Author: MHL

Save the Date: “Choosing Pathways to OA” Working Forum, Oct 16-17

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~This post is courtesy Polina Ilieva, UCSF Archivist.

The Premise: 

Many within the scholarly community have been trying to achieve a large-scale transition to open access (“OA”) to scholarly literature for nearly twenty years. To date, only around 15% of peer-reviewed journal articles are published in fully open-access journals. At this rate, realizing a full OA scholarly universe could take decades. If we within the research community are going to accelerate progress toward free readership for all, we must make critical choices about how we spend our money in supporting OA publishing.

 

To advance data-driven decision-making on these issues, in March 2018, the University of California (UC) libraries and the California Digital Library released the Pathways to Open Access toolkit. The Pathways toolkit analyzes the many approaches and strategies for advancing the large-scale transition to OA, and identifies possible next action steps for UC system-wide investment and experimentation.

 

We also designed the Pathways toolkit to be a practical resource for other institutions wrestling with the same choices. Now, we invite you to join us in this decision-making process to create localized plans suitable for your own institution or community.

The Call: 

Participate in a two-day working forum focused on action-focused deliberations about redirecting subscription and other funds toward sustainable open access publishing.

The Details: 

Who:   North American library or consortium leaders and key academic stakeholders are invited to substantively deliberate and develop plans for how they will repurpose budgets and subscription spends to support a transition to open access publishing.

 

The forum seeks to engage participants with relevant decision-making responsibilities involving subscriptions, licensing, collection development, publication policy, research funding, and other strategic areas. This may encompass more than one individual attending on behalf of an institution or community.

 

When:  October 16-17, 2018

 

Where: UC Berkeley (Berkeley, California)

 

What: A two-day working forum that inclusively engages participants in deliberations of OA approaches and strategies–with an eye toward empowering local decision-making. Diverse views on pathways for transitioning to open access are encouraged. The forum will be governed by a public statement of diversity and inclusion spanning from the planning process through the event itself. We are exploring ways to make portions of the event available remotely for those unable to attend in person.

Participants will have a meaningful opportunity to:

1.     Understand actionable mechanisms and opportunities for advancing the transition to OA

2.     Engage in facilitated, substantive exchange on the pragmatics of each of these strategies

3.     Accelerate their own action initiatives based upon the discussions

After first-day discussions, attendees will have dedicated time to further consider, align with, or plan for implementing various strategies, suitable for their institutions or communities.

For a preview of the panoply of OA approaches (Green, Gold Non-APC, Gold APC) and funding strategies that will serve as a basis for discussion and decision-making, please see the UC Libraries’ Pathways to OA toolkit.

How much:  This working forum is free to attend. No registration fees will be charged, and invited speaker travel and lodging will be covered by the University of California Libraries. Attendance includes breakfast, lunch, snacks, and one dinner.

Additional details and a registration form are forthcoming.

Questions in the meantime may be directed to: schol-comm@berkeley.edu

“Transplanting Technology: Dr. Michael DeBakey and Cold War Technology Transfer”

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~Post courtesy Stephen Greenberg, Section HEad, Rare Books and Early Manuscripts, History of Medicine Division.

You are cordially invited to the next NLM History of Medicine lecture, to be held Thursday, May 24, from 2 pm to 3:00pm in the NLM Lister Hill Auditorium, Building 38A, National Library of Medicine, Bethesda, MD.  This special program will be the second annual NLM Michael E. DeBakey Lecture in the History of Medicine, honors the legacy of Dr. DeBakey as it exists in modern medical practice and in the ongoing public service of the NLM.

 

This year’s lecture will be delivered by Heidi Morefield, MSc — 2017 NLM Michael E. DeBakey Fellow in the History of Medicine, Doctoral Candidate, Department of the History of Medicine, The Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, Maryland:

“Transplanting Technology: Dr. Michael DeBakey and Cold War Technology Transfer”

