Zanin Yost recognized for paper and professional excellence

Jan. 26, 2021

Alessia Zanin Yost, a Slippery Rock University instructor of library and health science librarian, won the 2020 Best Paper award from the Mid-Atlantic Chapter of the Medical Library Association, as well as the 2020 MAC Award for Professional Excellence by a New Health Sciences Librarian.

The professional excellence award is presented to a MAC member for outstanding contributions in health sciences librarianship. As the liaison to students and faculty in public health programs at SRU, Zanin Yost revamped an online course for credit library research and worked on a badge-system tutorial focusing on information literacy skills to use in the nursing, public health and psychology departments.

 For her Best Paper award, Zanin Yost cowrote a presentation with Cathleen Dillen, a Penn State University assistant teaching professor of nursing, titled “I am here and I see you” about nursing students developing empathy for patients with substance abuse. Using Jean Watson’s Human Care Theory, Zanin Yost and Dillen illustrated how they examined the level of empathy of undergraduate nursing students enrolled in a mental health class before and after the completion of a digital storytelling assignment. 

MAC-MLA is an organization of health sciences librarians and other information professionals serving the District of Columbia, Maryland, North Carolina, Virginia, western Pennsylvania and West Virginia. The purpose of MAC-MLA is to promote excellence in health sciences librarianship and improve access to quality health information services throughout the Mid-Atlantic region.