Short Answer Essay Topics (select one):

Future Forecasting

• Describe a future vision for corporate information profession.  What are the three core competencies for today’s pharmaceutical/medical information professional in order to be future ready?  What three things should professional associations be doing to promote the need for corporate medical information professionals?
• There has been much discussion on whether the word, “librarian” is a misnomer, given that librarians are doing, and will be performing, functions beyond the ones of the traditional librarian. Describe, contrast, and explain the evolution of the past health/medical library vs. a current real-life pharmaceutical/health/medical library.
• Given the current economic environment, discuss the value of transferable special library skills to positions that do not conform to the current pharmaceutical/medical librarian, i.e., researcher, knowledge manager, digital tools trainer, data scientist, etc.  Provide real job postings and/or real-life situations of transference of library skills to other job titles.

Arguing the Value of Current and Future Librarianship

• Situation:  You have encountered a conversation around the common corporate meeting area that proclaims information on the Internet alone provides all sufficient information on the latest research on Alzheimer’s drug therapy. As an information professional, you have an obligation to defend the competencies of the librarian, along with professional resources.  Develop a convincing, but diplomatic, argument defending the thesis that the Internet alone is not enough, and would garner support for value-added corporate librarian services.
• Thesis:  Information technology such as streaming and downloadable audio, video, and digital book technology, will displace the librarian.  Defend this thesis and develop solutions or approaches for information professionals to work with these resources in order to complement value of emerging technologies.

Technology

• With the vast numbers of online health consumer information, the barrier of waiting for health information from a doctor has reduced; however, access to inaccurate, outdated, and irresponsible health information has increased. Research an instance where a health consumer(s) or a health professional(s) experienced this situation.  Define how an informational professional would be able to intervene, and what kinds of programs and/or resources could be developed to impart credible health information to consumers, or to consumers via health professionals.
• Many corporations are encouraging employee use of hand-held devices to retrieve information.  Discuss how the corporate libraries can help support these mobile devices, and any issues involved.

Business of Health/Medical Libraries

• What is the pathway for entry into the medical information profession? Interview PHT members or summarize sufficient attributes of three or more medical/health librarians.  Make conclusions as to whether there is a typical trend pathway to the typical positions in the corporate medical world.
• Research life science corporations with medical information job postings in the past 2 years.   What are the core competencies wanted for entry level / mid-level / veteran-level positions?  What are the implications for information professionals in each of these three levels?
• Based on a listing of companies with known information professionals (contact rcls@novonordisk.com for the listing), compare and contrast the performance (stock market, percent revenue/profit growth, hiring trends) of these companies and those in the same sector without existing information professionals.