Friday, December 31, 2010

National Film Registry Adds 25 Films for 2010

Established by the National Film Preservation Act of 1988 (Public Law 100-446), the National Film Preservation Board is an advisory body for the Librarian of Congress. The Board helps shape national film preservation planning policy, and also recommends films for the National Film Registry, including 25 additional films just named for 2010. Chosen for their cultural, historic, or aesthetic significance, this year's selections cover a wide gamut of genres and time periods. The earliest, Newark Athlete, was produced in 1891 at the Edison Laboratory in West Orange, New Jersey. The entire 2010 list follows:

1990s
Study of a River (1996)
Malcolm X (1992)

1980s
Airplane (1980)
The Empire Strikes Back (1980)

1970s
Saturday Night Fever (1977)
All the President’s Men (1976)
Grey Gardens (1976)
The Exorcist (1973)
McCabe and Mrs. Miller (1971)

1960s
I Am Joaquin (1969)
Our Lady of the Sphere (1969)
Electronic Labyrinth: THX 1138 4EB (1967)
The Pink Panther (1964)

1950s
Cry of Jazz (1959)

1940s
Let There Be Light (1946)
A Tree Grows in Brooklyn (1945)
Tarantella (1940)

1930s
Make Way For Tomorrow (1937)
It’s a Gift (1934)
The Front Page (1931)

1920s
Lonesome (1928)

1910s
The Bargain (1914)
Preservation of the Sign Language (1913)

1900s
A Trip Down Market Street (1906)

1890s
Newark Athlete (1891)

Further information on the Registry as well as the films themselves can be found on the Library of Congress' web site. All 500+ films selected for the Registry since 1989 can also be browsed online.

In January 2011, "These Amazing Shadows," an independently produced documentary by Gravitas DocuFilms, will premiere at the Sundance Film Festival. It documents the history and cultural significance of the National Film Registry since its inception. More information can be found at the documentary's website.

Thursday, December 30, 2010

The End of an Era for Kodachrome Film

Dwayne's Photo in Parsons, Kansas will be processing the last roll of Kodachrome film today, December 30, 2010. Eastman Kodak manufactured Kodachrome film in a variety of formats for still and motion picture cameras from 1935 until 2009, when it announced that further production would cease due to diminished demand. Countless photographers greatly valued Kodachrome, which offered significant archival stability among other positive qualities. Dwayne's Photo was the last certified facility to continue developing the film--until today's deadline. The shirt pictured here commemorates a few highlights from Kodachrome's long history: Paul Simon recorded the song, "Kodachrome" in 1973, and the Kodachrome Basin State Park adopted its name after a photoessay of the Utah park appeared in the September 1949 issue of National Geographic.

University of Iowa To Offer MFA Program in the Book Arts

The University of Iowa's Center for the Book received approval earlier this month to begin offering a Master of Fine Arts (MFA) degree in Book Arts beginning Fall 2011. The Center has long offered a graduate certificate, and will soon join the University of Alabama at Tuscaloosa, the University of the Arts in Philadelphia, Columbia College in Chicago, and Mills College in Oakland, California as one of just a handful of institutions with a graduate program in the book arts. Iowa's program is notable for its breadth and depth, as well as its collaborative approach, drawing on significant university resources and faculty in papermaking, printing, calligraphy, bookbinding, digital technologies, and the history of the book. More information on Iowa's Center for the Book can be found at the Center's web site.

See related blog post on the Center's Timothy Barrett: Papermaker Named MacArthur Fellow.

Sunday, November 28, 2010

SHARP 2011: The Book in Art and Science

Submissions are invited for the nineteenth annual conference of the Society for the History of Authorship, Reading & Publishing (SHARP) to be held in Washington, DC, Thursday, 14 July through Sunday, 17 July 2011. The sponsors of the conference are the Smithsonian Institution Libraries, the Library of Congress, the Folger Shakespeare Library and Institute, and the Corcoran College of Art + Design.

Evoking Washington's status as an artistic and scientific center, "The Book in Art & Science" is a theme open to multiple interpretations. Besides prompting considerations of the book as a force in either art or science or the two fields working in tandem, it also encourages examinations of the scientific text; the book as a work of art; the art and science of manuscript, print, or digital textual production; the role of censorship and politics in the creation, production, distribution, or reception of particular scientific or artistic texts; the relationship between the verbal and the visual in works of art or science; art and science titles from the standpoint of publishing history or the histories of specific publishers; and much more. As always, proposals dealing with any aspect of book history are welcome.

More information on submissions for the conference is available on the SHARP website; deadline is November 30, 2010.

Friday, November 26, 2010

Some Consumer Advice for "Black Friday"


























For an earlier posting on the operation of books, see Medieval Help Desk, or The More Things Change . . . .

Sunday, November 14, 2010

Book Drive for UNC Pediatric Cancer Patients

Various UNC departments and organizations are sponsoring a book drive until December 9, 2010 on behalf of the Book Fairy, an organization that donates children’s books to the Pediatric Oncology Clinic at UNC Hospitals.

The need is especially great for English and Spanish-language board books, the sturdy picture books that can withstand repeated use by very young children.

Book drive organizers have created a list of suggested titles, but will gladly accept all new or gently-used books for ages one through mid-teen.

The drive follows a successful effort in 2009 that brought in 2,377 books.

Campus drop-off locations are:

• Davis Library lobby
• Undergraduate Library lobby
• Wilson Library lobby
• Health Sciences Library
• Law Library
• School of Information and Library Science, Manning Hall lobby
• School of Education, Peabody Hall, Student Affairs Office lobby, 1st floor
• School of Social Work, Tate-Turner-Kuralt Building lobby

For information about the drive, contact Katelyn Ander, UNC Undergraduate Library, 919-962-2559.

Artists' Books: When the Goblet Becomes the Wine

Books created by artists from around the country will be on display during a trunk sale and program by Vamp & Tramp Booksellers on November 16, 2010 in the Hanes Art Center at UNC.

The program will feature Bill and Vicky Stewart, owners of Vamp & Tramp, which is based in Birmingham, Alabama. Their talk, “Artists’ Books: When the Goblet Becomes the Wine,” will give an introduction to the genre, which is defined as works of art in the form of books.

Vamp & Tramp represents more than 300 contemporary fine presses and book artists. The Stewarts will showcase books in their inventory, selected to represent a wide range of the work currently being done by book artists.

The book sale will be held from 3-5:30pm at the Sloane Art Library. A reception will begin at 5:15pm in the lobby before the presentation at 6pm in the Hanes Auditorium. The event is free and open to the public.

Note: The title of the Stewarts' presentation alludes to an essay by Beatrice Ward, "The Crystal Goblet or Printing Should Be Invisible" (The Crystal Goblet: Sixteen Essays on Typography, 1956), wherein she observes that ". . . you will find that almost all the virtues of the perfect wine-glass have a parallel in typography."

Tuesday, October 19, 2010

2010-11 Bullitt History of Medicine Club Lecture Series

The Bullitt History of Medicine Club at UNC launches its 2010-11 lecture series on October 19, 2010 with a presentation by Dr. Brian Owen-Smith on Benjamin Franklin and Medicine. The complete schedule is as follows:

:: Dr. Brian Owen-Smith
Benjamin Franklin and Medicine
October 19, 2010, 5:30pm

:: Dr. Raúl Necochea
The International Planned Parenthood Federation in Cold War Peru
November 16, 2010, 12pm

:: William S. Meyer
On the Diagnosis and "Treatment" of Homosexuality: When Prejudice Masquerades As Science
December 7, 2010, 5:30

:: Chailee Mann-Stadt, Winner of 2010 McLendon-Thomas Award in the History of Medicine
Drs. Grace Dewey and Josephine Milligan: 19th-Century Women Become 20th-Century Physicians, Educators, and Activists
January 13, 2011, 12pm

:: Dr. Samuel K. Roberts
Infectious Fear: Politics, Fear, and the Health Effects of Segregation
February 1, 2011, 5:30pm

:: Dr. Erika Lindemann
James Dusenberry: Uncovering the Life of a 19th-Century UNC Medical Student
March 2, 2011, 12pm

:: Dr. Jeffrey P. Baker
Autism in 1959: Joey the Mechanical Boy
April 5, 2011, 5:30pm

All events are held in Room 527, UNC Health Sciences Library. Past lectures are available as podcasts on iTunes and as mp3s. For further information, visit the Bullitt Club web site.

