For our next Three Questions interview, we’re speaking with Sheridan Sayles, MSK Archivist.

What areas can you help MSK users with?My job is to manage and provide access to unpublished, historical records of Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center and its earlier iterations, and I can help users find historical information about MSK.

What projects have you been working on recently?
When I started a few months ago, I learned that all descriptions of records held in the Archives are in hard copy. I’ve been refining the descriptions of collections in preparation to get an online access system and hope to have that up and running shortly.

If you could travel anywhere in the world, where would you go?
I’d love to explore more of Central Europe: Hungary, Romania, Croatia, and the like. I visited Poland and the Czech Republic this summer and all of it was gorgeous!

For our next Three Questions interview, we spoke with Christina G., Special Project Librarian.

What areas can you help MSK users with?

Christina enjoying an NYC souvenir shop.

I work directly with Synapse, the Library’s authoritative database of MSK authors and their publications.  Synapse houses publications produced by MSK’s researchers, clinicians, nurses, and healthcare professionals and arranges them by author profiles. I can provide assistance to users who are interested in learning how to use and navigate Synapse, as well as help MSK authors update their profiles.

What projects have you been working on recently?

The Synapse team tracks and adds new publications by MSK authors into the database on a monthly basis, importing bibliographic records from Scopus, Web of Science, BIOSIS Citation Index, CINAHL, and PsycINFO. However, this requires the Synapse team to cross-reference these records with original PDFs to ensure the data were adequately imported and missing data, such as PMIDs and PMCIDs, are included. We also use information from MSK’s Human Resources to ensure we associate each publication with the correct MSK author’s profile. The process is vigorous, therefore I spend most of my time working on this!

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

I unfortunately haven’t traveled as much as I would like to so I would be happy to go literally anywhere in the world. The only requirement I ask is that it is somewhere with a beach since I love swimming and the ocean.

For our next Three Questions interview, we spoke with Tiffany Chan, Special Project Librarian.

What areas can you help MSK users with?

Hi! I work with the team that identifies MSK authors’ published works and links them to Synapse, our online database of MSK authors and their publications. Synapse is unique to our organization and it allows MSK staff to effortlessly find their published works via their profiles to use for networking, CV development, and more! I can answer your questions about how to enhance your profile and our overall process from beginning to end.

What projects have you been working on recently?

We receive many publications each month by MSK authors. I index these works in our database by reviewing each one and making sure all the identifiers and other bibliographic data match up with what is on the original PDF, PubMed record, publisher website etc. I then ensure the publication is associated with the correct MSK author’s profile or create a new one if it is their first time publishing while at MSK. This ongoing project is an important step in our process that ensures your work is discoverable by others.

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

There are many places I want to explore, but my heart tells me to go back to my roots. My family’s ancestral home in China was occupied for countless generations by hardworking farmers and very capable women. This home is now unoccupied, but still holds on to its former beauty. My hope is to see it soon before time and nature reclaim it.