Dr. Prudence W. Dalrymple, a research and teaching professor at Drexel University’s College of Computing & Informatics (CCI), was selected as a 2014 Fellow of the Medical Library Association (MLA) for her sustained and outstanding contributions to health sciences librarianship and to the advancement of the purposes of the Association.
MLA Fellows are regular members that are elected by the Association’s board of directors. Throughout its history, MLA has recognized individuals who have made outstanding contributions to the advancement of the purposes for which the Association stands by conferring a special membership status. "Honorary Member" was the term used until 1976, when a distinction was then made between MLA members and non-members who made contributions.
“There are few things in a professional’s career that are more gratifying than the recognition of your peers,” Dalrymple said. “Being named a Fellow of the Medical Library Association is a great honor and a confirmation that when I saw the importance of linking information to health care, I made the right choice. I look forward to welcoming talented young people to this field, just as I was welcomed many years ago.”
Dalrymple currently serves as the director of Drexel’s multidisciplinary Institute for Healthcare Informatics. A Drexel faculty member since 2008, Dalrymple’s research and teaching interests mainly center on user-centered information behaviors, particularly in the health arena. She teaches informatics courses related to health informatics and management. Her cognate interests include evidence-based practice, education for the information professions and assessment.
From 2005-2007, Dalrymple was a National Library of Medicine Post-Doctoral Fellow in health sciences informatics at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine where her research focused on the dissemination of research evidence for improving clinical practice. Prior to her academic career as both an instructor and an administrator, she practiced as a health sciences librarian in clinical and academic settings.
In addition to her work as a health information professional, she has been a member of the faculty at the Graduate School of Library and Information Science at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and at Dominican University where she served as dean from 1997-2005. From 1993-97, she directed the American Library Association Office for Accreditation.
She is a member of Phi Beta Kappa and Beta Phi Mu and a Distinguished Member of the Academy of Health Information Professionals. She served on the Board of Directors of the American Society for Information Science and Technology and represents Drexel's CCI in the Academic Forum of the American Medical Informatics Association. She was president of the Association for Library and Information Science Education in 2001-2002 and was elected a member of the Council of the American Library Association.
Including her authoring of numerous publications, Dalrymple’s informatics activities include appointment to the Biomedical Library Review Committee, (now the Biomedical Library and Informatics Committee) a study section at the National Library of Medicine from 1998-2002, and to advisory boards of several grant projects. She was a member of the student editorial board for the Journal of the American Medical Informatics Association and currently is on the editorial boards of the Journal of the Medical Library Association and Education for Information.
Dalrymple received her Ph.D. in library and information studies from the University of Wisconsin-Madison where her research focused on a cognitive model of electronic database searching. She also holds an M.S. in health sciences informatics from Johns Hopkins University, a certificate in health communications from the Bloomberg School of Public Health, an M.S. in library science from Simmons College, and a B.A. in English from Clark University.
###