This month’s Spotlight focuses on our 2018 WHSLA President,
Michele Matucheski, MLIS, AHIP.
Michele Matucheski is currently a medical librarian for
Ascension Wisconsin, based at Ascension Mercy Hospital in Oshkosh, WI. She previously worked for Affinity Health
System and Ministry Health Care before the most recent merger with
Ascension. Not quite a solo Librarian
through those years, out of necessity, Michele has learned to wear just about all hats in a hospital /
health system library environment from research,
web mistress and information architecture,
contract negotiation, end user training, marketing library services, cataloging,
and archives.
Since 2009,
she has been working with the Sisters who founded Mercy Hospital on an oral
history project to record their memories and life work with The Sisters of the
Sorrowful Mother. This has been a very
purposeful and satisfying project that reminds me why I do what I do as a
Librarian. One of the interviews is
available at The Stories of the Sisters. This interview is with Sr. Frieda Mohnl, who
survived WWII and Kristallnacht, The Night of Broken
Glass. Sr. Frieda was a pioneer in
social work and hospital case management.
Before coming to work at Mercy, Michele’s first
professional library job was for Middleton Health Sciences Library at
UW-Madison as a Reference Librarian who also did User Education and
Outreach. While still in Library
School, Michele worked as a Medical Library Technician at St. Mary’s Hospital
in Madison. This was a perfect “lab” to
compliment the theory and philosophical base of library school.
Michele has been a WHSLA Member since 1997 when she
attended her first WHSLA Conference.
Through the years, she has held various positions in WHSLA, including a
previous term as WHSLA President in 2005, Chair of Professional Development,
Fox Valley Area Representative, guest WHSLA Blogger, WISDOM Chat Presenter,
Annual Meeting Planning Committees, and more.
She currently holds positions with The Fox River Area
Library Consortium (FRVALC) as web mistress, Continuing Education Chair, and
Archivist.
In 2017, he presented a paper at MLA in Seattle,
co-written with Kellee Selden on Library-Friendly Contract Language. She is a distinguished member of The
Academy of Health Information Professionals (AHIP).
Michele grew up in the country of north central
Wisconsin, outside of Antigo. She earned
a Bachelor of Arts degree from UW-Madison in African Literature &
Languages, later earning her MLIS degree from UW-SLIS in Madison.
In her home life, she enjoys “making stuff” from
quilting to photography to texture and surface design, hand-dying fabric,
weaving, spinning, and fiber arts. This
creative life is tracked on her blog, Sweet Leaf
Notebook.
“What Medical Librarians do on Vacation.” One of her favorite places to travel is Scotland. Last summer, she visited The Surgeons Museum
in Edinburgh, fascinated with the history of Medicine and the pathology
specimens on display there.
