An Interview with: Samantha Intriligator, Librarian, Regeneron

I joined the company in 2015 in an administrative role supporting multiple early research groups. Part of my job at that time was managing scientific journal subscriptions. As the company grew, that task began to evolve and stretch into additional information management responsibilities until it became clear that a full-fledged library was needed. In 2018 the Library Services department was formed. It was just me for a long time, but now we're a team of two, which is incredible because we have grown by 100% and can provide even more assistance to our researchers.

Our main goal at the library is to provide our colleagues with all the information they may need. We want to make sure our scientists’ workflows are streamlined and they have the data and literature they require readily available and easily accessible to them. While our scientists experiment and discover new information in our labs each day, we bring knowledge from the outside world directly to them. This could be the information available in literature from scientific journals, real-world data from various competitive intelligence tools, or even hot-off-the-press news. Most importantly, we make sure the resources we hold subscriptions to will provide the highest value for our researchers.

The library supports the entire company. My main contacts all day, every day are scientists as I primarily work with our teams across early research. But I also collaborate closely with many of our clinical teams, for example, training them on tools to optimize their study designs. I regularly partner with medical affairs, regulatory affairs, and Industrial Operations and Product Supply (IOPs) on projects and trainings to ensure they have the information they need at any given moment. I work closely with our legal department, working as the copyright subject matter expert here. I spend a lot of time providing guidance on reuse rights and permissions daily to colleagues across the whole organization. Externally, I have valued partners across so many wonderful companies. Partners I’ve worked with for years to help build the library’s corpus.

Every day is different. Every email is different. The requests the library receives can range from something as simple as “Where can I access clinical trial information?” to as complex as “I have this new target that I am interested in learning more about. Can you send me information about what is currently known about the target and the top three to five comparators?”

I like to think of my work as detective work. I'm always investigating, problem solving, and uncovering the tiny nuances that may otherwise go unseen. At the heart of it, this role is mainly figuring out what people are seeking and then delivering the information they need.

I like to say that when we work together, I will first present you a fish and then teach you how to catch the next one on your own. This comes from being such a small department supporting such a large company. I want my researchers to become self-sufficient and work efficiently with the tools we provide. Citeline is a huge help with that.

What you imagine when you hear the word librarian is very different than what my reality looks like. Everything in our library is digital. And that's because science changes so rapidly that by the time we purchase a textbook, it's pretty much out of date in terms of the type of research we do here. We're on the cutting edge. Things are changing daily. The bonus of being totally digitized is that every single person at the company can access everything they need at any given moment.

The library’s intranet page is essentially the reference desk of my company. We see upwards of 50,000 visits a year. It is the place to go to find the tools you need to conduct your research.

Citeline was one of the library's earliest partnerships, and it's been so helpful over the past decade. Citeline holds answers to many of the questions I receive each day because the suite of tools is robust and varied.

When everything is flowing smoothly, which it generally is, people don't realize there's a human working hard every day behind the scenes to make sure the world of scientific information is available at their fingertips. So, I wouldn't call us unsung heroes, but I would say my work is largely invisible but extremely valuable. When people get a pulse on the work our library is doing, they're usually a bit shocked that it's all coming from one small department.

Day-to-day library work is largely customer support. I'm working with people throughout the whole company all day, every day answering questions, so good interpersonal skills and excellent written and verbal communication skills are must-haves. Patience and grace are required to handle the sheer volume of requests here with a smile.

This role also necessitates the ability to learn on the fly, to properly manage your time, and to employ shrewd judgement on what's a priority, or what's a valuable tool. There's a high level of discernment required in managing time, effort, and attention, because there are over 15,000 people here to help each day.

Yes, I’m a typical eldest daughter. Type-A, super-organized. I think that that is how I organically fell into this role of librarian. It's innate for me to optimize systems, and to make sure things are working in the most efficient manner possible.

I’m a mom of two boys, 6 and 8. So right now my life is a lot of sports, friends’ birthday parties, and quality time with family. I try to just soak up the little moments, the sweetness of watching these little guys grow up. In my spare time, I love reading, studying herbalism, hiking, practicing yoga, and gardening.

I’m honored to be part of PhMTI (Pharma & Medtech Information) and to volunteer as the program planner for its fall seminar again this year. The unique thing about PhMTI is that it brings together librarians and access managers, publishers and developers, and the researchers and analysts who work with publicly available pharmaceutical and medtech information.

This year our program is focused on thriving in an era of changing technology. Things are rapidly evolving in terms of how information is available and analyzed. So, we'll be bringing together experts and knowledge leaders from various areas of pharma and tech to teach us about how to adapt and succeed in the changing landscape. This year the seminar will be held in Philadelphia on October 28th and 29th.