Category Archives: Events & Exhibits

Library hosts new NLM exhibit on history of nursing told through postcards

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The UT Southwestern Library will host Pictures of Nursing: The Zwerdling Postcard Collection, a traveling exhibit from the National Library of Medicine, from November 19, 2018, through January 5, 2019.

The exhibition explores a unique archive of 2,588 postcards and more than 100 years of images of nurses and the nursing profession from around the world, investigating the hold these images exert on the public imagination then and now.

The postcard is a fleeting and widespread art form influenced by popular ideas about social and cultural life in addition to fashions in visual style. Nurses and nursing have been the frequent subjects of postcards for over 100 years. In fact, no other art form has illustrated the nursing profession so profusely using such a variety of artistic styles and images.

These images of nurses and nursing are informed by cultural values; ideas about women, men, and work; and attitudes toward class, race, and national differences. By documenting the relationship of nursing to significant forces in 20th-century life, such as war and disease, these postcards reveal how nursing was seen during those times.

The six-banner traveling exhibition highlights only a small selection from the 2,588 postcards of The Zwerdling Postcard Collection. Visit the U.S. National Library of Medicine website to view over 500 more postcards in the exhibition’s online digital gallery at Pictures of Nursing: The Zwerdling Postcard Collection.

“Bio-structural”: exhibit by artist Michael Duncan explores the fundamentals of life

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Artist Michael Duncan – a Louisiana native who has deep roots in Chicago but currently lives and creates in Dallas – pioneered a genre he calls “soundism”, which draws upon music as a conduit for expressing the rich tapestry of human emotional experience through paints and canvas. His extensive work as a sculptor and painter has focused on humanity and life as emotionally resonant themes. In his new exhibit called Bio-structural, Michael explores the vibrant patterns and rhythms inherent to all life forms on Earth.

“At the cellular anatomical level, everything is based on the smallest of things,” Duncan explains. “Plants, animals, bacteria…all living things share the same essential building blocks of life. Trees have veins to carry the nutrients of life, just as we and other animals have veins that transport oxygen. We share a common anatomy across the spectrum of life encoded by DNA.”

The works featured in Bio-structural possess organic qualities that create striking visual connections between microscopic and macroscopic living systems. The vital, supportive forces of nature are illustrated using the spine and other anatomical structures.

Bio-structural will be on display at the South Campus Library (Florence Building, Room E2) from October 15, 2018, to January 31, 2019. A reception with the artist will be held on Friday, October 19, 2018, from 5-7 p.m.

New traveling exhibit from the National Library of Medicine highlights global contributions of physician assistants

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Physician Assistants: Collaboration and Care, a traveling exhibit from the National Library of Medicine, is coming to the South Campus Library from July 30 through September 8, 2018. This exhibition was curated by Loren Miller, PhD, an independent historian and curator.

Physician assistants (PAs) practice medicine as a dynamic part of a team, alongside doctors, nurses, and other health care professionals and work within diverse communities to treat patients and improve lives by addressing health care shortages. Physician Assistants: Collaboration and Care describes how the profession developed as a solution to meet the social and health care needs of the mid-20th century and continues to evolve today. The exhibit features stories of PAs in communities all over the world and on the front lines of health crises, like the recent Ebola epidemic. It also features PAs from the highest echelons of government, including Congresswoman Karen Bass from California and George McCullough, the first White House PA.

Visit the U.S. National Library of Medicine website for more information on Physician Assistants: Collaboration and Care.

Medical School’s early years on display at Dallas Public Library

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Selected materials from the early years of the medical school are now on display until August 31 at the J. Erik Jonsson Central Library in Downtown Dallas. The “UT Southwestern at 75 Years: Early Highlights of Southwestern Medical College” exhibit was curated by staff at Special Collections and Archives (part of the UT Southwestern Health Sciences Digital Library and Learning Center).