Wednesday, October 6, 2010

The Triangle Research Libraries Network Joins the HathiTrust

The Triangle Research Libraries Network (TRLN), a longstanding consortium of Duke University, the University of North Carolina, North Carolina State University, and North Carolina Central University, has just joined the HathiTrust, a large-scale, collaborative digital repository of some of the leading research libraries in the U.S.

The mission of the HathiTrust is "to contribute to the common good by collecting, organizing, preserving, communicating, and sharing the record of human knowledge." The repository has the following stated goals:

:: To build a reliable and increasingly comprehensive digital archive of library materials converted from print that is co-owned and managed by a number of academic institutions.
:: To dramatically improve access to these materials in ways that, first and foremost, meet the needs of the co-owning institutions.
:: To help preserve these important human records by creating reliable and accessible electronic representations.
:: To stimulate redoubled efforts to coordinate shared storage strategies among libraries, thus reducing long-term capital and operating costs of libraries associated with the storage and care of print collections.
:: To create and sustain this “public good” in a way that mitigates the problem of free-riders.
:: To create a technical framework that is simultaneously responsive to members through the centralized creation of functionality and sufficiently open to the creation of tools and services not created by the central organization.
More information on the HathiTrust is available on the site's FAQ. The digital repository can be explored via catalog, full-text, and collection-level searches.

Chapel Hill Museum To Auction Memorabilia

The Chapel Hill Museum (North Carolina), which closed over the summer due to economic difficulties, will be holding an auction on Friday, October 8, 2010. Doors open at 6pm for registration and preview, with the auction commencing at 7pm. Chapel Hill memorabilia to be sold includes vintage photos and historic displays, items related to notable Chapel Hill residents, as well as vintage collectibles, oriental carpets, etc. Absentee bids will also be accepted in person on Thursday, October 7th from 10am to 2pm. Further information on the closing of the Museum, which was in operation since 1996, can be found on its web site.

Sunday, October 3, 2010

2010 Nobel Prize Announcements



Announcements of the 2010 Nobel Prizes via Live Webcasts

:: Physiology or Medicine [video]
Monday, October 4, 2010 -- 11:30 a.m. CET, 9:30 a.m. GMT, at the earliest.

:: Physics [video]
Tuesday, October 5, 2010 -- 11:45 a.m. CET, 9:45 a.m. GMT, at the earliest.

:: Chemistry [video]
Wednesday, October 6, 2010 -- 11:45 a.m. CET, 9:45 a.m. GMT, at the earliest.

:: Literature [video]
Thursday, October 7, 2010 -- 1:00 p.m. CET, 11:00 a.m. GMT.

:: Peace [video]
Friday, October 8, 2010 -- 11:00 a.m. CET, 9:00 a.m. GMT.

:: Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel [video]
Monday, October 11, 2010 -- 1:00 p.m. CET, 11:00 a.m. GMT at the earliest.

Further information about this year's prizes as well as a rich archive of past prizes can be found at the Nobel Foundation web site. Previous Nobel Prize-related posts on the Common Curator are available here.

Friday, September 24, 2010

Banned Books Week 2010

Banned Books Week: Celebrating the Freedom to Read (September 25 to October 2, 2010) is an annual event celebrating the freedom to read and the importance of the First Amendment. Held during the last week of September, Banned Books Week highlights the benefits of free and open access to information while drawing attention to the harms of censorship by spotlighting actual or attempted bannings of books across the United States.

Banned Books Week is sponsored by the American Booksellers Association; American Booksellers Foundation for Free Expression; the American Library Association; American Society of Journalists and Authors; Association of American Publishers; and the National Association of College Stores. It is endorsed by the Center for the Book in the Library of Congress.

For more information on getting involved with Banned Books Week: Celebrating the Freedom to Read, please see the American Library Association's Calendar of Events and Ideas and Resources. You can also contact the ALA Office for Intellectual Freedom at 1-800-545-2433, ext. 4220, or bbw@ala.org.

National Book Festival: Celebrating a Decade of Words and Wonder

The 10th annual National Book Festival, organized and sponsored by the Library of Congress, will be held on Saturday, September. 25, 2010, on the National Mall in Washington, D.C., between 3rd and 7th streets from 10 a.m. to 5:30 p.m.

President Barack Obama and Michelle Obama are honorary chairs for the event. The festival, a celebration of the joy of reading for all ages, is free and open to the public. More than 70 authors, illustrators and poets will be making presentations on the National Mall throughout the day in the Children, Teens & Children, Fiction & Mystery, History & Biography, Contemporary Life and Poetry & Prose pavilions.

The Festival website features numerous video webcasts and audio podcasts. The 2010 poster, shown here, was designed by Peter Ferguson and is available as a PDF download.

Thursday, September 23, 2010

BookOpolis 2010: Memory Palaces

Asheville BookWorks, a community resource for print and book arts based in North Carolina, is sponsoring BookOpolis 2010 this September 24-25, 2010. On Friday, the BookOpolis exhibition, with the theme of Memory Palaces, will have its opening reception from 6-9pm. It will feature over 100 artists' books from around the United States and internationally. On Saturday from 12-5pm, visitors can watch demonstrations and participate in activities such as letterpress printing, papermaking, book binding, and printmaking. For a full description of events, visit the BookWorks website.

Throughout the year, BookWooks also sponsors workshops, exhibits, lectures, and other events, such as the Edible Book Festival. BookWorks is a valuable resource for all those with an interest in the book arts, providing "space, equipment and technical support for artistic exploration, collaboration and the sharing of knowledge."

Note: The BookOpolis 2010 poster, shown here, was screenprinted by Philip Bell and is available for purchase at the event.

Tuesday, September 14, 2010

Call for Papers: American Association for the History of Medicine

The American Association for the History of Medicine (AAHM) invites submissions in any area of medical history for its 84th annual meeting, to be held in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, April 28 through May 1, 2011. The Association welcomes submissions on the history of health and healing; history of medical ideas, practices, and institutions; and histories of illness, disease, and public health. Submissions from all eras and regions of the world are welcome. In addition to single-paper proposals, the Program Committee accepts abstracts for sessions and for luncheon workshops. Please alert the Program Committee Chair if you are planning a session proposal. Individual papers for these submissions will be judged on their own merits.

Presentations are limited to 20 minutes. Individuals wishing to present a paper must attend the meeting. All papers must represent original work not already published or in press. Because the Bulletin of the History of Medicine is the official journal of the AAHM, the Association encourages speakers to make their manuscripts available for consideration by the Bulletin.

The AAHM uses an online abstract submissions system. We encourage all applicants to use this convenient software. A link for submissions is available on the website. Abstracts must be received by September 15, 2010.

If you are unable to submit proposals online, send eight copies of a one-page abstract (350 words maximum) to the Program Committee Chair, Susan E. Lederer, selederer@wisc.edu, Dept. of Medical History and Bioethics, University of Wisconsin School of Medicine and Public Health, 1300 University Ave. Madison, WI 53706.

When proposing a historical argument, state the major claim, summarize the evidence supporting the claim, and state the major conclusion(s). When proposing a narrative, summarize the story, identify the major agents, and specify the conflict. Please provide the following information on the same sheet as the abstract: name, preferred mailing address, work and home telephone numbers, e-mail address, present institutional affiliation, and academic degrees.

