There’s some sadness when you have to find information about a disease where you know the outcome might not be so good, when you know someone’s sick,” said Tannery.

While health care professionals may be able to request information in a detached way, it can be tougher to field questions from family members of hospital patients.

“Some searches you do for parents are emotional,” said reference librarian Renae E. Barger, who divides her time between the Falk Library of the Health Sciences in Scaife Hall and HSLS’s Children’s Hospital library.

“I keep it in perspective,” she said. “As long as I’ve given them something that’s helped in some way, it sort of eases it a little bit.”

Her colleagues have found themselves providing facts and research that have helped doctors make diagnoses, influenced court cases and prompted insurance reimbursements.

At Shadyside Hospital, reference librarian Michele Klein-Fedyshin’s electronic research on pacemaker contact sensitivity helped a doctor diagnose a case of pacemaker dermatitis for a patient who had the puzzling symptom of generalized itching but no rash.

At Children’s, librarian Andrea Ketchum found facts on starvation that provided important evidence during a child-neglect criminal trial.

Charles Wessel helped a UPMC physician go to bat for an ovarian cancer patient whose insurer refused to pay for chemotherapy it deemed experimental. Wessel found journal articles that provided information to the contrary and the patient received her reimbursement.

“Sometimes you don’t know what happened,” Barger said. “You don’t know if it impacted someone’s life.”

Other times, it is very clear.

In July, Barger’s work helped emergency room doctors treat the victim of an industrial accident involving a meat grinder.

She took an urgent cell phone call from an emergency room trauma team member who was racing toward Falk Library from the adjoining UPMC Presbyterian Hospital.

“He was pretty high strung because he was coming from the OR,” she recalled.

The patient, whose arm had been trapped in a commercial meat grinder, faced losing the limb.

The team found in the on-line Medline database a reference to a 30-year-old case in which the patient’s arm was freed from a similar grinder without further damage. They needed the 1975 Journal of Trauma immediately.

“You could tell on the phone he was urgently needing the article,” she said. She found the publication on the shelf amid the library’s collection of more than 2,000 medical journals.

“As I was opening the journal, he was coming through the door.” Although reference materials usually don’t travel, an exception was made.

Later, Barger learned that the patient had undergone emergency surgery. Part of the limb could not be saved, but the journal article helped doctors extricate the patient’s arm in a way that preserved as much as possible.

“It was nice to know everything turned out as good as could be expected on account of the article,” Barger said.

—Kimberly K. Barlow