Elizabeth C. Whipple is the Associate Director of Informationist Services at the Welch Medical Library and an Assistant Professor of Medicine, both at the Johns Hopkins University. She is responsible for overseeing the Library’s informationist team, as well as conceiving, planning, directing, and evaluating library information services for folks in the Johns Hopkins Schools of Medicine, Public Health, and Nursing.
Recognized early on as a leader, Whipple began her career in the highly competitive National Library of Medicine’s Associate Fellowship program. She also participated in the national HERS Leadership Training Institute for Women in Higher Education. In 2022-2023 she was a fellow in the international NLM/AAHSL Leadership Fellows Program, and in 2023 she received the prestigious Estelle Brodman Award for the Academic Health Sciences Librarian of the Year from the Medical Library Association (MLA), which recognizes an academic health sciences librarian who demonstrates significant achievement, leadership, and continuing excellence.
Her leadership approach is to lead with humility, empathy, and clear expectations. She believes in creating a safe and supportive environment for everyone to do their best work, empowering a diverse staff to offer their input and expertise, allowing them their own chance to grow and become future leaders themselves. One areas interest is using bibliometrics to bring visibility to issues of health equity in academic medicine, such as how bias affects the publication of papers authored by women or demonstrating collaborations (or gaps) across clinical and translational science institutions.