Career Honor

HSLIC Faculty Member Receives Prestigious Medical Library Association Research Fellowship

Jonathan Eldredge, PhD, a professor at The University of New Mexico Health Sciences Library & Informatics Center (HSLIC), has been named a Fellow of the Medical Library Association (MLA), and also named as the recipient of the association's prestigious 2022 Donald A.B. Lindberg Research Fellowship.

Eldredge will officially be inducted as a Fellow at the MLA's 2022 annual meeting, May 3-6. Fellowship is conferred in recognition of a scholar's noteworthy career achievements.

"Being named a Fellow of the Medical Library Association is one of the very highest honors of our profession," said HSLIC Executive Director Melissa Rethlefsen, MSLS, AHIP. "It indicates a career of excellence in health science librarianship, including outstanding contributions to our profession, impactful scholarship and leadership."

Eldredge, who joined the UNM faculty in 1986, thanked his colleagues for nominating him for the fellowship. "To me, the most important aspect of this honor is that my colleagues thought highly enough of me to make the effort to assemble a persuasive nomination portfolio," he said. "I am deeply touched by their efforts and filled with profound gratitude."

The Lindberg Fellowship provides a $10,000 grant, awarded annually by the MLA through a competitive process, to fund research aimed at expanding the research knowledge base, linking the information services provided by librarians to improved health care and advances in biomedical research.

For his fellowship, Eldredge will conduct a comprehensive inventory of the application of evidence-based practice (EBP) in the library and informatics literatures and lead a team to publish a six-chapter, practical, open-access guide to practicing EBP for health sciences librarians and other health information professionals.

"Dr. Eldredge has been the leading American voice for evidence-based librarianship since he originally coined the term in 1997," Rethlefsen said.

"It is thrilling to see that not only is he being recognized for his work by being named an MLA Fellow, but that he has additionally received the Lindberg Fellowship to create an open access textbook on evidence-based librarianship. Such a textbook is highly in demand and has the potential to influence generations of libriarians."

Eldredge said the Lindberg fellowship came about after he proposed publishing a book on evidence-based practice. "Countless colleagues over the years have urged me to publish such a book," he said. "I am grateful for this fellowship for granting me the opportunity to make this practical guide a reality."

Last year, Eldredge was named to the National Library of Medicine’s Literature Selection Technical Review Committee, a federal panel that determines which journals are indexed on MEDLINE, the world’s premier database for biomedical research.

The committee meets three times a year to review and recommend journals for inclusion in MEDLINE – which in turn serves as the basis for PubMed, the online resource that sees 3.3 billion searches annually.

Eldredge, who also holds appointments in the UNM College of Population Health and the UNM School of Medicine, has extensive experience as an editor and reviewer for scholarly publications, including the Journal of the American Medical Association, American Journal of Public Health, Evidence-Based Library and Information Science and BMC Biomedical Digital Libraries.

He earned his master of library science degree at the University of Michigan School of Information before joining UNM as chief of collection development at what was then the Medical Center Library, with an appointment as a lecturer in the School of Medicine.

Eldredge served as co-director for the Evidence-Based Practice course required of all medical students from 2008 to 2017 and later transitioned to co-directorship of a new Quantitative Medicine course. He also co-teaches a research methods course for all physician assistant students, a biomedical informatics course for all MSCR students and a public health course required of all public health graduate students.