For our next Three Questions interview, we spoke with Chris Boire, Special Projects Librarian.

What areas can you help MSK users with?

Those who’ve been frequenting our monthly ‘Three Questions’ blog series will be familiar with Synapse, MSK’s database of MSK authors and their publications. I work alongside Jeanine McSweeney and Marina Rosenfield, who’ve talked about the database on their own posts – any questions about Synapse or how to use it, I’m happy to help with. On top of that, I also work to ensure research compliance with the MSK Cancer Center Support Grant/Core Grant (P30 CA008748). Any peer-reviewed publication by MSK staff needs to meet specific criteria to ensure compliance. If you’ve published a paper at MSK and have questions about how it fits into this process, let me know.

What projects have been working on recently?

Summertime means the core grant compliance review’s in full swing! Working alongside Library Director Donna Gibson, and with help from the database the Synapse team and I maintain, I’m reviewing the research published at MSK over the past few years to ensure our output is meeting required criteria. I review every paper and its bibliographic data over on PubMed to make sure it’s got all the information we need. For whatever is missing, we work with the paper’s authors and help them figure out what they need to do and who to contact to ensure their papers are compliant.

If you could travel anywhere in the world, where would you go?

Years ago, I was able to briefly visit a beautiful string of towns along the Italian coast called Cinque Terre – I’d love to visit there again. On top of that, I’ve always wanted to visit Japan and Iceland.

For our next Three Questions interview, we spoke with Marina Rosenfield, Special Projects Librarian.

What areas can you help MSK users with? 

As part of the team working on Synapse, MSK’s collection of author profiles and authoritative database of published content from our researchers, clinicians, and nurses, I can answer your questions about keeping track of your publications and managing your profile page. Would you like to add or update your profile photo? Are there published works that are missing from your list of publications that you would like to include? Do you have any questions about manipulating the data in Synapse, including filtering, exporting, and reusing for reporting? I can help you with almost any question you have about Synapse. 

What projects have you been working on recently? 

I am working on several new projects in addition to the ongoing work of ingesting and verifying MSK publication data. Since the start of quarantine last spring, Synapse team has been keeping an up-to-date list of MSK-generated publications in response to Covid-19. Late last year, I helped reorganize the Synapse category of “journal articles” into a number of narrower publication types to help MSK authors and administrators get a clearer picture of overall publication output. We have reorganized the 2020 Synapse data to conform to the new standard. Now, I and my team-mates are working on converting 2019 journal articles already listed in Synapse to the new publication categories as well. Finally, we are starting collecting data for the 2020 Synapse publications report, a fifth one in our series! 

If you could travel anywhere in the world, where would you go?

Having cancelled vacations and holidays with the family for a full year now, I would be happy to go anywhere in the world that would have me. My long-term bucket list includes Turkey, the Republic of Georgia, and Japan.