At the height of the Cold War, Dr. Michael E. DeBakey, one of the most prolific American surgeons of the 20th century, made several trips to China and the USSR to survey the medical landscape on the other side of the Iron Curtain. DeBakey became a broker of valuable medical information, teaching new techniques and introducing new machines in the USSR and China, while reporting on the conditions of Chinese and Soviet medical institutions back home to the American public. His diplomatic success was possible in part because of his willingness to take less high-tech medical systems seriously—he praised the barefoot doctors and was “impressed” with Russian medical inventions that were showcased during his visits. With rich diary entries describing his visits, DeBakey understood medical technology as being appropriate only in context. He situated both the Western technology he helped transplant to the East as well as that which he encountered there within the topography of the Soviet and Chinese medical systems. In reflecting upon DeBakey’s Cold War travels, this talk will interrogate how his influence and mobility shaped perceptions of both American and communist-sphere medical technology

The NLM Michael E. DeBakey Lecture in the History of Medicine is supported by a generous gift to the NLM by the Michael E. DeBakey Medical Foundation. This lecture will be live-streamed globally, and subsequently archived, by NIH VideoCasting.

 

 

 

All are welcome.

The Medical Heritage Library wants your feedback!

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The Medical Heritage Library is gearing up for its next round of strategic planning. To ensure that we’re meeting the needs of our users, we need to hear from you!

Please take a few minutes to take our short survey and let us know how you’re finding and using  MHL content and what you think our priorities should be.

Don’t know about the Medical Heritage Library? Even better! We’re a digital curation collaborative among some of the world’s leading medical libraries that promotes free and open access to quality historical resources in medicine through the Internet Archive. We recently incorporated and are in the process of obtaining 501(c)(3) status. This is a perfect time to check out our content and let us know what you think!

From Our Partners: Base Hospital No. 30, One Hundred Years Later – Part One: Organization, Mobilization, and Travel

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~This post is courtesy Polina Ilieva, UCSF Archivist.

This is a guest post by Aaron J. Jackson, PhD student, UCSF Department of Anthropology, History and Social Medicine.

One hundred years ago today, April 24, 1918, the 240 men and women of U.S. Army Base Hospital No. 30—the University of California School of Medicine Unit—left American soil to support the war effort by operating a modern hospital in France. Their stories survive in the UCSF Archives & Special Collections, where they contribute to the rich history of the UCSF and San Francisco communities. In this four-part series, I hope to introduce you to the stories of the men and women of Base Hospital No. 30, and I encourage you to learn more by visiting the UCSF Archives & Special Collections in the Parnassus Library.

Figure 1 – U.S. Army Base Hospital No. 30, World War I

“This book purports to be a record, not merely of the happenings and the activities of Base Hospital Number Thirty, but a permanent record of the personnel with the addresses, that we may always keep in touch with one another and thus preserve the bonds of friendship now existent among us.” – Foreword, The Record

As the foreword to the book they commissioned to commemorate their experience expresses, the men and women of Base Hospital No. 30 formed a tight-knit community during their time in the service in the First World War. When Congress declared war on Germany on April 4, 1917, the American Red Cross Society quickly set to work in establishing, organizing, and supplying medical units in the nation’s leading medical institutions with the intent of creating a system of hospitals in France to treat the inevitable casualties of the war. The American medical community was enthusiastic about the effort. Famed surgeons George Crile and Harvey Cushing had been working with America’s French and British allies since 1915 to establish new medical techniques and organizational methods. Many physicians viewed the war as an opportunity to advance medical knowledge while simultaneously serving their country, and many members of the University of California Department of Medicine felt the same. With the assistance of the Red Cross, Base Hospital No. 30 began to organize in the spring and early summer of 1917. Consisting roughly of twenty-five officers, sixty-five nurses, and one-hundred-fifty enlisted men, the unit marched down Market Street as part of a Liberty Loan parade to raise money for the base hospital and to support the war effort.

Figure 2 – Liberty Loan Parade, San Francisco, Cal.

Unfortunately, the initial excitement of the spring and early summer became a period of uneasy waiting and bureaucratic frustration that dragged into the fall as the unit waited on official orders to arrive. Many members of the unit, including one or two officers and several of the nurses and enlisted men, anticipating immediate entrance into the service, had packed and stored their belongings and quit their jobs, and the commanding officers had to continuously combat rumors that the organization had been broken up or that no more base hospitals would be sent to France. Thankfully, the Red Cross had managed to secure $100,000 in funding, which it used to collect supplies while the Army bureaucracy plodded along. Finally, on November 20, 1917, Base Hospital No. 30 received official orders to muster at Fort Mason in San Francisco.

