Gateway Guide

Millie Plotkin’s recovery from an eating disorder began during library school, when she received treatment. Several years later, she heard someone use the phrase “eating disorders information clearinghouse” at a conference.

“That planted the seed of an idea that I could combine these two important parts of my life,” says Plotkin. “Though many journal articles are indexed on PubMed, it can be difficult to sort through everything to find the information you want. I wanted to make it easier for clinicians, patients, and families to get access to what they need.”

In 2013, the nonprofit she founded to support the creation of a citation library caught the eye of eating disorders specialist Craig Johnson, who asked her to bring the initiative to the Eating Recovery Center (ERC), in Denver. She’s been ERC’s informationist ever since.

She based her first taxonomy on a glossary created by a nonprofit, cutting and adding terms as the scientific literature evolved. That has developed into the Eating Disorders Gateway, a citation library with more than 25,000 resources. She downloads citations from PubMed, WorldCat, and the websites of scientific journals using EndNote; adds subject headings; and uploads the records to Gateway, which anyone can search.

“I try to include free-text links, and anyone can reach out to me for assistance in getting full articles,” she says. “Since I am the only librarian specializing full-time on this topic, I have become the go-to person for literature searches and statistics. I have responded to research requests from as far away as Israel and Taiwan.”