Celebrating the Retirement of Teri Hartman, Humans Win!

Professor Teresa (Teri) Hartman is retiring from a career of more than three decades as a health sciences librarian, with twenty-six of those years at the McGoogan Health Science Library. Teri started at McGoogan Library in 1999 as an Assistant Professor and National Network of Libraries of Medicine MidContinental Region (NNLM-MCR) outreach librarian. She moved to a liaison librarian role and was promoted to the Head of Education in 2004. She earned full professor in 2015.  

Prior to being hired at McGoogan Library she was first a customer. While working as the Northeast Missouri Area Health Education Center librarian in the mid-1990s, Teri visited McGoogan library for training on using and promoting the MEDLINE index to rural healthcare providers.  

Reflecting on her career, Teri said, “my career is a sum of my choices plus the opportunities offered.” Over the years, she championed information literacy and interprofessional education, helping the campus and Nebraska communities navigate an ever-changing information landscape. For Teri, McGoogan Library is “a place of growth,” a place where we are “not adapting to change but leading to change.”  

Teri’s career was not without personal challenges. In 2006, she faced adenoid cystic carcinoma, an experience that deepened her commitment to consumer health information services. Her story of resilience inspired colleagues and underscored the vital role of libraries in patient-centered care. She regularly shares her experiences as part of her health information literacy presentation at the annual Grey Matters: Brain and Spine Cancer Symposium 

Teri describes her career at McGoogan Library as being “a connector of information to the people that need it most at the time it is most needed.” This meant serving as a liaison to the College of Medicine, the College of Public Health, the Physician Assistant program, and being active in Pathways programs, participating in Summer Health Professions Education Program. She has served as director for the Inquiry, Research, and Evidence-Based Medicine Coil since 2017 and coordinates integrating information literacy and research skills instruction into COM three-phase curriculum. 

Her contributions have been widely recognized, including the Bernice M. Hetzner Award for Excellence in Academic Health Science Librarianship (2007) and the MCMLA Outstanding Achievement Award (2020). Through conferences, panels, and countless presentations, Teri shared her expertise on public health, leadership, and emerging technologies like GenAI, always with humor and always embodying her motto: “humans win.” 

Please join us in celebrating Teri’s retirement at a celebration reception on Thursday, February 26, 2026, from 3:30-5pm on the UNMC Omaha campus in the Wigton Heritage Center, Olson Auditorium. Remarks will begin at 4pm, and refreshments will be available.