Informationist Education

Abstract

The National Institutes of Health (NIH) funds biomedical research and conducts its own research. One way the NIH Library supports this work is by providing librarians with biomedical training and encouraging them to become embedded with researchers and administrators. Some of these "informationists" have degrees in scientific or health fields, and all engage in ongoing training, mostly through coursework at local institutions and at NIH itself. This article elaborates on the training of NIH informationists. Past research has indicated that patrons welcome librarians with biomedical training, which may in turn lead to greater communication between librarians and researchers.