News from the NLM History of Medicine Division
Greetings from the National Library of Medicine History of Medicine Division. I hope this email finds you healthy and safe during this holiday week.
* Reminder! NLM Welcomes Applications to its Michael E. DeBakey Fellowship in the History of Medicine for 2021 – Applications due September 25, 2020. Learn more<https://www.nlm.nih.gov/news/Applications_DeBakey_Fellowship_2021.html>.
* NLM Reading Rooms remain closed to the public until further notice in continued accordance with recommendations from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and to promote social distancing. During this period, NLM online resources remain available, including NLM Digital Collections<https://collections.nlm.nih.gov/> and PubMed Central<https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/>. NLM continues to provide interlibrary loan (ILL) services from electronically available resources. For the latest NLM ILL service information check here<https://www.nlm.nih.gov/psd/cas/illhome.html>. For the latest NLM Reading Room information check here<https://www.nlm.nih.gov/readingroom/index.html>.
* Washington Post features NLM/HMD collections of Marshall W. Nirenberg – “How the genetic code was cracked, with paper and pencil and no computers”<https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/how-genetic-code-was-cracked-with-paper-and-pencil-and-no-computers/2020/06/12/e5b32666-ab51-11ea-9063-e69bd6520940_story.html>
* The NLM Web Collecting and Archiving Working Group continues to identify and select web and social media content<https://circulatingnow.nlm.nih.gov/2020/03/26/archiving-web-content-on-the-coronavirus-disease-covid-19/> documenting the Coronavirus disease (COVID-19) outbreak as part of NLM’s Global Health Events web archive collection. Now including 1,300+ URLs (300+ gigabytes), the collection includes federal, state, and local government COVID-19 pages, websites of disaster relief agencies and NGOs, and content documenting life in quarantine, prevention measures, the experiences of healthcare workers, patients, and more. The group is actively reviewing recommended content for inclusion in the archive (2,300+ URLs to date), scoping and running crawls of content using Archive-It and Conifer (formerly Webrecorder), reviewing archived sites for quality, and adding metadata. The group continues to engage with other cultural heritage organizations archiving the history of COVID-19, including the group spearheaded by the leadership of the Smithsonian National Museum of American History, as well as the group of federal agencies who meet regularly to discuss their respective initiatives. The NLM Web Collecting and Archiving Working Group also continued to engage with the Society of American Archivist Web Archiving Roundtable, the Archive-It community, the National Digital Stewardship Alliance, and is contributing to and following the growing list of institutions collecting COVID-19 related content maintained by the Documenting the Now<https://bit.ly/doc-covid19> project. Nominations for content to include in NLM’s Global Health Events collection remain welcome via nlmwebcollecting@nlm.nih.gov<mailto:nlmwebcollecting@nlm.nih.gov>. NLM also continues to participate as an institutional contributor to a broader International Internet Preservation Consortium (IIPC) Novel Coronavirus outbreak web archive collection<https://archive-it.org/collections/13529>. IIPC registered their Novel Coronavirus (COVID-19) collection in the World Pandemic Research Network<http://www.wprn.org/>, here<https://wprn.org/item/444952>. Individual recommendations for the IIPC collection can be submitted using the form available here<https://netpreserveblog.wordpress.com/2020/02/13/cdg-collection-novel-coronavirus/>.
* Watch the archived livestream<https://videocast.nih.gov/watch=36347> of the NLM History of Medicine Division research symposium Reporting, Recording, and Remembering the 1918 Influenza Epidemic held in cooperation with Virginia Tech as part of the ongoing NLM/National Endowment for the Humanities partnership<https://www.nlm.nih.gov/news/NEH_and_NLM_Renew_Partnership_to_Collaborate_on_Research_Education_and_Career_Initiatives.html> to collaborate on research, education and career initiatives. Learn more<https://nihrecord.nih.gov/2020/06/26/students-learn-lessons-previous-pandemic> about the symposium from the NIH Record, and check out the NIH Videocast archive of History of Medicine programs<https://videocast.nih.gov/PastEvents?c=221>, including Dr. Joanna Radin, Yale University, speaking on When People are Data: How Medical History Matters for Our Digital Age<https://videocast.nih.gov/watch=35473>.
* Have you completed historical research in NLM’s collections? Would you like to share it freely with a wide audience? We warmly invite you to be a guest author on our blog Circulating Now<https://circulatingnow.nlm.nih.gov/>. Featured in the Washington Post<https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/health-science/the-real-history-behind-harry-potter-magic-and-wwi-poison-gas-treatments/2018/04/06/b7c14c6c-3824-11e8-9c0a-85d477d9a226_story.html?noredirect=on&utm_term=.98acfdbd9e32>, Circulating Now circulates widely, reaching more than 5,500 direct subscribers and 345,000 followers as part of the official NLM social media network. If you would like to write about your research in our collections, please send an email proposing your topic to Beth Mullen, managing editor, at elizabeth.mullen@nih.gov<mailto:elizabeth.mullen@nih.gov>. If you do not already subscribe to Circulating Now, please do—just look for the “Follow us via email” box on the right-side of the homepage<https://circulatingnow.nlm.nih.gov/>.
