SOM Librarian Duffy, Master of Information Promoted to Associate Dean, Vice President of HMH Libraries

Chris Duffy knew from his very first job, as a “page” shelving books at age 13, that he was going to work in a library. Duffy’s education and career journal brought him from working part-time in one as an undergraduate, to a master’s degree in library and information science, and then to training at a local hospital’s medical library. 

“Since that first job, I’ve never really looked back,” said Duffy.

Now Duffy, MLIS, AHIP, has been promoted to Associate Dean of the Hackensack Meridian School of Medicine (HMSOM) and vice president, Medical Library Services for Hackensack Meridian Health. Duffy has been the founding director of the Interprofessional Health Sciences Campus library since 2017 (previously his role was with Seton Hall University). He and his team have since become a go-to source around campus for finding information using the latest 21st century resources and materials.

Part of that was the debut of the brand-new HMSOM library website https://library.hmsom.edu on July 1. Duffy will now oversee not only the HMSOM library, but also all the hospital libraries across Hackensack Meridian Health. 

“Chris Duffy is an invaluable part of our team,” said Jeffrey Boscamp, M.D., the president and dean of the Hackensack Meridian School of Medicine. “He has continually ‘raised the bar’ for our information resources, which is such a crucial part of the entirety of medical education. We are glad to have him.”

“A librarian is an vital role on any campus of higher education, and we are fortunate to have Chris Duffy to lead what we have developed here,” added David Kountz, M.D., M.B.A., M.A.C.P., the senior associate dean of graduate medical education at the school. 

Duffy is a local person, raised in Glen Ridge and now living in Verona. Both of his parents were teachers, and he was the youngest of three children. An older sister is also a librarian. 

Duffy received his bachelor’s degree in History from Hobart and William Smith Colleges in 2007, and then received his MLIS from Rutgers University in 2011. During his MLIS studies, he served as a medical library assistant at St. Joseph’s Healthcare System, where he found his niche. 

“That's when I really fell in love with the health sciences/medical library field,” said Duffy. “I had an amazing mentor, Patricia May, who is still the library director there.”

He arrived at HMSOM in 2017, even before the school had admitted its first students. For him, establishing the library as a functional progressive resource - shared by HMSOM with two Seton Hall University schools on one campus - was his biggest career accomplishment. Also huge was the new switchover to the new dedicated library system for the HMSOM. 

During COVID-19, Duffy worked with Dean Boscamp on a literature review elective and eight of the inaugural cohort of the school. Its pace was headspinning; within 24 hours of the campus closing down for quarantine, they had created the elective and were combing the databases for the latest papers and results in the burgeoning health crisis. 

“Within a couple of days, our students were producing incredible work, putting together a synthesis of the emerging COVID-19 literature that was distributed to the frontline clinicians at HMH,” said Duffy. “This was an incredible experience for me and we are so proud of our amazing students.”

The elective’s work was also picked up by Elsevier and distributed across the globe. 

Furthermore, that project showed how adaptable libraries can be a whole new kind of groundbreaking resource in times of need. 

Libraries, of course, have changed in many ways since that job as a “page” in 1998. Electronic books and journals were just becoming a reality then. 

Now the new library for the HMSOM has over 1 million electronic books and 20,000 journals, and very few items in hard copy. Visitors are often surprised to see how book shelves are not the centerpiece of the library space on the first floor of the HMSOM building. 

But at its core, the mission of the library has not changed, Duffy said. 

“Our goal is to provide access to current information, in whatever form that might be,” said Duffy. “I think the great thing about libraries is how easily we have been able to adapt to new technologies as they emerge.

“I get to be part of an amazing medical school and health system, and get the chance to develop a world-class health sciences library,” he added.

Duffy is married and living with his wife Lindsey and two young daughters in Verona. What little free time he has outside the library and the child-raising is spent at the community pool, and following the New York Football Giants.