An expert to the experts: mining diverse databases leads to a career in diverse fields--and a connection between librarianship and fundraising.

For more than 30 years, Sharon M. Gray has worked in the information industry. She has held several titles and has been employed by many firms and organizations, but at the core, she has always remained a special librarian. She has retained the tenets of the profession, fully used her skills, and broadened her talents as she expanded her career into new areas of interests.

Now, Gray, who has been an SLA member since the early 1970s, is the director of development for the Community Research Initiative of New England (CRI). She is responsible for all aspects of the organization's fundraising and communication efforts.

"My responsibilities include the annual giving, planned giving, major donor relations, prospect research and special events," Gray said in a recent interview. "I also oversee public relations and marketing, and I provide information on HIV/AIDS and clinical trials to a constituency of researchers and consumers via our newsletter, Web site, and external communications."

CRI is an independent, nonprofit organization based in Boston. For nearly 20 years it has participated in some of the most promising HIV/AIDS clinical research--and has provided access to life-saving medications and health insurance coverage for those in need.

Gray has been employed with CRI since 2003. In that time, she and her staff of two have achieved some remark-able accomplishments: designed and implemented a new branded annual fund that had a 107% increase; developed signature special events that have raised more than $125,000; launched a major gifts program that netted more than $200,000 in 2006; created and implemented a message delivery strategy to inform donors; and cultivated prospects and disseminated the organization's news.

Prior to CRI, Gray was the director of foundation relations and manager of the information center/library for Silent Spring Institute (SSI) for four years in Newton, Massachusetts. Silent Spring is a non-profit, scientific research organization that studies and identifies the links between the environment and breast cancer. Gray continues as a library consultant at SSI. Since her job at CRI is compressed into four days a week, the extra day allows her to pursue projects such as SSI.

"My practice is library-related," she said of her consultancy. "It comes from a long experience in librarianship. If there's some kind of special project or grant or proposal, I can help with the grant and managing the program."

At Silent Spring, for example, a Komen Foundation grant funded a literature search review on breast cancer and the environment and has now made that information available online. "That's really exciting, because we worked on locating and reviewing about 450 articles reporting on breast cancer studies," Gray said. She was involved in setting up the framework, working out the search terms, and helping the researchers identify information that would guide future research and decision-making.

"From its beginning, Silent Spring placed a strong role on science-based evidence, and they felt one way to do that was to have a librarian and a library database that tracked relevant research," said Gray. "Silent Spring has a multi-disciplinary approach, so there's an interest in toxicological information, epidemiological information, and environmental information, as well as medical research.

"Many of the standard databases don't gather materials from the cross-disciplinary fields SSI investigators wanted. Silent Spring felt that project investigators needed a way to coordinate and be aware of information from all the related disciplines. The water research, the air research, the toxic elements research--as well as what was happening in medicine and epidemiology."

The Silent Spring library database has been in ongoing development since the early 1990s when the state of Massachusetts helped support it. The Komen Foundation's participation was to create a state-of-the-art, comprehensive review of scientific research on environmental factors that may increase breast cancer risk. Making that information available online via a searchable online database began in 2005.

Raising Funds?

One obvious question arises in the interview: How does a librarian become a fundraiser?

"Fundraising and librarianship have a lot of convergence," Gray said. "One is being able to organize information, being aware of the whole picture of information, and what people need to know to support the interest in your organization, keeping information organized and usable. There's also finding out who might be interested in and have the capacity to support your organization. Prospect research is a librarian's realm. That's the direct correlation.

"When my children were young I did fundraising as a volunteer, and when I went back into the job market I always looked for a fundraising component in my work. At Silent Spring, besides being a librarian, I worked as a director of foundation relations; I coordinated grant writing and grant reporting. When my boss at Silent Spring came to CRI in 2003, he asked me to come along to be director of development."

During her four years at Silent Spring, she has worked on proposal development for more than $1 million in awarded grants, including two National Library of Medicine grants for public access to environmental health information. Gray's library background plays an important role in her approach to development and communications. For example, CRI's Web site includes a bibliography of the organization's research. And she included an online searchable HIV clinical trials database to make sure information about CRI's clinical trials is easily accessible and current.