While the unit drilled and trained in the operation of a military hospital, the nurses received separate orders to travel to New York. They were able to enjoy the Christmas holiday with their friends and family before taking their oath of service at the Presidio on December 26, 1917 and setting out on a five-day, frigid train ride to New York City. They arrived on New Year’s Day and spent the next three weeks on Ellis Island preparing their uniforms and equipment and receiving training. On January 25, they were divided into five groups bound for Army camps in South Carolina, Maryland, Ohio, Georgia, and Virginia, where soldiers gathering from across the nation were coming down with acute infections like measles and mumps in large numbers. While the nurses expressed disappointment at not being able to set out for France immediately, Chief Nurse Arabella Lombard expressed that they were happy to be of service and to gain valuable experience before receiving orders to return to New York in March.

Figure 3 – Nurses of Base Hospital No. 30

Back in San Francisco, the officers spent their time working at clinics in the city and training the enlisted personnel. On March 3, 1918, nearly a year after the declaration of war, the unit received orders to pack their supplies and board the steamship S.S. Northern Pacific en route to New York. The trip took two weeks—a near-record pace at the time—and the unit was assigned temporary barracks at Camp Merritt. While in New York, several of the officers attended clinics on the latest medical techniques, such as instruction on the treatment of pneumonia and meningitis at the Rockefeller Institute and the Carrel-Dakin course on aseptic surgery and wound treatment—essentially the use of diluted chlorine and bleach solution to hasten the separation of dead from living tissue, which was cutting-edge lifesaving technology before the discovery of antibiotics.

On April 22, the nurses rejoined Base Hospital No. 30 as the unit boarded the U.S.S. Leviathan, a former German luxury liner originally named the Vaterland that had been seized by the U.S. government the year prior and converted into a troopship. They set sail on April 24, 1918. More than one year after Congress’s declaration of war on Germany, the members of Base Hospital No. 30 were finally travelling to France. They anticipated the hard but meaningful work of repairing the broken bodies of America’s soldiers, but in France, they would have to overcome a number of unexpected obstacles before that work could take place.

Figure 4 – USS Leviathan

Figures:

1 – “U.S. Army Base Hospital No. 30, World War I,” circa 1917, UC San Francisco, Library, University Archives, Base Hospital #30 Collection.

2 – “Liberty Loan Parade, San Francisco, Cal.,” circa 1917, California State Library, California History Section Picture Catalog.

3 – “Nurses of Base Hospital No. 30,” January 1918, UC San Francisco, Library, University Archives, Base Hospital #30 Collection.

4 – “USS Leviathan,” 8 July 1918, Naval History & Heritage Command, 19-N-1707.

A Contagious Cause: The Search for Cancer Viruses and the Growth of American Biomedicine

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~This post courtesy Emily Gustainis, Deputy Director, Center for the History of Medicine of the Francis A. Countway Library at the Harvard Medical School.

Register now via EventBrite!

The Center for the History of Medicine, Francis A. Countway Library of Medicine, invites you to join us for the lecture A Contagious Cause: The Search for Cancer Viruses and the Growth of American Biomedicine with Robin Wolfe Scheffler, Leo Marx Career Development Professor in History and Culture of Science and Technology at the Program in Science, Technology, and Society, MIT.

Throughout the twentieth century, few theories have caused more hope and frustration than the idea that cancer might be caused by a virus. This search for cancer viruses over successive generations of medical, scientific, and organizational advances serves as a lens through which we can understand the political ground upon which biology and medicine merged to form biomedicine in America and which enabled biologists to reimagine the nature of life in molecular terms.

The event will take place on Tuesday, April 24, 2018 in the Minot Room, Countway Library, from 6:00-7:00.  Registration is required.  Please visit our EventBrite page to register.

“Reading Vesalius Across the Ages” and Annual Celebration of the Library

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~Post courtesy ALLISON E. PIAZZA, MLIS, Reference Services and Outreach Librarian at the New York Academy of Medicine

Tuesday, April 24, 2018

6:30PM-8:00PM

Venue: The New York Academy of Medicine, 1216 Fifth Avenue at 103rd Street, New York, NY 10029

Cost: Free; advance registration required

Friends of the Rare Book Room are invited to a private reception with the speaker prior to the event; please email emiranker@nyam.org if you wish to attend.