This exhibit explores military connections, changes in medical education, and selected departmental highlights and institutional developments during the first two decades of the medical school. Some of the materials on display include:

  • A patient logbook from the 19th century
  • The first yearbook from the medical school
  • A kymograph
  • Lantern slides

Edward H. Cary, M.D. (1872-1953), more than any other single person, was responsible for the founding of what is today UT Southwestern. He was the originator and first president of Southwestern Medical Foundation, originally founded to strengthen Baylor Medical College. When Baylor Medical College moved to Houston in 1943, Dr. Cary and the Foundation started Southwestern Medical College, now UT Southwestern. As president of the Foundation, Dr. Cary helped negotiate the medical school’s entry into the University of Texas system in 1949. This exhibit includes his log book from his training at Bellevue Hospital Medical College.

Southwestern Medical College faculty and students, most in military uniforms, circa 1944

Southwestern Medical College faculty and students, most in military uniforms, circa 1944

Both the Army Specialized Training Unit and the Navy V-12 Unit were part of the earliest years of Southwestern Medical College. These two programs, created during World War II, were intended to boost both the number of technically trained personnel and officers. The commemorative plaque given to the school in recognition of the Navy V-12 Unit is featured in this exhibit, along with early images and the first medical school yearbook.

Seal of Southwestern Medical College

Seal of Southwestern Medical College

One of the departments of instruction when Southwestern Medical College opened in 1943 was Medical Art and Visual Education. Southwestern Medical College was the first educational institution to offer the Master of Medical Arts degree. An original drawing by Lewis Waters, a 1950s illustrated scholarly work on polio, the seal of Southwestern Medical College, and early lantern slides help reveal how the use of images in medical education has changed over time.

The exhibit is available for viewing on the 5th floor (Business & Technology) of the J. Erik Jonsson Central Library in downtown Dallas until August 31, 2018.

Questions or comments about the exhibit? Contact archives@utsouthwestern.edu.

New “Fire and Freedom” traveling poster exhibition at South Campus Library

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The UT Southwestern Health Sciences Digital Library & Learning Center is hosting Fire and Freedom: Food and Enslavement in Early America, a new six-panel traveling exhibition. Meals can tell us how power is exchanged between and among different peoples, races, genders, and classes. The 18th century collection materials—upon which the exhibition is based—describe connections between food, botany, health, and housekeeping.

The exhibition will be on display for the UT Southwestern community until May 19, 2018. In addition to this physical exhibition, other publicly-available online components include web pages for each of the six panels, higher education class modules, a curator’s bibliography, and a digital gallery.

One of the medical history books listed in the curator’s bibliography—Blanton, Wyndham B. Medicine in Virginia in the Eighteenth Century. Richmond, VA: Garrett and Massie, 1931—is available at the Joint Library Facility and can be requested by UT Southwestern faculty, staff, and students at no cost through Interlibrary Loan. It is also available as an ebook through HathiTrust and can be viewed page by page without logging in; to download the ebook as a PDF for offline reading, simply log in using a UT Southwestern username and password.

The National Library of Medicine, National Institutes of Health developed and produced this exhibition. Research assistance was provided by staff at The Washington Library at George Washington’s Mount Vernon. It was guest curated by Psyche Williams-Forson, Ph.D., Associate Professor and Chair, American Studies, University of Maryland College Park.

New NLM Library exhibit shows the important role of nurses in confronting domestic violence in the United States

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The UT Southwestern Health Sciences Digital Library & Learning Center is pleased to host Confronting Violence: Improving Women’s Lives – a six-panel traveling exhibition provided by the National Library of Medicine – that uses images, manuscripts, and records to tell the stories of the nurses who witnessed the effects of domestic violence and campaigned for change.

Activists and reformers in the United States have long recognized the harm of domestic violence and sought to improve the lives of women who were battered. During the late 20th century, nurses took up the call. With passion and persistence, they worked to reform a medical profession that largely dismissed or completely failed to acknowledge violence against women as a serious health issue. Beginning in the late 1970s, nurses were in the vanguard as they pushed the larger medical community to identify victims, adequately respond to their needs, and work towards the prevention of domestic violence. This is their story.

Confronting Violence, Improving Women’s Lives began traveling around the United States in October 2015 and will be at the South Campus Library until January 27, 2018.

Credit line: The National Library of Medicine produced this exhibition.
Curated by Catherine Jacquet, PhD
Images courtesy Ellen Shub and National Library of Medicine.