Sunday, September 12, 2010

Trent Center Lecture on Eugenics and Bioethics: "Unsettled Legacies"

The first lecture of the new academic year in the Trent Center's Humanities in Medicine Lecture Series will be by Dr. Eric Juengst, the new director of the UNC Center for Biomedical Ethics. Entitled "Unsettled Legacies: Early 20th Century Eugenics, Late 20th Century Bioethics, and Where We Go from Here," the lecture will take place 12-1 pm, Monday, September 13, 2010 in the Duke Hospital Lecture Hall 2001. (Click on image to enlarge flyer).

Of related interest is two earlier Common Curator posts on Eugenics: The History of Eugenics in North Carolina and North Carolina Dedicates Eugenics Historical Marker.

Monday, September 6, 2010

The Common Curator Launches

The Common Curator has recently superseded the Carolina Curator blog, which was previously cited by OnlineUniversities.com as one of the "100 Best Curator and Museum Blogs." After approximately 220 postings on a wide variety of topics since its inception in December 2008, all the content of the Carolina Curator (click the Carolina Curator label) has been incorporated into the Common Curator blog, which will continue in much the same--if broader--vein to document developments in the history of the health sciences, digital libraries, archives, museums, and special collections, as well as tend other issues of import, such as freedom of information, open access, preservation and conservation, public policy, human rights, etc.

All readers of the Carolina Curator are encouraged to follow the Common Curator by visiting this website, or by subscribing to its RSS feed with Google Reader, Bloglines, or your favorite RSS reader. In addition to the new blog, the Common Curator also has a presence on other social media, including Delicious, Facebook, Flickr, and Twitter.

So, whether a longtime follower of the Carolina Curator or just discovering the new blog, thanks for your collective interest and comments--hope to continue hearing from you here at the Common Curator!

Wednesday, September 1, 2010

Ask a Curator Day

September 1, 2010 is "Ask a Curator Day," a one-time worldwide Question & Answer event on Twitter. Modelled on the successful Follow a Museum event on February 1, 2010, users of Twitter can post questions to participating curators of art, history, science, and other collections at #askacurator. A list of individuals and institutions from over 20 countries available for questions can be viewed here.

Tuesday, August 31, 2010

New Consortium for History of Medicine Finding Aids

The History of Medicine Division of the National Library of Medicine (NLM) is pleased to announce the release of its prototype History of Medicine Finding Aids Consortium, a search-and-discovery tool for archival resources in the health sciences that are described by finding aids and held by various institutions throughout the United States.

The new resource crawls existing Web content managed by partner institutions, provides keyword search functionality, and provides results organized by holding institution. Links point to the holding institution's Web sites. Formats indexed consist of HTML, PDF and Encoded Archival Description XML. The project does not include content held in bibliographic utilities or other database-type information. Crawls are conducted monthly to ensure information is current and to capture new content as it is released.

Current Consortium partners are:

-- NLM History of Medicine Division, Archives and Modern Manuscripts Program
-- Columbia University Health Center Library Archives and Special Collections
-- Medical Archives of the Johns Hopkins Medical Institutions
-- University of California-San Francisco Library Archives and Special Collections
-- University of Virginia Health Sciences Library Historical Collections
-- Virginia Commonwealth University Tompkins-McCaw Library Special Collections and Archives

NLM's History of Medicine Division invites libraries, archives and museums which include in their collections archival materials related to the history of medicine and health sciences to join.

For more information about the project or requests to join the Consortium, please contact John P. Rees, Archivist and Digital Resources Manager, NLM, at reesj@nlm.nih.gov, or visit the Consortium's web site.

"The Gross Clinic" Restored and on Exhibition

"An Eakins Masterpiece Restored: Seeing The Gross Clinic Anew" is an exhibition currently on display at the Philadelphia Museum of Art that will run through January 9, 2011. It features Thomas Eakins' famous painting of 1875, Portrait of Dr. Samuel D. Gross (The Gross Clinic), which has recently undergone a major restoration effort.

The large-scale painting (measuring 8' by 6'6") was purchased by the Philadelphia Museum of Art and the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts with the support of over 3,500 donors in 2007 after its previous longtime owner, the Jefferson Medical College (Dr. Gross' alma mater), proposed its sale to museums outside Philadelphia.

The Museum's web site provides much detailed technical and historical information about the painting's conservation treatments over the decades, and dramatically documents the painting's evolving appearance. The image depicted here reflects its current state.

Sunday, August 29, 2010

New Curator for Duke History of Medicine Collections

Rachel C. Ingold has been appointed the new Curator for the History of Medicine Collections at Duke University Medical Center Library. She will start September 1, 2010. The previous Curator, Suzanne Porter, retired at the end of July after a long and successful career at Duke, UNC, and other institutions.

Prior to this appointment, Rachel has served in the Conservation Unit in the Duke University Libraries, as an intern at the EPA Library, as an intern the Sallie Bingham Center for Women's History and Culture, and as a Library Technician at the Library of Congress. She has nearly 13 years worth of experience in a library setting.

Rachel holds a BA in Political Science and a BA in Women's Studies from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, an MA in Women's Studies from George Washington University, and an MLS from North Carolina Central University. She is a member of the America Library Association and the Special Library Association.

Truman G. Blocker, Jr. History of Medicine Fellowship

The Moody Medical Library of the University of Texas Medical Branch at Galveston is pleased to offer the Truman G. Blocker, Jr. Fellowship to support research related to the history of medicine conducted at the Moody Medical Library.

The Truman G. Blocker, Jr. Fellowship will provide between $2,000 and $4,000 per year to support travel, lodging and incidental expenses for the period between September 1, 2010 and August 31, 2011. Upon completion the recipient will deliver a paper at the University of Texas Medical Branch outlining the research, provide an expense report and a copy of the final research product. The University of Texas Medical Branch also reserves the right to post excerpts from the work, a photograph and biographical material of the Fellow on its website.

The fellowship proposal must demonstrate that the Truman G. Blocker, Jr. History of Medicine Collections contain resources central to the proposed topic. These collections consist of over 18,000 titles and 10,000 pamphlets and reprints documenting the development of Western medicine and allied sciences. The Moody Medical Library's holdings of books printed prior to 1501 place it among the top medical sciences libraries in the United States. Collection strengths include fundamental and secondary works in anatomy and surgery, anesthesiology, immunology, and occupational medicine. The Titus Harris Collection of the History of Psychiatry maintains over 4,500 volumes and is considered one of the most comprehensive accumulations of works on the subject.

The archival collections housed at the Moody Medical Library are among the largest and most significant in the history of the biomedical sciences in the southern United States. These collections provide records of state and national organizations, and professional societies in medicine and related fields in addition to the private and professional papers of University of Texas Medical Branch faculty, staff, students and alumni. An inclusive list of these archives may be found at the Texas Archival Resources Online website.

While preference will be given to applicants who live beyond commuting distance of Galveston, all are encouraged to apply, including graduate students. Applicants should submit a fellowship proposal outlining the subject and objectives of the research project and historical materials to
be used, (not to exceed 2 pages), a project budget including travel, lodging and research expenses, curriculum vitae and two letters of recommendation by November 1st, 2010. Award decisions will be made by December 1st, 2010.

Applications should be mailed to:

Robert O. Marlin IV, Archivist
Truman G. Blocker, Jr. History of Medicine Collections
Moody Medical Library
University of Texas Medical Branch
301 University Blvd.
Galveston, TX 77555-1035

Call for Papers: Southern Association for the History of Medicine and Science

The Southern Association for the History of Medicine and Science (SAHMS) invites paper proposals for its thirteenth annual meeting on March 4-5, 2011, at the famous Peabody Hotel in Memphis, Tennessee, sponsored by the University of Tennessee Health Science Center Library.