 

REGISTER

 

How was Vesalius’ Fabrica read across the ages? This talk analyzes how, in the past five hundred years, copies the Fabrica travelled across the globe, and how readers studied, annotated and critiqued its contents from 1543 to 2017. Dániel Margócsy will discuss the book’s complex reception history and show how physicians, artists, theologians and collectors filled its pages with copious annotations. He will also offer an interpretation of how this atlas of anatomy became one of the most coveted rare books for collectors in the 21st century.

 

Refreshments will be served following the lecture and there will be an opportunity to view new rare book acquisitions of the library collections.

 

About the Speaker: Dániel Margócsy studies the cultural history of early modern science. He has taught at Northwestern University and at Hunter College, the City University of New York, and received his PhD in the History of Science from Harvard University in 2009. His first book, Commercial Visions: Science, Trade and Visual Culture in the Dutch Golden Age (Chicago, 2014) examined the impact of global trade on cultural production in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. He currently lectures on Science, Technology and Medicine Before 1800 at University of Cambridge.

World War I: Reflections at the Centennial

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~Post courtesy Emily Gustainis, Deputy Director, Center for the History of Medicine at the Francis A. Countway Library of Medicine of Harvard Medical School.

The Center for the History of Medicine, Francis A. Countway Library of Medicine, in partnership with its co-sponsors theHarvard Medical School Civilian-Military Collaborative and the Ackerman Program on Medicine & Culture, is pleased to announce the upcoming event World War I: Reflections at the Centennial with speakers James A. Schafer, Ph.D., and Jeffrey S. Reznick, Ph.D.

James A. Schafer, Ph.D., Associate Professor, Department of History, University of Houston, will present “The Mobilization of American Medicine for the First World War,” an examination of the causes and effects of the rapid recruitment of doctors, nurses, and other medical personnel (such as volunteer ambulance drivers) during the War. Drawing from Harvard University and other Boston area examples, Professor Schafer will measure the scope and scale of medical mobilization, explain the motivations for doctors, nurses and medical personnel to mobilize, and explore the immediate effects of mobilization on the careers and lives of American doctors, nurses, and medical personnel.

Jeffrey S. Reznick, Ph.D., Chief of the History of Medicine Division, National Library of Medicine (NLM), National Institutes of Health, will present “A Prisoner of the Great War and his Songs in Captivity,” an exploration of the period when Rudolf Helmut Sauter (1895-1977)—the artist, writer, and nephew of the novelist John Galsworthy—was an internee in Alexandra Palace camp, north London, and Frith Hill, Surrey. Drawing on collections of the NLM, Imperial War Museum, and University of Birmingham, among other archives and libraries, Dr. Reznick will reveal how Sauter’s experiences open a unique window onto the history of the Great War both as Sauter experienced it and as he subsequently sought to forget it like so many other surviving members of the “generation of 1914.”

The event will take place on Wednesday, March 21, 2018 in the Minot Room, Countway Library, from 5:00-6:30.Registration is required.  Please visit our EventBrite page to register.

A Conversation About Graphic Medicine

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~Post courtesy Stephen Greenberg, Section Head, Rare Books and Early Manuscripts History of Medicine Division, National Library of Medicine.

You are cordially invited to the next NLM History of Medicine lecture, to be held on Thursday, March 1, from 2:00pm until 3:30pm in the NLM Lister Hill Auditorium, Building 38A, National Library of Medicine, Bethesda, MD. NLM Director Patricia Brennan, RN, PhD will host “A Conversation About Graphic Medicine” with pioneers from this emerging genre of literature that combines the art of comics and the personal illness narrative.

 

Dr. Brennan will be joined in conversation by Ellen Forney, cartoonist, educator, author of the New York Times bestselling graphic memoir, Marbles: Mania, Depression, Michelangelo and Me, and guest curator of the new NLM exhibition, Graphic Medicine: Ill-Conceived and Well-Drawn!; MK Czerwiec, RN, MA, Artist-in-Residence at Northwestern Feinberg School of Medicine, author of Taking Turns: Stories from HIV-AIDS Care Unit 371, and co-manager of GraphicMedicine.org; and Michael Green, MD, physician, bioethicist, and professor at Penn State University’s Milton S. Hershey Medical Center, and co-author with MK Czerwiec and others, of The Graphic Medicine Manifesto.

