Leon S. McGoogan Health Sciences Library
University of Nebraska Medical Center
University of Nebraska Medical Center

McGoogan News

UNMC welcomes Nebraska State Poet Jewel Rodgers

Jewel Rodgers in white outfit against botanical backdrop. Text says: This is What Medicine Cannot Measure A special presentation by Nebraska State Poet Jewel Rodgers Wednesday, November 11, 2026 Noon-1 p.m. MCPH 3013 or via Zoom

This Is What Medicine Cannot Measure 

A special presentation by Nebraska State Poet Jewel Rodgers 

Date: Nov. 11, 2026 

Time: Noon-1 p.m. 

Location: MCPH 3013 or via Zoom 

Nebraska State Poet Jewel Rodgers will join the UNMC community for a special presentation, “This Is What Medicine Cannot Measure.” Through her poetry, Jewel will explore how compassion and a sense of peace can be part of seeking and receiving care.  

Jewel will speak about healing, humanity in our care, and the importance of ensuring that people feel valued and heard in their health care, education and daily lives.  

A select amount of boxed lunches is available. 

To attend the talk, register via Zoom.  

Attend in person: MCPH 3013. 

The 2025-2029 Nebraska State Poet, Jewel Rodgers has been a spoken-word poet for more than a decade, performing in schools, festivals, community settings, conferences, public events and other venues. Rodgers is an Omaha Entertainment and Arts Award winner for Best Performance Poet in Omaha and a three-time TEDx speaker.  

She has received numerous accolades, including being named as a 2022 Union for Contemporary Art Fellow, a 2023 Andy Warhol Populus Fund Grantee, a 2024 finalist in the Blackberry Peach Poetry Slam, and a 2025 Academy of American Poets Laureate Fellow.   

Through her State Poet initiative, Rodgers works to increase access to poetry and creative connection across Nebraska through performances, workshops, community conversations and literary exchanges.  

Beyond poetry, Rodgers is a spatial practitioner and emerging developer focused on small-scale community development projects in Omaha, exploring how storytelling, public space and culture work together to deepen a sense of belonging.   

This event is sponsored by the Office of the Chancellor, with McGoogan Health Sciences Library, the College of Public Health, Gold Humanism Honor Society and the Interprofessional Academy of Educators.  

Rare book gallery reopens in Wigton Heritage Center

A number of rare books rest open underneath explanatory panels in the rare book gallery on Level 5 of Wigton Heritage Center.
Photo by Carli Cominoli

The rare book gallery on Level 5 of the Wigton Heritage Center has reopened to visitors.  

The gallery resumed its operations this month upon completion of repairs caused by a water pipe break this summer.  

The gallery “is an inviting space that allows visitors to get close to historically important books from the history of the health sciences,” said Erin Torell, rare books librarian at McGoogan.  

Currently, visitors to the gallery can enjoy a unique selection of anatomy books, which includes a first edition of Gray’s Anatomy, a text “that is significant not just to medicine but our culture as well,” Torell said.  

Other available anatomy texts are published in English, Italian and French and feature dental, obstetric and more general illustrations, Torell said. 

This summer’s flood damaged walls behind some exhibit cases, which were pulled out from the walls as part of the drying process, Torell said. Lighting components and door seals were repaired; the latter provides the needed barrier preventing “water from entering the book display,” Torell said. 

Returning to their normal, Torell said librarians freshen the collection as they “turn the pages every three months.” While this small act of momentum represents “a preservation task, it also invites visitors to return to view new illustrations,” Torell said.  

Learn more about the Wigton Heritage Center here.  

Schmidt honored with MCMLA’s 2026 Outstanding Achievement Award

Cindy Schmidt wears a green long-sleeved top with purple fan earrings against a well-lit hallway.

Cindy Schmidt’s librarian peers recognize the depth of her experience and the width of her wisdom. This year, the Midcontinental Chapter of the Medical Library Association (MCMLA) sounded its agreement, honoring Schmidt with its 2026 Outstanding Achievement Award.  

The honor is both distinct and part of a pattern; MCMLA has acknowledged Schmidt three times for Best Research Poster Award (2005, 2008 and 2019) and valued her presence on the association’s programming and research committees.  

First bestowed in 1983, the Outstanding Achievement Award honors an MCMLA member “for significant contributions to the chapter and its activities, and to health sciences libraries or organizations.” 

A key part of McGoogan’s Education and Research Services Librarians team, Schmidt is known for her commitment to serving others through systematic reviews and interprofessional education, Associate Dean Katie Bishop noted.  

The MCMLA also expressed appreciation for Schmidt’s close collaborations with the College of Pharmacy at UNMC and the Institutional Animal Care and Use Committee at the University of Nebraska-Omaha.  

Bishop values Schmidt’s “willingness to share her vast expertise with her colleagues her at McGoogan and … the profession generally,” she said. Schmidt’s contributions to the field are “truly … outstanding,” Bishop added, underlining Schmidt’s “rare” background for a health sciences librarian.  

Schmidt possesses a chemistry degree from UNO as well as an M.D. in education from UNMC. Before coming to McGoogan some 24 years ago, Schmidt worked as a pathology resident, postdoctoral associate and research associate at the University of Minnesota and taught at Indiana University School of Medicine. 

Join the McGoogan staff and UNMC community in congratulating and thanking Cindy! 

How Danielle Westmark lives out the spirit of National Medical Librarians Month at McGoogan

A librarian works at a computer, seated, while a medical professional asks questions from a standing position. Text reads: The Ultimate Source for Accurate and Trustworthy Information Get the Most Reliable Information from Your Medical Librarian. National Medical Librarians Month

October is American Archives Month as well as National Medical Librarians Month. To celebrate, we’re sharing conversations with just three of the staff members that make McGoogan a shining example of a medical library and an embodiment of the archivist’s job. Today, get to know Education and Research Services Librarian Danielle Westmark.  