SAHMS welcomes papers on the history of medicine and science, broadly construed to encompass historical, literary, anthropological, philosophical and sociological approaches to health care and science including race, disabilities and gender studies. Participants may propose individual papers or panels of several papers on a particular theme. The deadline for submissions is September 30, 2010.

Each presenter is limited to 20 minutes, with additional time for questions and discussion. Please do not submit papers that have already been published, presented or scheduled for presentation at another meeting. All participants are responsible for their own travel expenses and must pay registration costs in advance of the meeting. Student travel awards are available each year; for more information, contact SAHMS President Michael Flannery at flannery@uab.edu.

To submit proposals, please visit the online submission site. Required elements for the online proposals include Title, Purpose Statement, Rationale and Significance, Methodology, Sources, Findings & Conclusions, and Three Learning Objectives. For questions or problems with the submission site, contact Richard Nollan (rnollan@uthsc.edu) or Lisa Pruitt (lpruitt@mtsu.edu).

Friday, July 16, 2010

An Odyssey of Knowledge: A New Online Exhibition from the National Library of Medicine

"An Odyssey of Knowledge: Medieval Manuscripts and Early Printed Books from the National Library of Medicine," is a new online exhibition at the National Library of Medicine by visiting curator Dr. Alain Touwaide of the Smithsonian Institution. As described on the exhibition web site:
Medicine in the Old World arose from many components: the classical Greek tradition, its Christian re-elaboration, the contributions of the Arabic World, and the unique medieval synthesis of them all. By examining significant pages and illuminations from manuscripts and early printed books of the National Library of Medicine, one can see how these cultures contributed to the creation of medical knowledge in Europe.
The exhibition is organized by the following sections: Greek Medicine and Science in the Early Middle Ages; The Arabic Contribution; A Crossroad of Knowledge: Southern Italy; The Spread of Translation; From Translation To Teaching; Diffusion; The Return of Greek; and The Many Uses of Books and Texts.

The collections of the National Library of Medicine include 90 Western manuscripts written before 1601. Many of the Library's manuscripts are recorded in Dorothy M. Schullian and Francis E. Sommer, A Catalogue of Incunabula and Manuscripts in the Army Medical Library (1950), and Seymour De Ricci and W.J. Wilson, Census of Medieval and Renaissance manuscripts in the United States and Canada (1935–1940), with a supplement by C.U. Faye and W.H. Bond in 1962.

Note: The image above depicts an illuminated manuscript initial with two physicians in conversation (Paris, 13th century); it is from the National Library of Medicine's Manuscript E 78, folio 35 recto.

Tuesday, July 13, 2010

The Future of the History of Medicine Conference

The Wellcome Centre for the History of Medicine is hosting a three-day international conference on The Future of the History of Medicine from July 15-17, 2010. The scope, breadth, and viability of the field as a whole in the 21st Century will be discussed in Panel Sessions on The Neurological Turn, The Cultures of Food, The Place of Non-Humans in the Project of Medical Humanism, Asian Medicine, and Global Health. The list of speakers as well as the final program are available online.

As reported in several earlier posts, the Wellcome Centre for the History of Medicine is slated for closure. An online petition to "Save History of Medicine at UCL" recently concluded with over 4,100 supporters. Details on the petition are being collated and a summary of the main points is being prepared for submission to both the Wellcome Trust and University College London.

Call for Papers: Southern Association for the History of Medicine and Science

The Southern Association for the History of Medicine and Science (SAHMS) invites paper proposals for its thirteenth annual meeting on March 4-5, 2011, at the famous Peabody Hotel in Memphis, Tennessee, sponsored by the University of Tennessee Health Science Center Library.

SAHMS welcomes papers on the history of medicine and science, broadly construed to encompass historical, literary, anthropological, philosophical and sociological approaches to health care and science including race, disabilities and gender studies. Participants may propose individual papers of panels of several papers on a particular theme.

Each presenter is limited to 20 minutes, with additional time for questions and discussion. Please do not submit papers that have already been published, presented or scheduled for presentation at another meeting. All participants are responsible for their own travel expenses and must pay registration costs in advance of the meeting. Student travel awards are available each year; for more information, contact SAHMS President Michael Flannery at flannery@uab.edu.

To submit proposals, please visit the online submission site. The deadline is September 30, 2010. Required elements for the online proposals include Title, Purpose Statement, Rationale and Significance, Methodology, Sources, Findings & Conclusions, and Three Learning Objectives. For questions or problems with the submission site, contact Richard Nollan (rnollan@uthsc.edu) or Lisa Pruitt (lpruitt@mtsu.edu).

Thursday, July 8, 2010

Call for Papers: American Association for the History of Medicine

The American Association for the History of Medicine invites submissions in any area of medical history for its 84th annual meeting, to be held in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania April 28 through May 1, 2011. The Association welcomes submissions on the history of health and healing; history of medical ideas, practices, and institutions; and histories of illness, disease, and public health. Submissions from all eras and regions of the world are welcome. In addition to single-paper proposals, the Program Committee accepts abstracts for sessions and for luncheon workshops. Please alert the Program Committee Chair if you are planning a session proposal. Individual papers for these submissions will be judged on their own merits.

Presentations are limited to 20 minutes. Individuals wishing to present a paper must attend the meeting. All papers must represent original work not already published or in press. Because the Bulletin of the History of Medicine is the official journal of the AAHM, the Association encourages speakers to make their manuscripts available for consideration by the Bulletin.

The AAHM uses an online abstract submissions system. We encourage all applicants to use this convenient software. A link for submissions will be posted to the AAHM website. Abstracts must be received by September 15, 2010.

If you are unable to submit proposals online, send eight copies of a one-page abstract (350 words maximum) to the Program Committee Chair, Susan E. Lederer (selederer@wisc.edu; tel: 608.262.4195), Dept. of Medical History and Bioethics, University of Wisconsin School of Medicine and Public Health, 1300 University Ave. Madison, WI 53706.

When proposing a historical argument, state the major claim, summarize the evidence supporting the claim, and state the major conclusion(s). When proposing a narrative, summarize the story, identify the major agents, and specify the conflict. Please provide the following information on the same sheet as the abstract: name, preferred mailing address, work and home telephone numbers, e-mail address, present institutional affiliation, and academic degrees.

Saturday, July 3, 2010

Guide to the History of Medicine and the Health Sciences

A guide to selected resources in the history of medicine and the health sciences is available at the Special Collections web site at UNC Health Sciences Library; a PDF version is also available for download. While not a comprehensive compendium, the guide contains links to scores of useful tools and research materials at UNC and at other institutions around the United States and abroad. Organized by section, it covers the following areas of interest:

— Professional & Scholarly Associations
— Libraries
— Online & Print Catalogs
— Classification Schemes & Catalog Searching
— Digital Collections
— Online Exhibitions
— Aggregator Sites
— Listservs & Blogs
— Bookdealers, Antiquarians & Auction Houses
— Dissertations
— Oral Histories
— Museums
— Archives & Manuscripts
— UNC Special Collections
— UNC Online Resources & Guides
— Online Journals
— Selected Books & References
— Digitization
— Preservation & Conservation
— Book Collecting
— Information Management
— Funding & Opportunities

A guide to researching Public Health at UNC is available online as well.

Monday, June 21, 2010

UNC Health Sciences Library Awarded Digitization Grant

Special Collections at UNC Health Sciences Library has recently been awarded $42,675 for year two of a three-year NC ECHO digitization grant project for the creation of the North Carolina History of Health Digital Collection. Funded by the State Library of North Carolina through the Library Services and Technology Act (LSTA), the 2010-11 awards were announced June 10, 2010 and totalled $4.9 million for statewide library projects; the complete list of awards, including others at UNC, is available at the LSTA web site.