 

“A Conversation About Graphic Medicine” will address the place of graphic medicine within medical literature and the landscape of personal health communication in the 21st century. This special public program is in conjunction with the new NLM exhibition, Graphic Medicine: Ill-Conceived and Well-Drawn! on display in the History of Medicine Division Reading Room on the first floor of the NLM, Building 38 and online here: www.nlm.nih.gov/graphicmedicine.

 

This lecture, like all NLM History of Medicine Lectures, will be free, open to the public, live-streamed globally, and subsequently archived, by NIH VideoCasting. All are welcome to attend onsite and remotely:

https://www.nlm.nih.gov/hmd/lectures/index.html

 

The specific live-stream URL for this talk is here: https://videocast.nih.gov/summary.asp?live=26989&bhcp=1

 

Sign language interpretation is provided for all lectures. Individuals with disabilities who need reasonable accommodation to participate may contact Erika Mills at 301-594-1947, Erika.Mills@nih.gov, or via the Federal Relay (1-800-877-8339).

 

Due to current security measures at NIH, off-campus visitors are advised to consult the NLM Visitors and Security website:

http://www.nlm.nih.gov/about/visitor.html

In addition, we warmly welcome you to visit our blog, Circulating Now, where you can learn more about the collections and related programs of the NLM’s History of Medicine Division, and watch for interviews with guest participants in the upcoming Conversation about Graphic Medicine:
http://circulatingnow.nlm.nih.gov/

Here also you can read interviews with previous lecturers:
http://circulatingnow.nlm.nih.gov/tag/lecture/

 

Sponsored by:

NLM’s History of Medicine Division

Jeffrey S. Reznick, PhD, Chief

 

Event contact:

Erika Mills

301-827-4577

Erika.Mills@nih.gov

New York Academy of Medicine Library Launches Digital Exhibit “Facendo Il Libro: The Making of Fasciculus Medicinae, an Early Printed Anatomy”

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~Post courtesy Kiri Oliver, Communications Manager, The New York Academy of Medicine

The New York Academy of Medicine Library has launched a new digital exhibit, “Facendo Il Libro: The Making of Fasciculus  Medicinae, an Early Printed Anatomy.” The Library, one of the world’s most significant historical libraries in medicine and public health, holds five editions printed between the years of 1495 and 1522 of the Fasciculus Medicinae, which contains the earliest realistic anatomical images in print, and the earliest scenes of dissection anywhere. The digital exhibit explores full scans of these richly illustrated editions, examining each work on its own – and also in context of each other, and looking at the printing techniques that were used to create them.

“The Academy’s dedication to public access to our Library’s collections continues with the launch of a digitized exhibit of this seminal work. Today, scholars and users worldwide can easily access an important resource in the history of medicine and public health,” said Academy President Judith A. Salerno, MD, MS.

The book was first printed in Venice in 1491 by the brothers Gregori at their famous printing house. It was extremely popular, and went through 14 editions by the year 1522.  Originally collected in manuscript form, the text comprises a number of medical treatises on uroscopy, phlebotomy, anatomy, surgery, and gynecology. The book’s woodcut illustrations include skilled renderings of medieval prototypes including a Zodiac Man, bloodletting man, and an urinoscopic consultation.

“This exhibit tells an important story about an influential medical text, and its evolution during the earliest years of printing in Northern Italy. Exploring the book’s astonishing woodcuts, the earliest realistic anatomical illustrations in print, enhances our understanding of how sixteenth-century individuals related to and understood their bodies in times of sickness and health,” said Academy Library Curator Anne Garner.

“Facendo Il Libro” is an addition to the Academy’s digitization initiatives led by Dr. Robin Naughton, Head of Digital. Also included in the exhibit are curated essays on each edition, noting important technical, textual, and artistic changes in each, and on the culture of Venetian print. The essays were contributed by guest scholars

Taylor McCall, PhD, and Natalie Lussey Seale, PhD. This online exhibit was made possible by generous support from The Gladys Krieble Delmas Foundation.

 

Now online, decades of medical student theses available for download

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~This story is courtesy Jenny Blair and Yale Medicine.

