In Maggie Neilson’s family, libraries are in the genes. This soon-to-be third generation librarian has a grandmother who was a librarian in Montreal and a father who has worked as a librarian at Memorial, Lakehead, and UNB. With a family history like that, it’s no surprise that Maggie has just completed her first year of the Master of Library and Information Studies (MLIS) degree at Dal and is spending her summer working at the Kellogg Library.

“I know I’m supposed to be a librarian,” says Maggie, who did her undergraduate degree in animal science at the Nova Scotia Agricultural College (now known as Dalhousie’s Agricultural Campus). Even while she was pursuing her Bachelor of Science, Maggie spent two summers working in the MacRae Library as a summer student. “I was encouraged by the staff of the MacRae Library to pursue my MLIS degree,” says Maggie. “They could see that I really liked the role that libraries play in research.”

This summer, Maggie has been revamping the design of the Libguides, assisting with systematic reviews (large searches that involve upwards of 10,000 articles), and helping students and researchers with their searches. One major undertaking that she is especially excited about is a bibliometric project where she is counting citations in five different clinical pharmacy journals. (Bibliometrics is the statistical analysis of books, articles, or other publications.) Maggie is assisting with evaluating how often the journals cite other sources and how often other people cite them. This information will be used in a paper to help science libraries select the best journals, based on both popularity and prestige.

“A health sciences library is a great fit with my undergraduate degree and I’d heard that the Kellogg Library offers an extensive internship with boundless learning opportunities,” says Maggie. “Every day I have an opportunity to help someone. Working at the Kellogg Library allows me to contribute to the health of my community, and that’s very exciting to me.”