Work on the North Carolina History of Health Digital Collection commenced with a pilot project over two years ago, and through year one of the grant project (FY 09-10), over 130,000 pages of core journals and books in medicine, public health, dentistry, pharmacy, and nursing from 1849 to the present have been digitized. The digital collection will eventually grow to over 800 volumes and approximately 300,000 pages. This material thoroughly documents the development of health care and the health professions within North Carolina and is thus a significant part of the state’s cultural heritage and history.

While digitized content is also being made available via the Internet Archive, the project is actively developing an integrated web site that will provide consolidated online access and advanced searching functionalities. The digital collection will moreover provide historical context for the resources in the various health disciplines and K-12 educational materials for selected content. A glimpse of public health images from the digital collection is available via Flickr.

Daniel Smith, Special Collections Librarian at UNC Health Sciences Library, is the principal investigator and project manager, and has directed each phase of the grant. Partners in the project include the Carolina Digital Library and Archive, the UNC Library, and Learn NC.

Note: The image above is from the Health Bulletin (1927), v. 42, n. 2, p. 1, published by the North Carolina State Board of Health.

Five Centuries of North Carolina Maps Now Online

More than 3,200 historic maps of North Carolina are now available online as part of the digital North Carolina Maps project, set to be completed June 30, 2010

Visitors to the North Carolina Maps site can see the results of a three-year collaborative project to identify and scan nearly every original map of the state published from 1584 to 1923. The collection also contains maps of every North Carolina county and maps published by the state through the year 2000.

The North Carolina Collection in the Wilson Special Collections Library collaborated to produce the new site with the North Carolina State Archives and the Outer Banks History Center in Manteo. The UNC Library and the State Archives scanned the maps, and the Library hosts and administers the site.

Read more . . . .

Tuesday, June 15, 2010

2010 North Carolina Book Awards

The North Carolina Literary and Historical Association (NCLHA), established in 1900, has issued a call for entries for the 2010 North Carolina Book Awards. Several different competitions are now open, including the Hardee Rives Award for Dramatic Arts, the Ragan Old North State Award for Nonfiction (successor to the Mayflower Cup), the Roanoke-Chowan Award for Poetry, the Sir Walter Raleigh Award for Fiction, and the American Association of University Women Award for Juvenile Literature.

To be eligible for consideration, a work must meet the following criteria:

-- It must be an original book published during the twelve months ending June 30 of the year for which the award is given;

-- Its author(s) must have maintained legal or physical residence, or a combination of both, in North Carolina for the three years preceding the close of the contest period; and

-- Three (3) copies of each entry must be submitted to the Awards Coordinator for the North Carolina Literary and Historical Association.

Additional guidelines are available on the NCLHA web site. The deadline for receipt of nominated books is July 15, 2010.

Other related awards include the Christopher Crittenden Memorial Award, which recognizes significant contributions to the preservation of North Carolina history, and the R. Hunt Parker Memorial Award, which acknowledges literary contributions. At the annual meeting each year the Historical Society of North Carolina presents the R. D. W. Connor Award for the best article to have appeared in the North Carolina Historical Review in the preceding year and the Hugh T. Lefler Award for the best paper by an undergraduate student.

Visit the NCLHA web site for further information about the Association, which is among the oldest of its kind in the nation.

Resources for Oil Spill Disasters and Health

As part of its Disaster Information Management Research Center, the National Library of Medicine provides access to disaster management information resources, projects, and programs. One of its newest additions is a set of disaster preparedness and response resources related to crude oil spills and health. This site features sections for current awareness; occupational hazards; dispersants; food contamination; government agencies; wildlife protection; social media; as well as resources from the National Library of Medicine and in foreign languages.

The Internet Archive Book Drive

The Internet Archive has been scanning books for some years now, and we're always looking for more. In addition to 1,000,000+ eBooks available to anyone available through Open Library, we've announced the release of modern books for the print-disabled community in a special format called DAISY. It's a brand new collection--one of the largest available online. For too long, print-disabled people have been denied access to the full breadth of contemporary books, and we'd like to assist in tipping that balance back to where it should be, universal access for all readers.

Please help us by donating books to be scanned or with financial support for the scanning process. Based on existing foundation funding, we are sponsoring the scanning of the first 10,000 books that are donated in this Book Drive. We're looking for wonderful and important books for this first 10,000 and even more books and money to keep it going. We will make these digital books as available to the world as we can, including the print-disabled, and will preserve the physical book for the long term.

How Does The Book Drive Work?
You can simply send up to 100 books or drop them off in person at our headquarters:

Internet Archive Book Drive
300 Funston Avenue
San Francisco, CA 94118

If you'd like to make a donation of more than 100 books, wow! That would be wonderful, but please give us a call on +1 415-561-6767 to arrange shipping and handling.

Read more . . . .

Physicians' Lives in the Shenandoah Valley

The National Library of Medicine's Archives and Modern Manuscripts Program (AMMP) in the History of Medicine Division is pleased to announce the launch of a new digital texts site, Physicians' Lives in the Shenandoah Valley, a collection of 828 letters dating between 1786-1907. It is drawn from the Henkel Family Letters collection covering more than a century of life in Virginia's Shenandoah Valley.

The Henkel family settled in New Market, Virginia in 1790. Generations of fathers and sons studied medicine. Over the course of their careers, these physicians ministered to their community, tended to their countrymen on the battlefield, and testified in the nation's courts of law. The letters of the Henkel family richly document the daily life of men in medicine in the nineteenth century and reveal the challenges of the profession as well as the rewards and responsibilities. Their writings colorfully represent the range of events in everyday life, from the minute details of local issues to the national crisis of the Civil War. The missives convey the concerns and characters of the authors, vividly illustrating the writers' personalities, and their experiences as physicians.

The site contains the complete collection of transcribed letters alongside images of the originals. Curators normalized the majority of place names, general subject terms, and MeSH terms (Medical Subject Headings) to aid searching and browsing. The original spellings are enhanced by pop-up window links that display the normalized phrase. All spellings and verbiage are those of the original writers; no editorial interventions were made, although some layouts differ to enhance readability.

Friday, June 11, 2010

Edward G. Holley, National Library Leader, Dies at 83

One of the most outstanding leaders in 20th century American librarianship, Dr. Edward G. Holley, died peacefully Thursday, February 18 in Durham, North Carolina. A highly respected dean and professor at the School of Information and Library Science (SILS) at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill from 1972 to 1985 and William Rand Kenan, Jr. Professor from 1989 until he retired from the School in 1995, Dr. Holley was known as a giant in the library world.

Holley was born in 1927 in Pulaski, Tenn. In 1949 he earned a B.A. in English from David Lipscomb College in Nashville, Tenn. He then received an M.A. in library science in 1951 from George Peabody College for Teachers, also in Nashville. In 1961 Holley completed a Ph.D. in library science at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. He began his professional
academic career at the University of Houston, and he spent nine years in Texas before coming to Chapel Hill in 1972 to assume the position of dean and professor in UNC at Chapel Hill's SILS.

Holley served as president of the American Library Association (ALA) from 1974-75 and received nearly every major award his profession bestowed, notable among them the ALA Scarecrow Press Award for his published dissertation, Charles Evans, American Bibliographer (1964); the ALA Melvil Dewey Award (1983); the ALA Joseph Lippincott Award (1987); Distinguished Alumnus Awards (Peabody Library School, Vanderbilt University, 1987;
Graduate School of Library and Information Science, University of Illinois at Champaign-Urbana, 1988); the Academic/Research Librarian of the Year Award (Association of College and Research Libraries, 1988); and the Beta Phi Mu Award (1992). In 1994, he was honored with a festschrift, For the Good of the Order: Essays in Honor of Edward G. Holley, the title bearing
witness to his tireless professional devotion.

