Don Lindberg's influence on future generations: The U.S. National Library of Medicine's biomedical informatics research training programs.

Through his visionary leadership as Director of the U.S. National Library of Medicine (NLM), Donald A. B. Lindberg M.D. influenced future generations of informatics professionals and the field of biomedical informatics itself. This chapter describes Dr. Lindberg's role in sponsoring and shaping the NLM's Institutional T15 training programs.

Don Lindberg's Influence on Future Generations: The U.S. National Library of Medicine's Biomedical Informatics Research Training Programs.

Through his visionary leadership as Director of the U.S. National Library of Medicine (NLM), Donald A.B. Lindberg M.D. influenced future generations of informatics professionals and the field of biomedical informatics itself. This chapter describes Dr. Lindberg's role in sponsoring and shaping the NLM's Institutional T15 training programs.

Assessing the National Library of Medicine's Informationist Awards.

OBJECTIVE: To understand the experience of the informationist recipients of NLM-funded Administrative Supplements for Informationist Services and gather evidence for their impact on NIH-funded biomedical research. METHODS: A mixed methods approach consisting of a survey of principal investigators and a focus group of informationists. RESULTS: Informationists appeared to have a positive impact on their team's research, especially in the areas of data storage, data management planning, data organization, and literature searching. In addition, many informationists felt that their involvement had increased their research skills and made them true research partners. Assessing their own impact was a challenge for the award recipients, and questions remain about the best evaluation methods. The overall experience of the informationists and researchers was mixed but largely positive. CONCLUSION: The NLM-funded informationist supplement award appears to be a successful mechanism for immersing informationists into research teams and improving data management in the supported projects.

Information in context: integrating information specialists into practice settings.

An information need (the problem) cannot be divorced from its context. The problem context determines the urgency, granularity of detail, authority, and level of certainty required for an acceptable answer and dictates the expertise and resources that can be brought to bear. The size and diversity of the sources that can be marshalled during clinical problem solving is cognitively unmanageable--too large and too complex for a single person to process effectively in a constrained timeframe. Can the clinical team, as currently constituted, collectively handle this information-processing task, or is there a need for special information expertise on the team? If there is such a need, what is the best way to prepare information specialists to participate in context-based problem solving? This article explores preparation for work in information-rich, problem-solving environments. The authors provide two case studies, one clinical and one bioscientific, that elucidate knowledge and training requirements for information specialists who work as peers in patient care and research settings.