NLM Poster Exhibit: Frankenstein, Penetrating the Secrets of Nature

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The UT Southwestern Health Sciences Digital Library & Learning Center is pleased to host Frankenstein: Penetrating the Secrets of Nature, a six-panel traveling exhibition that explores the birth of the novel Frankenstein, Mary Shelley’s life, connections to medicine and science in her time, and how Frankenstein continues to resonate into the 20th century and beyond. Frankenstein was first published anonymously in 1818, with revised editions attributed to Shelley in 1822 and 1831. The 1831 edition is the version most widely read.

The exhibit will be on display for the UT Southwestern community until December 30, 2017. This physical exhibition also has publicly-available online components, including web pages for each of the six panels, higher education class modules, a curator’s bibliography, and even an NPR interview with an illustrator about adapting Frankenstein for a graphic novel.

The National Library of Medicine, National Institutes of Health developed and produced this exhibition. This exhibition has been adapted from early exhibitions including the National Library of Medicine installation (1997-1998) and the American Library traveling exhibition (2002-2012). It was guest curated by Susan E. Lederer, Ph.D. (Robert Turell Professor of Medical History and Bioethics, University of Wisconsin-Madison).

Highlights of medical artifacts on display at Dallas Public Library

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The UT Southwestern Health Sciences Digital Library and Learning Center’s Special Collections and Archives includes more than 200 medical artifacts. Thanks to the Dallas Public Library, selected highlights from the medical artifact collection are on now display at the J. Erik Jonsson Central Library in downtown Dallas.

Some of the artifacts on display include:

  • An English homeopathic medicine case (circa 1873)
  • Pocket surgical kit with a paper packet of surgical needles, manufactured around 1880
  • Surgical instruments catalog published in1890
  • Snake bite kit similar to those issued to oil field workers in Texas in the 1930s and 1940s

A snake bite kit similar to those issued to oil field workers in Texas in the 1930s and 1940s

Some selected artifacts also have connections to the Texas Physicians Historical Biographical Database. This publicly-accessible database contains brief biographical entries and citations for more than 10,000 Texas physicians who either practiced in or had strong historical connections to Texas. Artifacts from physicians William Benjamin Goodner and Luis Leib are included in this exhibit.

A small selection of patent medicines and pharmaceutical containers

A small selection of patent medicines and pharmaceutical containers are also on display. The federal 1906 Pure Food and Drug Act called many of these earlier medicines into question. To learn more, the National Library of Medicine provides online access to the FDA Notices of Judgement Collection, which contains a fascinating digital archive of evidence files, including correspondence, legal records, lab reports, product labeling, photographs, and more.

St. Paul Hospital on Bryan Street, two nurses adjusting empty orthopedics patient bed. http://utswlibrary.contentdm.oclc.org/cdm/ref/collection/p13044coll6/id/601

One of the four display cases contains a range of artifacts, such as the pitcher (visible in this circa 1955 photo) that are also part of the extensive St. Paul Hospital Collection, 1896-2004.

The exhibit is available for viewing on the fifth floor (Business & Technology) of the J. Erik Jonsson Central Library in downtown Dallas until mid-February 2018.

Questions or comments about the exhibit? Contact archives@utsouthwestern.edu.

Celebrating National Medical Librarians Month

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“The Medical Library Association has declared October as National Medical Librarians Month to raise awareness of the important role of the health information professional,” said Kelly Gonzalez, MSIS, MBA, Assistant Vice President for Library Services. Library staff strive to support UT Southwestern Medical Center’s educational, research, and clinical missions through services, including the:

  • Provision of a comprehensive digital collection of databases and resources
  • Delivery of librarian-mediated searches in response to clinical and research inquiries
  • Education of UT Southwestern Medical Center students, faculty, and staff on how to access/use electronic resources
  • Archiving of the institution’s historical documents, photographs, etc.
  • Collection, preservation, and distribution of UTSW electronic theses, dissertations, and archives in its institutional repository

For more information or to schedule training with a health sciences librarian, please contact us by completing the Ask Us form or call 214-648-2001.