Faith A. Meakin-HSC Libraries' Director
Faith A. Meakin, M.L.S., has announced she will retire in March 2007 after almost 13 years as the HSC Libraries' Director.
Meakin has worked many jobs in several prestigious libraries during her decades of service: a summer internship at Harvard's medical library; a postgraduate fellowship at UCLA's Biomedical Library; 14 years at the medical school at UC-San Diego, first as a reference librarian and ending as head of Public Services, with a one-year NLM fellowship at the University of Minnesota during that time. In 1983, she took a position at the World Health Organization in Geneva, Switzerland, as Head of Reference and Readers' Services, where she coordinated the headquarters library and the reference services in the six regional offices and played a large role in the training program for librarians in developing countries, traveling extensively during her five years there. After five years as executive director with the Southeastern/Atlantic branch of the Regional Medical Library Services (now the National Network of Libraries of Medicine), in May 1994 she became director of the UF Health Science Center Libraries.
During her tenure here, Meakin has been awarded many competitive fellowships in the field of medical librarianship and has a long career of service and scholarly contributions to the field. In 1997, she received the prestigious Woods Hole Informatics Fellowship sponsored by the National Library of Medicine. In May 2004 she was awarded fellowship by the Medical Library Association in recognition of her outstanding and sustained contributions to the field, and was elected to MLA's National Board of Directors the same year.
Meakin's post-retirement plans include traveling with her husband Skip, taking courses at the community college (especially digital photography), and getting back to gardening (especially her herbs and flowers).
"I have always tried to promote the idea of librarians as integral members of the health-care team," she said. "My joy has been to contribute to the health and well-being of people as a visible partner for the University teachers, clinicians and researchers."