My Medical University of South Carolina (MUSC) Years

This morning finds me reflecting on my first years in Charleston, SC again.  

When skin problems drove me indoors in 1998, I was faced with what to do with my life yet again.  

Being a former public school teacher who no longer wanted to be in the classroom, I found myself gravitating to higher education.  When I was offered a grant funded job at the Medical University Library with RAPID (Rural Access Partnership for Information Delivery), I took it! 

RAPID was a partnership between the Medical University of South Carolina (MUSC) Library and the Lowcountry Area Health Education Consortium (AHEC). Its sole purpose was to to provide the best library services available to practicing Lowcountry health professionals.  We served 13 counties in the Lowcountry of South Carolina back in the late 1990s and 2000.  

We did a LOT of day trips.

I had to schedule and help present training sessions for medical professionals across all 13 counties. Generally one or more medical librarians attended these sessions with me.  

What an experience!  We visited some cities like Hilton Head and Beaufort, but we mostly did training in rural areas like Bamberg and Barnwell and Varnville and Branchville, etc.  

Back then the Internet was fairly new and access was dial-up, so we had to carry our own 100 foot telephone cord, a projector, laptop, power extension cord, and screen to do the training sessions.  This job is why I laugh when people complain about slow connections nowadays. 

The job did have frustrations, but I met so many people!  That was the best part of the job, the people.  The work itself was an awful lot to do.

My duties included maintaining the RAPID website, acting as writer, photographer, editor, publisher and distributor of the RAPID monthly newsletter, designing marketing and teaching materials, teaching medical professionals about Medline, PubMed, MedlinePlus, and Loansome Doc, which were all new at the time, and doing customer service things and reporting, etc.  

My favorite thing was teaching the difference between using "and" and "or" in a boolean search. 

The joke was, "I used to want a husband who is tall AND handsome AND rich AND kind, but at this point I'd settle for a husband who is tall OR handsome OR rich OR kind." See?  OR expands the search.  AND limits the search.

They tended to remember that.  😉

I had to use both Windows and Macintosh computers to do this job, and I had to be able to use Microsoft Publisher, Adobe Pagemaker, Filemaker Pro, Access, Excel, Netscape, Internet Explorer, Adobe Photoshop, Claris Homepage, Corel Photo-Paint 7, Microsoft Word, Photostudio and Powerpoint.

Needless to say, I learned a LOT, but it was also fun.  

Medical librarians are a fun bunch.  After the training sessions we did, we'd go out to eat lunch in little out-of the way mostly "Mom and Pop" type restaurants in the little towns.  Delicious! 

If you ever make it to Blackville, SC, go eat at the Amish / Mennonite restaurant, Miller's Bread Basket. You will NOT be disappointed!

In addition to wonderful food, we also discovered some quirky things in our travels.  Once when we were visiting Beaufort, SC in early 2000 to do a training session in the hospital there, we came across a "Cows on Vacation" art exhibit and couldn't resist taking this picture for our RAPID Newsletter.

Work Work Work. All I Do Is Work.

Later that same year (2000) the grant funding ended, so the job ended, and I went in search of yet another way to spend my life.  I found it!  But that is a story for another time.