Meet the Associates:
2024-2025 Associate Fellows
Katie Kidwell
Katie Kidwell received her master’s in library and information science from Simmons University in May 2024. Most recently, she worked in the Hirsh Health Sciences Library at Tufts University and the Somerville Public Library. Before transitioning to librarianship, Katie earned a master’s in higher education and student affairs from the University of Iowa, spending nearly a decade working in admissions and residence life. She also enjoyed a short stint as the operations manager for a medical office that manufactured and fit prosthetic limbs. She holds a bachelor’s in history, English, and film from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. As an NLM Associate Fellow, Kidwell is eager to learn more about controlled vocabularies, user engagement and outreach. She is also interested in how data are generated, analyzed, and translated, as well as how equity and meaning-making factor into data creation and dissemination. After the fellowship, Katie hopes to return to a medical school library to focus on research and instruction.
Sophie Nachman
Sophie Nachman earned her master’s degrees in information science and public health with a concentration in health equity, social justice and human rights from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. She worked as a graduate assistant at the UNC Health Sciences Library for three years, where she provided support and instruction about literature searching, citation managers, health literacy, and systematic reviews. She has contributed to research about plain language in LibGuides and search hedge validation. Sophie completed her bachelor's degree in information science with a second major in women and gender studies at UNC-Chapel Hill. During that time, she volunteered as a community education intern for a domestic violence crisis center, creating content about healthy relationships, center services, and sexual and reproductive health topics. As an NLM fellow, Sophie seeks to deepen her understanding of the tools available to facilitate health literacy, open science, and health information dissemination. After the fellowship, she aspires to work in research settings to develop inclusive consumer health information resources, support organizational health literacy, and reduce barriers to healthcare.
Erin Simon
Erin Simon received her master’s in library science from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in May 2024. While completing her program, she worked as a research and education intern at Duke University’s Medical Center Library and Archives, where she worked on systematic reviews, instructional material, bibliometrics projects and was introduced to the scope and skillset needed to become a medical librarian. Prior to her graduate program, Erin earned her bachelor’s in biology, health and society from the University of Michigan, where she volunteered at the university hospital and pursued emergency medical technician training. She then went on to teach English as an assistant language teacher in Nagano, Japan. As an NLM Associate Fellow, Erin hopes to gain more familiarity with the open science landscape, as well as improve her data science skills to pursue bibliometrics projects in equity in the citation process. Erin is also passionate about health literacy and is interested in how developing AI technologies could improve health literacy initiatives. After the fellowship, Erin hopes to continue working in a government or academic setting where she can continue to support open science initiatives, systematic reviews, health literacy and bibliometric research.
Eli Wachter
Eli Wachter received their master’s in library and information science from the University of Washington in June 2024. During their program, they worked as a graduate teaching assistant for the Informatics Research Methods undergraduate course and as a student specialist for the University of Washington Libraries Special Collections, accessioning and processing faculty papers for the medical school. Before graduate school, Eli worked as a library assistant at a public library for one year after completing their bachelor’s in psychology and English at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. During their time as an undergraduate, they gained experience assisting in transgender psychotherapy research as part of the Trans CARE Collaborative, working as a student lab assistant at the UWCCC TSB-BioBank, and supporting local families as a respite provider through United Cerebral Palsy. As an NLM Associate Fellow, Eli hopes to develop a range of skills around research data management, community engagement, and health information dissemination. After the fellowship, Eli aspires to work within a public or academic library setting, focusing on areas such as medical history, community health research, and/or health literacy.
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Last Reviewed: November 28, 2022