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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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!

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.

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.

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