Barbara Epstein, AHIP, FMLA, Medical Library Association President, 2017–2018.pdfVIP

313 PRESIDENT’S PAGE DOI: dx.doi.org/10.5195/jmla.2017.304 Barbara Epstein, AHIP, FMLA, Medical Library Association President, 2017 –2018 Kelly Gonzalez, MSIS, MBA See end of article for author ’s affiliation. Meeting Barbara Epstein, AHIP, FMLA, for the first time at the 2010 Medical Library Association (MLA) annual meeting in Washington, DC, was very memorable. That was the meeting that cardboard cutouts of President Barack Obama and First Lady Michelle Obama greeted everyone at the top of the Hilton Washington escalator. It was also the meeting that Earvin “Magic” Johnson Jr. made an appearance at the Hilton for a separate, non-MLA-related, event. I was a new National Library of Medicine (NLM)/Association of Academic Health Sciences Libraries (AAHSL) Fellow, and Barbara was selected as my mentor. I had no idea who she was; I needed to do my research. My library director at that time, Laurie L. Thompson, AHIP, FMLA, took great care to introduce me as a Fellow to respected MLA members like Jett McCann, AHIP, senior associate dean for knowledge management and Thompson who arranged for us to have dinner with director of the Dahlgren Memorial Library at Barbara and two of her staff members, Melissa Georgetown University Medical Center, who Ratajeski, AHIP, and Jill Foust. participated in the Fellows’ capstone event, and The topic of MLA oral histories was a common Carolyn E. Lipscomb, AHIP, FMLA, former program thread for Barbara and me. It was 2