What drew Westmark to librarianship and McGoogan 

Westmark’s path revolves around a common yet always distinct story about how one class changed everything.  

Unsure about her future but interested in education and public service—maybe elementary education or social work?—she took her first library science course as an undergraduate at University of Nebraska-Omaha.  

The class, Introduction to Library Services, offered an overview of librarianship from nearly every aspect and angle and explained how librarians support entire communities. Westmark felt the pull, changing her academic emphasis.  

From there, her way to McGoogan is lined with right-place, right-time moments. 

“My career has just been happy accidents—or happy incidents,” Westmark said.  

A temporary role at McGoogan after graduation became part-time, then full-time. Her support of other librarians, work at the AskUs desk and increasing excitement about supporting literature searches, answering reference questions, and supporting student and faculty research cemented Westmark’s place at the library, where she’s now been for 12 years.  

The greatness Westmark sees in medical librarianship 

Danielle Westmark with reddish-orange hair in a gray top against lit windows

Working at McGoogan, Westmark recognizes the uniqueness of medical librarianship, in which librarians take on numerous diverse projects and touch topics affecting the entire community.  

There’s a great scope to medical librarianship—and an intimate one, Westmark noted. Working closely with students, medical librarians help them “learn the tips and tricks to using the literature databases” as well as analyze the information they discover, she said.  

Medical librarians like Westmark also encourage students to ask key follow-up questions, such as: Is this good information? What makes it important? And what makes this relevant to your patient?  

“Each day is a bit different,” Westmark said, noting she might spend her time with library user consultations or speak in a class, might help users with questions about citation and research tools or work alongside a faculty member seeking journal articles to aid their manuscript.  

Recent rewards  

Westmark has worked alongside students in the course Evidence-Based Practice 3: Systematic Reviews for Occupational Therapy for the last four years. Going beyond the already rigorous standards of a literature review, a systematic review represents “an exhaustive search on a focused question” and an attempt to find all available literature, she said.  

“It’s like a puzzle to me … taking pieces of something and trying to make the picture work,” Westmark said of her joy in the process.  

Watching these students take her puzzle, then apply and present the findings is exciting, she said.  

Occasionally, when searching on a student’s behalf, Westmark can convey this message: “Congratulations, you found a gap in the literature.” That is, the student’s query might have been talked about but not written or studied in a significant way.  

“It’s a great way to continue the conversation on their research topic and build that relationship to help support them on their research journey,” Westmark said. 

More often though, she watches students take the question further—such as in their systematic review class—or to their floor, as resident nurses improve care or processes in their department. Witnessing the knowing changes they make delights Westmark.  

Read our profile of Archives Specialist Kelly Gonzalez here.

What Kelly Gonzalez brings to McGoogan—and American Archives Month

October is American Archives Month is the message read against a variety of images that could be archived: cassette tapes, floppy disks, folders, film strips and more.

October is American Archives Month as well as National Medical Librarians Month. To celebrate, we’re sharing conversations with just three of the staff members that make McGoogan a shining example of a medical library and an embodiment of the archivist’s job. To begin, get to know Archives Specialist Kelly Gonzalez.  

What drew Gonzalez to librarianship, and archives in particular 

With overlapping passions for libraries and the study of history, Gonzalez spent time as an undergraduate at Vermont’s Norwich University exploring the possibilities housed in library and museum archive jobs. Her search didn’t, ultimately, help her pick one over the other. 

“I didn’t really want to make up my mind—so I didn’t, really,” she said. 

Through early jobs in Pennsylvania, Georgia and elsewhere, Gonzalez explored the overlap between types of archivist jobs, acting as a sort of “liaison,” she said.  

Highlighting the through lines themselves as she goes, Gonzalez appreciates any role that allows her to help people access information, regardless of collection or era.  

“I like to enjoy people’s research and celebrate with them,” Gonzalez said.  

She truly loves the process of undertaking the “treasure hunt,” then sending a patron off to the rest of their work and starting over with the next person, she said.  

Kelly Gonzalez in a floral top against the Wigton Center facade

What makes medical libraries and librarianship significant  

The work of a health sciences library matters, in part, because literally every person interacts with illness, doctors and health information in some way, Gonzalez said.  

And though everyone needs good health information, not everyone can venture into the depths.  

The terminology of bodies, ailments and cures can be intimidating, a vocabulary all their own, Gonzalez said. It truly helps to have an intermediary between medical professionals and laypeople; librarians can be these liaisons, leading patrons through big questions. 

The ability to translate information across audiences, in this case everyone from students to doctors, researchers to patients, is a particular challenge for health sciences librarians—and commends their work. 

“You have to be able to transform yourself, adjust how you communicate with people,” Gonzalez said. “I think I’m good at that.” 

The rewards of a recent experience 

Looking back at recent projects, Gonzalez relished her visit—alongside Special Collections Curator Darby Kurtz—to an iteration of this summer’s Highlander camp for elementary-aged children in North Omaha. As part of a weeklong focus on medicine, the pair presented on medical illustrations, bringing samples from the McGoogan collection such as models, porcelain doll sculptures, historical drawings, rare books and more.  

Gonzalez and Kurtz discussed medical illustration as a form of communication and helped campers think through why an artist might make certain choices. They talked about historical and current developments in the field; the latter encompassing forms like holograms and other computer-designed works.  

To work with an audience that would typically never enter the McGoogan space and to, once again, build bridges—between kids and their potential futures, between art and science—felt particularly rewarding to Gonzalez.  

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