Draft:Carol Burns (librarian)

Carol Burns, MALS, AHIP, FMLA, is retired Director Emeriti of the Emory University Woodruff Health Sciences Center Library. She spent her career in academic health sciences librarianship at Emory University and retired in 2000 after serving 27 years. Burns was elected a fellow of the Medical Library Association in 2001, in recognition of her contributions to the profession. She served as a key resource in the Tbilisi-Atlanta partnership and establishing a national medical library in the Tbilisi.

Early life and education
Carol Burns was born in New Jersey to a family of teachers. Following her parents and siblings, her first career expectations were to join the teaching profession. She received a bachelor’s degree in history and education from Wittenberg University in 1967.

After teaching mathematics for several years, Burns returned to academia to earn a master’s in history from Eastern Michigan University. Later she enrolled in library school, under Gwendolyn Cruzat, while simultaneously starting as a reference associate in the Medical Center Library at the University of Michigan. Burns completed her Master’s of Library Science, with a focus on Medical Librarianship, in 1974.

Career
Upon moving to Atlanta with her family in 1974, Burns started at Emory University’s A. W. Calhoun Medical Library, now known as the Woodruff Health Sciences Center Library, as its first audiovisual librarian. At that time, Emory’s medical library was host to the southeastern regional medical library program under director Miriam Libbey. The A. W. Calhoun Medical Library also housed the Georgia Regional Medical Television Network. As the audiovisual librarian, Burns helped to circulate thousands of video recordings of lectures, conferences, and grand round sessions to hospitals throughout the state.

In 1983, Burns was appointed acting director of the library, following the sudden illness of director Miriam Libbey. She was appointed to the position permanently in 1984. In 1992, Burns gave a tour of the now renamed Woodruff Health Sciences Center Library, to a delegation from the Tbilisi State Medical University. The delegation was visiting Emory as part of a USAID funded program to modernize healthcare in country of Georgia. Subsequently, Burns was invited to join the project and made several visits to Tbilisi, helping to found the National Information Learning Centre. The Centre opened in 1996 though the Georgian Ministry of Health and directly supported the Tbilisi State Medical University and city hospitals.

Service to the Library Community
Despite her international work, Burns expressed a strong preference for a more local and regional professional organizations and was active in the founding and establishment of both the Atlanta Health Sciences Libraries Consortium and the Georgia Health Science Library Association. While a member of the national Medical Library Association (MLA) since the mid-1970s, Burns did not attend her first national meeting until 1984 after accepting the appointment to library director. Instead, she focused her involvement in the southeast regional chapter known as Southern Chapter. While serving on the Southern Chapter Research Committee, Burns co-authored a paper examining hospital journal usage and applying evidence-based principles to library collections. The paper was first presented at a national MLA meeting in 1996 and formally published in 1998. The presentation won the association award for best presented research. The publication later won the organizations Ida and George Eliot Prize for best published research in 2000.

Legacy
In 2001, the year following her retirement, Burns was named a Fellow of the Medical Library Association for outstanding contributions to health sciences librarianship. She recorded her oral history for the organization in 2004.