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Medical Librarians: Job Description, Education, Skills, Abilities, Duties, Earnings and Outlook

Submitted by: paula


Job Overview The field of Medicine is a huge field of study. It is a science that encompass different subspecialties from medical pharmacology to surgery. To support the practicing professionals or the incoming professionals, medical libraries are available in medical schools and hospitals as a place to find the best informational resources. Medical librarians are the ones who man these kinds of libraries. Medical librarians are also called medical information specialists. Their tasks are to help doctors, patients, as well as other medical personnel find health information and to select the library materials that suit their needs.


Education, Knowledge and Trainings Required

If you wish to establish a career in becoming a librarian someday, prepare as early as high school by taking subjects in computer science, health sciences and English.  After finishing high school, take a bachelor's degree of choice, preferably related to health sciences or languages. The minimum requirement to become a medical librarian is a master's degree of any of the following: MLS (Master's of Library Science) or MLIS (Master's of Library and Information Science).

Skills and Abilities

Basically, all librarians should love reading and organizing learning and teaching materials. The skills that are needed include organization skills, communication skills, as well as leadership and management skills. These are helpful in maintaining an easy to use library and a good place for the patrons to visit and learn. Helping and teaching skills are also a must to sincerely aid the patrons with their library needs.

Duties

These types of specialized librarians are usually hired and usually work in hospitals, medical schools, corporations and in university medical centers or clinics. Much of their job is more or less similar to that of the traditional librarians. They organize, put into shelves, and help people find and select materials or retrieves books, various journals and periodicals, and other electronic sources that will suit their informational needs. They may also help them check out materials for those who want to borrow books overnight or over a period of time, stamp due dates as well as collect fines from those items that are past-due already. they also look for misshelved books or items and reshelve them. In addition, they work with the electronic media such as organizing CDs, DVDs, videotapes or even working on data found in the internet.

Outlook and Earnings

The job outlook in this field is said to move more slower than the average for the other professions. The demand for a medical librarian does not increase more specially that the use of online medical sources and libraries caused the decline of building additional libraries for the professionals. The income of a medical librarian starts off from 29,000 U.S. dollars to 46,000 U.S. dollars per annum. Others who have already established a position and have a considerable number of years of experience may earn around 71,000 U.S. dollars and over.

Paula Hiz is a researcher and a human resource specialist who helps newly graduates, job applicants and post graduate professionals be aware of their job opportunities and available trainings for skills and practice upgrading.

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