An eminent historian, Holley produced over 100 books, articles and essays on topics as diverse as library biography, the history of library education, copyright, library administration and the place of personal morality in public life. He served on countless high level committees,
worked for accreditation standards, defended the MLS, testified before Congressional committees and acted as library consultant. As ALA president during turbulent times (1974-1975), he was largely responsible for establishing a federated system for ALA ("every tub on its own bottom").

While dean of SILS, Holley established a doctoral program, hired distinguished faculty and expanded the master's program to two years, providing a core curriculum known famously to students during his years as "The Block." In 1975 he established the internship program at the Environmental Protection Agency Library that still exists today. As professor and advisor, he was an inspiration to his students.

"Ed was not only a distinguished professional, but also a caring and compassionate individual," said Dr. Barbara B. Moran, interim dean of SILS. "He was one of the most unselfish people I ever met and was always concerned with the good of others. He was a wonderful mentor and someone who cared deeply about the students, the faculty and the School. Using his own term, he always put the "good of the order" before his individual needs. He was truly a remarkable person and one who will be missed deeply by those who had the opportunity to know him."

Dr. Holley was preceded in death by his wife, Bobbie Lee Holley. He is survived by four children, Gailon Holley, Jens Holley, Amy Holley and Beth Holley; and three grandchildren, Melody Holley, Faith Holley and Julia Ruth.

A memorial service for Dr. Holley, will be held at 1 p.m. on Saturday, June 12, 2010 at Gerrard Hall on the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill campus.

A reception in the historic Queen Anne Faculty Lounge at the UNC Campus YMCA (next to Gerrard Hall) will immediately follow the memorial service. All who would like to join the family are invited to attend.

Gifts in memory of Dr. Holley may be directed to the "Edward G. Holley Student Research Fund" at SILS. For more information on how to make donations in Dr. Holley's name, please contact the SILS office at 919-843-8337 or send e-mail to wmonroe@unc.edu.

Note: Portions of this news story have been reprinted from "Interview with Edward G. Holley" by Tommy Nixon, which was published in North Carolina Libraries, 56(2), Summer 1998, p.65-70.)

Wednesday, June 9, 2010

North Carolina Digital Heritage Center

The North Carolina Digital Heritage Center is a new, statewide digitization and digital publishing program housed in the North Carolina Collection at UNC-Chapel Hill. The Center operates in conjunction with the State Library of North Carolina's NC ECHO (North Carolina Exploring Cultural Heritage Online) project. It is supported by the State Library of North Carolina with funds from the Institute of Museum and Library Services under the provisions of the Library Services and Technology Act.

There are several projects currently available at the Center's website:

:: North Carolina College and University Yearbooks. Images and full-text searching are available for student yearbooks from several schools, including Appalachian State, Elon, Elizabeth City State, East Carolina, Meredith College, Louisburg College, UNC-Greensboro, and UNC-Chapel Hill. There will be many more schools added soon.

:: Images of North Carolina. This collection features images of original materials from a variety of institutions, including the Orange County Historical Museum, the Sallie Mae Ligon Museum and Archives at the Masonic Home for Children in Oxford, and UNC-Chapel Hill.

:: Durham Urban Renewal Records. Records from the Durham County Library documenting the urban redevelopment of Durham in the 1960s and 1970s.

:: Digital Davie. Historic photographs from the Davie County Public Library documenting people and places in Davie County.

:: Wilson County's Greatest Generation: The Memories of the World War II Veterans of Wilson County, N.C. This collection was compiled by the Wilson County Historical Society and consists of photographs, documents, and personal recollections of many of the men and women from Wilson County who served in World War II.

Visit often, as new materials are being added to all of these projects on a regular basis. We will also continue to develop new projects, and look forward to working with more libraries, archives, and museums around the state to share their resources online.

Please feel free to contact Nicholas Graham, Program Coordinator, with any questions (ngraham@unc.edu or 919-962-4836).

Monday, June 7, 2010

Study of Open Access Publishing Project

A survey is being conducted by the Study of Open Access Publishing (SOAP) project, financed by the European Commission. The study is investigating publishing practices and attitudes towards Open Access publishing. More information about the SOAP project can be found on the project's public website.

The survey is primarily aimed at active researchers in public and private organisations, from all fields of the research in the sciences and humanities. It focuses on publication of research articles in peer-reviewed journals. All responses will be confidential and submitted anonymously. It should take about 10-15 minutes to complete. Results will be made publicly available in the second half of 2010.

The SOAP consortium represents key stakeholders such as publishers (BioMed Central Ltd (BMC), Sage Publications Ltd (SAGE) UK and Springer Science+Business Media Deutschland GmbH (SSBM)), funding agencies (Science and Technology Facilities Council (STFC) UK), libraries (Max Planck Digital Library of the Max Planck Society) and a broad spectrum of research disciplines.

It aims to study the new open access business models that have emerged as a result of the shift from print to digital documents and inform the European Commission and all stakeholders about the risks, opportunities and essential requirements for a smooth transition to open access publishing.

Tuesday, June 1, 2010

Beyond Impact Factor: Panel & Discussion

Beyond Impact Factor: Understanding & Supporting Scholarly Work in the New Academy
Wednesday, June 9, 2010, 9am-12:30pm
Pleasants Family Assembly Room, Wilson Library, UNC

The UNC Libraries' Scholarly Communications Committee invites you to a half-day panel and discussion, exploring alternative forms of scholarly output and their impact on academia. Please register by Friday, June 4. Beverages and refreshments will be served.

Panelists include:

Gary Marchionini (moderator), Dean, School of Information and Library Science, UNC
Phil Edwards, Instructor in School of Information and Library Science, UNC
Molly Keener, Scholarly Communications Librarian, Wake Forest University
Erin O'Meara, Electronic Records Archivist, UNC
Kevin Smith, Scholarly Communications Officer, Duke

Winner of 2010 McLendon-Thomas Award in the History of Medicine

Chailee Mann-Stadt, a third-year MD student in the UNC School of Medicine, is the winner of the third annual McLendon-Thomas Award in the History of Medicine. Sponsored by the Bullitt History of Medicine Club, the essay competition carries a $500 prize that is funded by UNC alumni S. Gregory Boyd (MD '03, JD '04) and Laura Boyd (JD '02). The award honors Dr. William McLendon and Dr. Colin Thomas, Jr. and recognizes scholarly excellence in the history of the health sciences.

Chailee's winning essay was entitled, "Drs. Dewey and Milligan: Early Women in American Medicine," and she will be delivering a presentation to the Bullitt Club during the lecture series for 2010-11.

The essay competition is open to all UNC-Chapel Hill students in the health sciences: medicine, pharmacy, public health, dentistry, nursing, and allied health sciences. The next deadline for submissions is April 1, 2011; for further information, please see the competition guidelines.

:: Greg and Laura Boyd live in New York City, where he is an attorney with Davis & Gilbert LLP and she is professional photographer. Greg considers the history of medicine to be one of the most important aspects of his medical education and Drs. McClendon and Thomas among the best role models possible. They both strongly believe that the history of medicine represents a critical perspective and focus on the art of medicine that are necessary for training the best possible physicians, health care executives, and policy makers.

:: Dr. William W. McLendon served from 1973-1995 at UNC as Director of the Hospital Clinical Laboratories and as Professor and Vice-Chair of Pathology. Since his retirement in 1995 he has been Professor Emeritus of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine. An MD graduate of UNC in 1956, he and Bob Whitlock (MD '57) were the student co-founders in 1954 of the Bullitt History of Medicine Club. Dr. McLendon is the co-author, along with the late Drs. William Blythe and Floyd Denny, of the recently published Bettering the Health of the People: W. Reece Berryhill, the UNC School of Medicine, and the North Carolina Good Health Movement.

