Direct Effects: David Rothman, Community General Hospital

David Rothman, information services specialist at the Community General Hospital Medical Library in Syracuse, says, “The thing I like best about hospital library work is that answering a medical reference question well or performing a literature search thoroughly can have a direct effect on the life of a patient.”

Rothman has an equally direct effect on the lives of busy librarians as cocreator of LibWorm, which searches over 1500 library-related RSS feeds (from blogs to journal tables of contents). Since LibWorm lets users set up custom RSS feeds to track topics of interest, it helps them manage information overload. Two of his greatest contributions to the medical field are his “enthusiasm and generosity.” He has even shown his hospital's chief medical officer how to use an aggregator!

Rothman also shares information on “Web geekery of interest to medical libraryfolk” on his blog. Grateful reader Melissa Rethlefsen, education technology librarian at Mayo Medical School, says, “Without his blog, I know that many of us wouldn't be nearly as up-to-date.”

When it comes to catching that slippery medical information, David Rothman is the ultimate early bird.