In the spring of 1952, Jocelyn Malkin, M.D. ’52, completed her student thesis on laryngeal cancer. Using punch cards, Malkin encoded clinical characteristics of 235 patients suffering from the malignancy, including race, religion, family history, and “excessive voice use.” She then threaded the cards onto a sorter shaped like an ice pick, looking for clear-cut risk factors. One stood out starkly: tobacco use.

After seeing her own thesis results, Malkin recalls, she “nagged” her husband to quit his cigarette habit. Later, as a psychoanalytic institute leader in Washington, D.C., she refused to allow light-ups in meetings.

“Everybody smoked—it was considered very, very cool,” she says. “I was very unpopular because I made a fuss about it.” Thanks to her thesis, Malkin was far ahead of her time. Not until 1957 did the U.S. Surgeon General issue its first report on the health consequences of smoking. Tobacco use is now known to be the most important laryngeal-cancer risk factor.

Malkin’s historic typewritten thesis is freely available online, along with hundreds of other newly digitized Yale medical student theses. Although hard copies of most recent and many older theses are available to peruse in the medical library, digitization and open access means a much larger audience.

“What we’re doing now just opens them up to the world,” says Melissa Grafe, Ph.D., the John R. Bumstead Librarian for Medical History at the Cushing/Whitney Medical Library.

The world has responded. Over 80,000 downloads of Yale medical student theses have taken place by readers in 187 countries, over half at educational or governmental facilities. The theses are available at both the Medical Heritage Library, an online consortium of major medical libraries that digitizes materials and makes them freely available via Internet Archive, and from Yale’s in-house repository, Eli Scholar.

With the first evidence of a thesis requirement appearing in an 1839 catalog, the Yale School of Medicine is perhaps the longest-lived such directive of its kind. Many theses go on to be edited and published in medical journals, but many others have long languished on shelves, largely unread.

Digitization has been underway since 2002, when the medical library and the YSM Office of Student Research placed some of that year’s theses online as part of the Yale Medicine Thesis Digital Library project. Four years later, submitting a digital copy became mandatory of all students. Living alumni were first invited to participate in 2012, and the project has rolled along since then via outreach at alumni events.

But in 2017, a grant to Yale University Library by the Arcadia Fund, one intended to preserve at-risk cultural materials, made it possible to digitize many more.

On July 12, 2017, John Gallagher, director of the Medical Library, with the assistance of Deborah Jagielow, director of Alumni Affairs, emailed some 3,000 alumni from the Class of 2009 and before, inviting them to participate. Within five hours, close to 400 replies had come in granting permission. Eventually, nearly 1,200 alumni agreed to allow digitization, including the families of four who had died.

Grafe and her colleagues then packed up 51 boxes of hard-copy theses and mailed them to Princeton, New Jersey, where, over October, November, and December, the Internet Archive scanned them in (and then mailed them back). Yale library staff then embarked on a quality-control check, making sure all the scans were legible and the data attached to each thesis were accurate.

“Even though it was a short timeline, it was a careful process,” Grafe says. “We wanted to make sure that the alumni who entrusted us with digitizing their material were happy with what they saw [and] received something they could share.”

Topics trend over time, she adds.

“In the late 80s and early 90s, I saw a batch of theses having to do with HIV and AIDS, and in recent years there’s been some global health emphasis,” she says. By contrast, in the 1960s and 70s, patient care and community health were popular.

A quick browse turns up theses on West Nile myeloencephalitis (1955), fetal electrocardiography (1957), cross-cultural psychiatry (1966), concentration camp survivors’ guilt (1971), health care for migrant farmworkers (1975), athletics in hemophilia (1980), detective fiction (1980), children’s fear of needles (1982), childbirth in literature (1987), professional courtesy (1996), and spirituality in HIV care (2001).

There are also many 19th-century theses in elaborate copperplate handwriting, including “On Diabetes Mellitus,” “On Gonorrhea,” and “On The Therapeutic Application of Ice.”

Everything is faithfully preserved as a PDF, including linen-bound covers, blank pages, and librarians’ penciled notations on title pages. Malkin’s includes a copy of the cards she used, notched with their telltale punch-outs. So far, it has been downloaded 50 times.

The digitization project is ongoing. Though theses written prior to 1923 are in the public domain, the library continues to seek permission from alumni or living relatives for any written after that. Interested alumni can fill out an online form.