"If there's a thread in the work I love, it is that I often work with small, mission-driven organizations," she said. "They have such brilliant and dedicated people involved. They are so interesting to work with, so committed to what they do, and doing such incredibly meaningful work. And they know that more people need to know about their work. It makes these kinds of assignments just absolutely fascinating."

Other Projects

One of her other consultancy projects was the database of research at the Center on Media and Child Health (CMCH) at Children's Hospital in Boston. The database catalogs and cross-indexes research that examines the relationship of media exposure and children's health.

"That's a fascinating project," Gray said, "and a place where dedicated researchers are trying to put together a way for parents and researchers to see out the how media affects children. There are interesting results coming from many disciplines. Dr. Michael Rich, CMCH's director, had the foresight to involve librarians to find a way to gather and disseminate that information."

But it doesn't end there with her consultancy work. There are the bees--and dealing with lots of books about bees. When Gray moved to Boston 10 years ago, before joining Silent Spring, she saw an ad in the newspaper: A collector sought a librarian to assist with a private collection. The subject matter: bees and beekeeping. This individual apparently has the largest collection of American books, pamphlets, and ephemera--more than 10,000 items--on the subject.

"I have traveled to all the major libraries with beekeeping collections," Gray said. "I now do the collecting and manage and care for the collection. That's something people probably don't think about as a career, or a piece of a career. It's not an institutional job; it's a private collection. It's like having a chunk of the rare book room at Yale; you're collecting books of unique historical and monetary value. You know the gaps in the collection and you can be a detective always hunting for elusive titles."

Yes, but is she an expert on bees after 10 years? "No, but I'm an expert on bee books. I know a bit about bees, but I know tons about the authors, the history of the bee books, and the leading publishers."

Gray said that her consultancy has given her great opportunities to work on out-of-the-box projects, besides the bees.

"For example, at Silent Spring, we did so many interesting things. For example, we received a National Library of Medicine grant to do a health information project on the seminal environmental and health geographic information system (GIS) data Silent Spring collected on Cape Cod. The project involved making the mapping and GIS materials accessible online. We built a proposal around an earlier NLM grant, and then I consulted on it. And then the Komen database project arose from those many years of paying attention to the literature on breast cancer and the environment.

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"And at Children's Hospital--again, this was a cross-disciplinary thing: the doctors working there on media and children's health knew there was literature in criminology, in sociology and psychology, in medicine and in communications about children and media. But it was not brought together in any single place. It was an opportunity to work on this, in bringing materials together that had never been brought together.

"We think in the library business there are these huge, fabulous databases that fit all sizes but they don't. I have tried to convince the National Library of Medicine that there just might be reasons we need another online database because it is just not easy to find what you need if your research is multi-disciplinary You just don't always have all the relevant information when you're looking at a topic from one of many disciplines. And isn't this how we should be thinking in the complex world we live in today."

Gray cited an example of research related to water and health that is not necessarily in medical databases. "I have to go to some of the EPA databases, and I have to go to the other sciences to find some of the information. Same with the children and violence. There are studies in communications that aren't in any of the medical journals. They aren't indexed where you find other related studies. If you want the full picture of what's happening in the field you have to search all over the place. Organizations like Silent Spring and the Center on Media and Child Health help researchers bring the cross-disciplinary information together, and I think there's a real need for it. Credit should go to NLM for funding some very innovative projects, but they are less willing to fund an online literature database because there are existing products."

Gray stresses it is not only the multi-disciplinary aspect of these projects but also the added value of organizing the information users may need. For example, the Silent Spring database entries make it easy to see the study design, menopausal status, exposures investigated, exposure measures, early life exposures, and an exposure assessment comment by a researcher in the field. Likewise, the CMCH database includes outcome measures, interventions, results, and conclusions that help the user place the study in context.

Dialog on CD

The work Gray is doing these days is a long way from 1972 when she received her MLS from the University of Minnesota. She recalls being one of the first to use Dialog. "Those old CD-ROMs and complicated search procedures are several lifetimes away," she said.