:: Dr. Colin G. Thomas, Jr. joined the faculty of the UNC School of Medicine in 1952, and is currently Byah Thomason-Sanford Doxey Professor of Surgery. From 1966-1984 he served as Chair of the Department of Surgery, and from 1984-1989 as Chief of the Division of General Surgery. Dr. Thomas was one of the early faculty members of the Bullitt History of Medicine Club, and is the co-author, along with Mary Jane Kagarise, of the 1997 history, Legends and Legacies: A Look Inside: Four Decades of Surgery at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, 1952-1993.

:: For more information on the Bullitt Club and mp3 recordings of past lectures, please visit the Bullitt Club website.

Wednesday, May 26, 2010

The Internet Tidal Wave -- Then and Now

"The Internet Tidal Wave" was the subject of a memorandum delivered to Microsoft executives and other staff by Bill Gates fifteen years ago today, on May 26, 1995. The memo is supplied in its entirety on Wired Magazine's This Day in Tech, and is remarkable both for its prescience and for its observations that from today's vantage seem almost quaint, such as the following:
Most important is that the Internet has bootstrapped itself as a place to publish content. It has enough users that it is benefiting from the positive feedback loop of the more users it gets, the more content it gets, and the more content it gets, the more users it gets. I encourage everyone on the executive staff and their direct reports to use the Internet.
The memo was made available as a trial exhibit in a District Court filing for the antitrust case, United States v. Microsoft.

Tuesday, May 25, 2010

Journal Cancellations Review for UNC Health Sciences Library

The UNC Health Sciences Library (HSL) is preparing for reductions to the FY 2010/2011 acquisitions budget. As a result, we are again reviewing all areas of purchasing and asking publishers to keep price increases to a minimum for 2011. However, the primary strategy for finding reductions is to continue the 2009 comprehensive review of active journal subscriptions. Approximately 95 percent of HSL’s acquisitions budget is spent on journal or database subscriptions. To achieve budget reductions we must lower this recurring annual expense through targeted cancellations.

Last year, 670 users helped us evaluate our subscriptions and we need even more help this year. During the next couple of months we plan to post a list of potential journal cancellations and to ask for feedback. Here is some preliminary information about this review effort, which is also available via the Journal Review homepage:

Cancellation Criteria
Timeline
FAQ

Our goal is the same as for 2009: to keep as much valued content available as possible, minimizing negative impact on our community of users, while still achieving our budget reduction targets. Please keep checking the Journal Review homepage for updates and changes, and your opportunity to provide feedback. We value all feedback received and use it to help make the best decisions possible.

The 2009 review process helped greatly to reduce recurring annual expenses. Through extensive feedback from the UNC Chapel Hill Health Affairs community and beyond, and through aggressive negotiations with journal publishers for better pricing, we were able to cancel only 58 titles. We also implemented other changes to save costs, such as converting more journal subscriptions from print plus online to online only. However, these savings will not carry the HSL through another budget reduction in 2010/2011, so the comprehensive review continues.

While the need to reduce the acquisitions budget is driven partly by current economic conditions, carrying out a journals cancellation review is normal library practice, done most recently in 2009 and 2003. Furthermore, our acquisitions budget cannot keep pace with the annual price increases for journals in the health sciences, as the average cost of a health sciences journal is now $1,400.

First National VIVO Conference: Enabling National Networking of Scientists

Enabling National Networking of Scientists
August 12-13, 2010
New York Hall of Science

The first annual National VIVO Conference, Enabling National Networking of Scientists, will bring together scientists, developers, publishers, funding agencies, research officers, students and those supporting the development of team science. This two day conference will begin with workshops and tutorials for those new to VIVO, those implementing VIVO at their institutions, and those wishing to develop applications using VIVO. Invited speakers will present regarding the Semantic Web, Linked Open Data and the role of VIVO in support of team science. Panelists will discuss adoption and implementation findings. Feedback sessions will engage participants in requirements gathering and brainstorming regarding future network services. Presenters will discuss mapping, social networking, crowd sourcing, support for societies and other national network applications. Learn more at the conference web site.

VIVO is an open source, open ontology, research discovery platform for hosting information about scientists, their interests, activities, and accomplishments. VIVO supports open development and integration of science through simple, standard semantic web technologies. Learn more at the VIVO web site. VIVO is funded by the National Institutes of Health, U24 RR029822.

Thursday, May 20, 2010

New Mobile Application for PLoS Medicine

The Center for Biomedical Informatics at the Harvard Medical School in collaboration with the Public Library of Science (PLoS.org) have created a free iPhone application for PLoS Medicine, the open-access journal publishing important original research and analysis relevant to human health.

To give it a test drive, simply visit the iTunes Application store and download it to your iPhone or iPod Touch. To launch the application, simply touch the PLoS icon and you are immediately taken to a screen that contains the most recent and viewed articles, with an option to search for anything else from the current or archive issues using your touch keypad.
Other features include:
  • Clear article layout – with options to view the PDF or view online
  • Favorite and share – straight from your phone
  • Access the full archive – never be without the content you need again
  • Get further information – about PLoS in general and PLoS Medicine specifically
:: Check out related Carolina Curator blog entries for mobile options at UNC Libraries and the National Library of Medicine.

Tuesday, May 18, 2010

Friends of the Wellcome Trust Centre for the History of Medicine at UCL

The Friends of the Wellcome Trust Centre for the History of Medicine at UCL (University College London) has recently established a new blog. The main topic for postings is the pending closure of the Centre, and several researchers, including the University of North Carolina's Dr. Michael McVaugh, have related their observations about its importance for the history of medicine as well as their concern for its future. The Friends blog also has a link to the online petition to Save History of Medicine at UCL, which now has over 3,400 signatures and is open for further supporters.

In addition, the Friends blog has links to articles about the closure: Wellcome Trust Is To Close Its Centre for History of Medicine (British Medical Journal, April 16, 2010) and Terminal Diagnosis for UCL's History of Medicine Centre (Times Higher Education, April 20, 2010). A summary history of the Wellcome Trust Centre for the History of Medicine at UCL is available online.

Previous related Carolina Curator postings include: Wellcome Trust Centre for the History of Medicine To Close (with Call for Papers for conference on The Future of Medical History) and Petition To Save the History of Medicine at University College London.

Monday, May 17, 2010

Festschrift for Professor Michael McVaugh

Between Text and Patient: The Medical Enterprise in Medieval & Early Modern Europe brings together essays by an eminent group of scholars who traveled to Chapel Hill, North Carolina in 2007 to honor the work of UNC Professor Michael R.McVaugh. Like McVaugh’s own publications, the essays vary greatly in their approaches to the healing arts in the medieval and early modern periods, ranging from philological studies of individual texts to paleo-pathological examinations of the spread of disease; from considerations of physicians, surgeons, apothecaries, patients, and unlearned healers, to the contexts in which they functioned: the town, the university, the monastery, the court, and the printing house; and from poly-lingual studies of Latin, Greek, Arabic, Hebrew, and Middle English texts to descriptions of the unstudied riches to be found in modern manuscript collections. As such, Between Text and Patient provides excellent examples of some of the best current research in the field. In addition to the many excellent essays, the volume is valuable for more than a dozen photos of never-before reproduced manuscripts, as well as brief editions and translations of original texts hitherto unavailable to English readers.

Edited by Florence Eliza Glaze and Brian Nance, Between Text and Patient (ISBN 978-88-8450-361-9) will be published this summer as part of Sismel's Micrologus' Library. Through June 30, 2010, the press is offering a reduced Tabula Gratulatoria price of 48 euro (72 euro after June 30). A table of contents and a Tabula Gratulatoria discount order form is available online.

Of related interest, see The MacKinney Collection of Medieval Medical Illustrations, a UNC digital collection.

