Andy Hickner's blog

(by Melissa Grafe and Charlotte Abney Solomon)   In celebration of Harvey Cushing's birthday on April 8th and the Medical Library’s 75th Anniversary, the Medical Historical Library invited all Instagram users visiting the Harvey Cushing/John Hay Whitney Medical Library at Yale to share their best photos taken within our space. Contestants used the hashtag #HappyBirthdayHarvey and tagged our account, @yalemedhistlib. On display are the winners of the Instagram Challenge.   Brainiest Instagram: Best photo taken in the Cushing Center @rolfoid- Jon Rolfe Jon commented on his photograph that “The Cushing Center is a fun place for brainy Yale students.” Most Studious Instagram: Best photo taken while studying in the library- Honorable mention @annapziganshina- Anna Ziganshina Anna tells us that "it is never too early to learn." Judges’ Favorite Instagram: Best photo overall @archibrarian- Diane DiFazio What inspired Diane to take this particular photo:  “A few things: I expected a beautiful reading space at YMHL, but I'm often drawn to the details, and the metalwork in the Library caught my attention, so I took this photo because it represented medicine (hello, rod of Asclepius!), as well as the distinctive bookcases, other Tudor-style interior details, natural lighting, and bi-level space. My background's in architecture and I'm a librarian, so it was thrilling to be in a space that was both well-designed and inspiring; the Library continues the architectural traditions of great libraries. (And, I love how Harvey Cushing's ideas were realized by his friend and former classmate, architect Grosvenor Atterbury.) I thought the balustrades around the mezzanine (in the rotunda, too) were interesting, but I didn't realize how cool Atterbury's design really was until later! I thought, "Neat, I wonder if that's wrought iron," but later read that the railings are aluminum ... with decorative steel cutouts (!), and that it was all designed to mask lighting fixtures, which is such a fantastic modern way of the architect to handle things! So good.”   Happiest Birthday Instagram: Best selfie or other photo including an image of Harvey Cushing or the words “Happy Birthday Harvey” @kevin.a.nguyen- Kevin Nguyen With this selfie, Kevin noted, "Biology gives you a brain, but life transforms it into a mind."     Most Collectible Instagram: Best photo taken of an image, book, or other item in any CWML current or historical collections @sona.ghorashi- Sona Ghorashi Sona accompanied her photograph with this comment: "A path to the light through the shadows, at the Medical library."    Most Studious Instagram: Best photo taken while studying in the library @magic_meg- Megan Ritchey Megan captioned this lovely image of the Medical Historical Library with "The whole place to myself.”  

The Medical Historical Library, Cushing/Whitney Medical Library, is pleased to announce the following recipients of the Ferenc Gyorgyey Research Travel Award for 2016-2017: Whitney Wood, Postdoctoral Research Fellow, Department of History, Classics and Archaeology, Birbeck, University of London A New Way to Birth?  Herbert Thoms and the International Natural Childbirth Movement Whitney Wood’s research explores the natural childbirth movement in Canada.  As part of this research, Wood will be examining the Herbert Thoms papers (https://hdl.handle.net/10079/fa/mssa.ru.0656), as Thoms was an international leader in the movement and produced quite a bit of material on the topic of natural childbirth. Whitney Wood is planning to come to the Medical Historical Library in Spring 2017. Erin Travers, Doctoral Candidate, History of Art and Architecture, University of California, Santa Barbara Boundaries of the Body: The Art of the Anatomy in the Seventeenth-Century Netherlands Erin Travers will be examining Dutch anatomies, particularly Jacob van der Gracht’s drawing book, Anatomie der wtterlicke deelen van het menschelick lichaem.  These anatomies form the basis of her dissertation.  She will at the Medical Historical Library July 18th-23rd, 2016. Many thanks to the selection committee: John Warner and John Gallagher.

(by Katie Hart) Librarians attending the Medical Library Association Annual meeting in May.  Left to right:  Andy Hickner, Denise Hersey, Nathan Rupp, Holly Grossetta Nardini, Rolando Garcia Milian, Mark Gentry.  You’re invited to a SCOPA sponsored Lunch & Learn at the Cushing/Whitney Medical Library on June 8th at 1pm. Join us to hear recent presentations given at the Medical Library Association annual conference. Please feel free to bring a lunch or perhaps make a stop at the famous medical school carts. The four presentations we will be reprising for you are: Design, Implementation, and Evaluation of a Medical Library Program to Support Biomedical Research in the 'Omics Era – Rolando Garcia-Milian (presenting), Janis Glover, and John Gallagher. This presentation discusses the strategies used to design and implement our end-user bioinformatics support program. It also provides results on training, resources, tools, and services available to Yale biomedical researchers.  Putting the Pieces Together: Finding a Point-of-Care Solution for an Academic Medical Center – Denise Hersey (presenting), Mark Gentry, Janene Batten, Nathan Rupp, and Holly Grossetta Nardini. The Cushing/Whitney Medical Library assembled a task force composed of librarians, physicians, nurses, and hospital IT staff to compare and evaluate DynaMed Plus and UpToDate – two resources used at the beside to provide clinical care – and then recommend which product best meets the needs of our associated hospitals, informing the subscription renewal process for 2016-2017. The Yale Medical Subject Headings (MeSH) Analyzer: A New Tool for Search Refinement – Holly Grossetta Nardini and Lei Wang. The presentation describes our MeSH analysis methodology, a technique that helps craft more comprehensive searches, and the use of a new tool that saves time by doing this analysis automatically. The Yale MeSH Analyzer helps refine searches, particularly those where indexing is challenging, by creating a quick, scannable grid of MeSH terms for easy review. Using Omeka for Online Exhibits – Andy Hickner (presenting), Melissa Grafe, Kerri Sancomb, and Francesca Livermore (5 minute lightning talk). Omeka is a web publishing platform for online exhibitions. Andy will describe how Yale University Libraries conducted a pilot of Omeka for the Libraries’ online exhibition needs and share lessons from our experience. See you there!

The spring 2016 issue of Nota Bene: News from the Yale Library is now available online. This issue has a particular focus on the work of the Harvey Cushing/John Hay Whitney Medical Library as it marks its 75th anniversary this year.  In addition to telling the story of the Medical Library, the issue profiles some of the current projects, resources, collections, and exhibits that are making an impact at Yale and in the medical community worldwide.

(Guest post by the YSM, YSN, and PA Classes of 2016) If you've visited the library recently, this unusual sculpture may have caught your eye as you entered.  The 2016 Class Gift is a collective effort between the Yale School of Medicine, School of Nursing, and Physician Associate Program.  The gift is a tree sculpture made from molds of the limbs of first-year students in the 3 programs, and serves as a reminder of the collaborative process between the bodies of students and donors in the anatomy course.  We invite everyone to write notes thanking the donors or describing what the service, donations, or anatomy course meant to them on ribbons and to pin them on the tree.