After she earned her degree, Gray started as a corporate librarian and then worked as a manager of information services for the National Association of Purchasing Management. She eventually returned to school in the early 1990s to pursue a master's in psychology at Montclair State University in New Jersey. That decision eventually led her into the health information industry, an area she's found rewarding and never dull.

"I've been interested in human behavior," Gray said. "My children were home, and I was doing volunteer work and I decided to go back to school. The curious thing is that it led me back to librarianship. Psychology--any subject matter--is useful for a librarian. It was a turning point for me. I was a graduate research assistant, and my job was running the computer lab. It opened my eyes to the capacity for what was changing in all fields, but really was at the heart of librarianship--and specialist librarianship, in particular."

Gray has been a member of SLA as long as she has been an information professional. In the late 1970s, she served as president of the SLA Minneapolis-Twin Cities Chapter. "It was one of the most vibrant chapters around," she recalled. "First of all, I worked at Dayton Hudson Corporation (now Target) and there was a group called 'The Insiders' because many of the corporations were connected by skyways in downtown Minneapolis--companies like Dayton Hudson, Pillsbury, 3M, General Mills."

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She remembered those days when they were all learning about Dialog and the ability of a new search tool. "There was a big emphasis on new ways of business searching. We could be much more proactive. We weren't sitting in the corporate libraries waiting for things to happen. We started getting out and pushing out what we did. I produced a retail industry newsletter that high-lighted the new information for our staff every week, the pre-alert services we now all use. That was the beginning of a changing phase."

By 1986, Gray was residing in New Jersey. There, she served as a trustee for the Montclair Kimberley Academy and Montclair Art Museum. For six years, she was responsible for prospect research, cultivating, and soliciting donations. Then, in 1995, Gray was hired by the Center of Addiction and Substance Abuse at Columbia University. It's a small non-profit affiliated with the university but it was independently founded by Joseph A. Califano, the former Secretary of Health, Education and Welfare for President Lyndon Johnson. She served as the manager of its information center.

"He is a dynamic leader and forward thinker in that area," Gray said of Califano. "What we did with research projects was to prepare a full bibliography. We made available a full-range of information. It wasn't just the study but back-up information. We often produced a separate bibliography to accompany the study document. It was a great experience."

SLA on Cutting Edge

"Over the years I've belonged to various medical associations and ALA, but I find SLA full of innovative people trying new things and who are always on the cutting edge of information. I always learn something." In 1999, she and her family moved to Boston and Gray became an employee of Silent Spring Institute.

Part of the secret to her longevity in the information industry--as she advises others--is being able to constantly learn from those who have new skills and always looking at ways people use information. "That's really crucial. Where I've had the most fun is finding niches where there's a real need for information that's there, that can be pulled together to help see relationships. In a certain sense, I think of myself as 'entrepreneurial.' seeing where there are needs and people who are eager to find the tools that will help. A lot of it is serendipity, being open to experiences, really looking at what's around you and how people are using information or need to use it."

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Gray spoke of her experience with the GIS project and her lack of experience in such a technical feat. "It's working with people who have the technical skills," she explained. "Together we can understand how the material may be used, what might be an easier interface for users, how the user might come to the information. So while I have no expertise in GIS or Web design or coding, I can keep asking to focus on how the user can get to the information."

Gray recalled when she was attending the University of Minnesota and was employed in the chemistry library. Her mentor there taught her that librarians could be an expert to the experts. It's a lesson Gray continues to practice. "As long as there are interesting things to do," she said, "I cannot foresee a day when there won't be great projects utilizing my library skills."

FORREST GLENN SPENCER is a Virginia-based information retrieval consultant, public relations distributor, and writer. He can be reached at [e-mail].

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RELATED ARTICLE: Sharon M. Gray

Joined SLA: 1970s

Jobs: Director of Development and Library Consultant

Employer: Community Research Initiative of New England; self-employed

Experience: 30+ years

Education: MLS, University of Minnesota; MS, Montclair State University, New Jersey

First job: Corporate Librarian, Dayton Hudson Corporation (now Target)

Biggest Challenge: "There are so many fantastic opportunities to create useful, innovative, and needed information tools that serve important research areas. I wish there were as many funding streams as there are ideas, dedicated researchers, and innovative librarians."