Wednesday, May 12, 2010

Dr. Benson Reid Wilcox, UNC Heart Surgeon, Dies at 77

Benson Reid Wilcox, M.D., a pediatric heart surgeon who served 29 years as chief of the Division of Cardiothoracic Surgery at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, died May 11, 2010, at his home after a courageous battle with brain cancer. He was 77.

Dr. Wilcox served as chief of cardiothoracic surgery at UNC from 1969 to 1998. During that period, which was a time of dramatic advances in heart and lung surgery, the UNC hospital began offering coronary artery surgery, heart and lung transplantation, successful surgery for congenital heart defects in newborn infants, and a comprehensive program for the treatment of lung and esophageal cancer.

Dr. Wilcox was primarily a pediatric heart surgeon whose specialties were congenital heart disease, pediatric cardiac morphology, pediatric chest disease, and pulmonary circulation. He was a co-author of three books and an author of numerous medical journal articles and book chapters. He held important leadership posts in national medical organizations and was especially interested in the training of future surgeons.

Dr. Wilcox, known as Ben, was born May 26, 1932, in Charlotte, N.C., the son of James Simpson Wilcox and Louisa Reid Wilcox. He was raised in Charlotte and graduated from the Darlington School in Rome, Ga., in 1949. He was named 1997 Distinguished Alumnus of the Darlington School.

He earned an A.B. in history from the University of North Carolina in 1953 and an M.D. from the UNC School of Medicine in 1957. As an undergraduate at UNC, he was president of Sigma Alpha Epsilon fraternity and Rex of the Order of Gimghoul. At the UNC medical school, he was president of his class and was inducted into the Alpha Omega Alpha medical honor society in 1957.

While a medical student in 1956, Dr. Wilcox helped to conduct laboratory research on the application of newly developed heart-lung machines. A heart-lung machine was first used in the operating room at UNC in April 1957, beginning the era of open heart surgery at North Carolina Memorial Hospital.

After serving as a surgery resident at Barnes Hospital in St. Louis (1957-1959) and North Carolina Memorial Hospital in Chapel Hill (1959-1960), he spent two years as a surgical clinical associate at the National Heart Institute, part of the National Institutes of Health in Bethesda, Md. He then returned to UNC as chief resident in cardiovascular and thoracic surgery (1962-63) and as chief resident in surgery (1963-64).

He joined the UNC Department of Surgery faculty in 1964 and was appointed as chief of the Division of Cardiothoracic Surgery in 1969 and as a full professor in 1971. He was named a Markle Scholar in Academic Medicine in 1967. After he retired as chief of cardiothoracic surgery, Dr. Wilcox remained on the UNC medical school faculty as Professor of Surgery from 1998 until his death.

Dr. Wilcox also served the university in a number of other capacities. He was a member of the Selection Committee for the North Carolina Fellows Program; the UNC Faculty Committee on Athletics, serving as chairman from 1977 to 1985; and the Morehead Foundation’s Central Selection Committee, serving as chairman from 1989 to 1992. He was on the university’s Faculty Council and other campus-wide committees. He was a member of the executive committee of the Atlantic Coast Conference from 1978 to 1982 and was its president from 1980 to 1981. He also served on the board of directors of the Ronald McDonald House in Chapel Hill from 1981 to 1999.

He held leadership positions in prestigious professional organizations, including chairman of the American Board of Thoracic Surgery, chairman of the Advisory Council for Cardiothoracic Surgery of the American College of Surgeons, president of the Nathan A. Womack Surgical Society, and president of The Society of Thoracic Surgeons, the largest society of thoracic surgeons in the world. He received the Distinguished Service Award from the Society of Thoracic Surgeons in 2003.

He had a strong interest in graduate medical education, the training of resident physicians. He was instrumental in establishing the Thoracic Surgery Directors Association (TSDA) which was formed to improve cardiothoracic surgery training and education for doctors, and whose members are directors of cardiothoracic surgery residency programs across the United States. From 1985 to 1987, he served as president of TSDA. In 2009, the TSDA honored him by establishing the Benson Wilcox Award for Best Resident Paper, to be presented each year at The Society of Thoracic Surgeons' annual meeting for the best scientific abstract submitted by a cardiothoracic surgery resident.

He also was on the Board of Directors of the National Resident Matching Program from 1998 to 2007, serving as president from 2001 to 2002. He was a member of the Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education’s Residency Review Committee for Thoracic Surgery (1999-2005); the American College of Surgeons’ Graduate Medical Education Committee (1993-2001); and a member of the Committee on Graduate Education for the American Association for Thoracic Surgery (1992-2001).

In 1980, Dr. Wilcox spent time during a sabbatical at Royal Brompton National Heart and Lung Hospital in London, beginning a collaboration with Robert H. Anderson, M.D., a pediatric morphologist at Royal Brompton. After that visit, he and Dr. Anderson worked together on many research projects and publications, including the book Surgical Anatomy of the Heart (Raven Press, 3rd edition, 2004). The two physicians established a program that for many years enabled UNC cardiothoracic surgery residents to spend time in London studying with Dr. Anderson and attending rounds with him. Dr. Anderson also visited UNC.

Dr. Wilcox also was co-author of Atlas of the Heart (Gower Medical Publishing, 1988); and a co-editor of Diagnostic Atlas of the Heart (Raven Press, 1994). He was an author of more than 100 scientific and clinical articles that were published in medical journals.

After operating on many ill children, Dr. Wilcox had the idea of starting a support group for families of children who are undergoing heart surgery. The Carolina Parent Network, begun in 1986 and directed by Maggie Morris for many years, enables parents of children who are facing heart surgery at UNC to talk to parents who have already had the experience, and it also educates families about what to expect before, during and after surgery.

Dr. Wilcox loved history, especially medical history. As a medical student at UNC, he helped found the Bullitt Club for the study of the history of medicine. As a faculty member, he began collecting old and rare books about the history of medicine, particularly books about thoracic surgery and the specialties that preceded it. In 1984, he began presenting a rare book to the UNC Health Sciences Library each year in honor of his chief resident. In 1998 and 1999, he donated most of his medical book collection to the library. Since then the Benson Reid Wilcox Collection has grown to more than 1,400 books, journals, reprints and other items. He served on the board of visitors for the UNC Health Sciences Library.

"Dr. Wilcox' contributions to the historical collections at the Health Sciences Library were truly remarkable in both variety and scope. An avid and erudite bibliophile, he thrilled in the hunt for significant texts, and had a deep appreciation for the role of history in the theory and practice of medicine," said Daniel Smith, special collections librarian for the UNC Health Sciences Library.

Dr. Wilcox is survived by his wife, Patsy Davis, and by his four children: Adelaide W. King and her husband, Ruffin, of Charlottesville, Va.; Sandra W. Conway and her husband, Peter, of Charlotte, N.C.; Melissa W. Bond and her husband, Brett, of Charlotte; and Reid Wilcox and his wife, Suzanne, of Greensboro, N.C. He is also survived by 11 grandchildren, Alexandra and Ruffin King; Peter, Ben and Adelaide Conway; Brett, Lucinda and Reid Bond; and Ben, Henry and Ellie Wilcox. He is also survived by two stepdaughters, Harriet Kendall and Julia Klein; a brother, Bob Wilcox; two sisters-in-law, Dede Thompson and Louise Wilcox, and a brother-in-law Allan Davis. He was predeceased by his parents and by his brother Jim Wilcox.

A memorial service will be held Friday, May 14, at 2 p.m. in Gerrard Hall on the campus of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Gerrard Hall is on Cameron Avenue, across from the Old Well, between Memorial Hall and the South Building.

In lieu of flowers, the family suggests memorial gifts to the TSDA Benson R. Wilcox Award. Checks can be made to the Thoracic Surgery Directors Association and mailed to Michael R. Mill, M.D., Division of Cardiothoracic Surgery, CB#7065, UNC-CH, Chapel Hill, NC, 27599-7065.