Upcoming Classes by Miner Library

Here are the classes offered by Miner Library for the upcoming month:

Blackboard Basics for Academic Courses and Residencies

Date: Monday, December 10, 2018 Time: 9:00am – 10:00am

Register

EndNote Basics

Date: Tuesday, December 18, 2018 Time: 10:00am – 11:00am

Register

Podcast Basics

Date: Thursday, December 27, 2018 Time: 2:00pm – 3:00pm

Register

For a full list of Miner Library’s classes, visit our Classes page.

Have a question? Contact Miner Library’s Answer Desk @ 585-275-3361.

November 2018 Classes by Miner Library

Here are the classes offered by Miner Library for the upcoming month:

RefWorks Basics

Date: Monday, November 12, 2018 Time: 1:00pm – 2:00pm

Register

EndNote Basics

Date: Tuesday, November 20, 2018 Time: 9:00am – 10:00am

Register

Podcast Basics

Date: Thursday, November 29, 2018 Time: 2:00pm – 3:00pm

Register

For a full list of Miner Library’s classes, visit our Classes page.

Have a question? Contact Miner Library’s Answer Desk @ 585-275-3361.

Going to medical school in the 19th century, you couldn’t get into class without one of these

May I have your ticket please?

A student enrolled in any medical school during the 19th century was required to obtain from the registrar a card for each class (or series of lectures) in which he or she desired to enroll. These cards (essentially tickets) validated attendance at lectures, dissections, and rounds in hospital wards.

Within the nation’s medical schools many apprentices and practicing physicians attended lectures alongside medical students without matriculating. The system of lecture tickets made this possible. With roughly 10 to 15 dollars in hand, anybody could purchase admission to a course of lectures directly from the professor, who profited directly from the fees.

Our Rare Books & Manuscripts Section houses a collection of over 200 class cards issued by various American medical schools between 1814 and 1897. 

Medical school class cards are of great interest to the historian. They provide a record of what classes were being taught at a given school in the year issued and who was teaching each class. If a set of cards is complete, it lays out the student’s course of study and how long it took him or her to complete. 

 

At your finger tips, but not contagious…yellow fever

Now you can flip through the pages of our Yellow Fever Collection from anywhere, via the New York Heritage digital collections site.

Yup! Right from where you’re sitting.

And we’re pretty excited. And proud.

It’s taken a bunch of us over two years to make this happen. And we couldn’t have done it without a generous gift from Ranlet and Beth Miner, and technical guidance from Rochester Regional Library Council.

Yellow fever was one of the two most virulent epidemic diseases in 18^th and 19^th century United States, the other being cholera. And our Yellow Fever Collection is one of the largest and finest anywhere in the world. It contains more than 400 works, published between 1741 and 1914, representing the development of medical thought on yellow fever over the course of a century and a half.

Yellow fever broke out in Boston in 1693; Philadelphia in 1793; Norfolk, Virginia, in 1855; and the Mississippi River Valley in 1878. The yellow fever epidemic impacted nearly all aspects of life in affected cities as residents fled, economies suffered, and thousands died.

Painting by Juan Manuel Blanes, 1871 (Wellcome Collection)

Imagine the horror.

You step outside one morning and 1 out of 10 of your neighbors lies dead or dying.

Your world is upside down.

No one can agree on what’s causing the deaths or how to prevent them.

How will you survive in a city turned frantic with disease?

This was scene during the summer of 1793 in Philadelphia, when it was struck with the worst outbreak of yellow fever ever recorded in North America.

At the time, Philadelphia was the nation’s capital and its busiest port. Between August 1 and November 9, 1793, approximately 11,000 people contracted yellow fever. Five thousand people (10% of the city’s population) died. The epidemic created panic in the capital, causing 17,000 people, including President Washington and other members of the federal government, to flee to the countryside.

The disease gets its name from the jaundiced eyes and skin of the victims. Other symptoms include fever, headache, and “black vomit” caused by bleeding into the stomach. At the time, it was thought that yellow fever was caused by rotting vegetable matter.

The collection is a fascinating study on the confusion of 18th century physicians when confronted with a new and deadly malady; the static debates between contagionists and non-contagionists during the 19th century; early attempts to identify a bacterial agent; and the consequences of Walter Reed’s discovery of a mosquito vector.

It also provides a view into the panicked efforts of local, state, and national government to respond to yellow fever’s introduction and to check its spread; and to religious leaders’ fervent warnings of pestilence as punishment for public sins.

Rather than keep this outstanding and increasingly fragile collection locked up, why not share it with you and the rest of the world?

And that’s what we did.

Cheers!

P.S. There is no record of yellow fever ever having occurred in Rochester or in the Genesee River Valley.

 

Want to improve your clinical skills? Have you tried reading comics?

(Reading time: Less than 3 minutes)

No?

Then you should stop by and take a look at our new graphic medicine collection, made possible by a generous gift from Friends of University of Rochester Libraries.

Some people say “graphic novels” or “graphic medicine” and others say “comics.”

But what’s the difference?

Not much.

Basically, it’s the subject matter.

Graphic medicine is defined as, “the use of comics to tell personal stories of illness and health.”

The main characters in these comic books aren’t Superman, Catwoman, or Captain America. They’re not fighting bank robbers and bashing bad guys.

The heroes of these stories are ordinary people. They use imagery, insight, and humor, even while taking on painful, difficult issues like sexual abuse, cancer, and mental health. Their comics help patients and caregivers alike get in touch with the emotional side of illness, treatment, and recovery.

In their 2010 analysis, “Graphic medicine: use of comics in medical education and patient care,” Michael Green and Kimberly Myers argue that comics also are a valuable tool for medicine.

“To read a comic effectively, you must understand not only what is overtly seen and said but also what is implied. This is because much of the action takes place outside the boundaries of comic panels in the blank space known as the gutter. Thus, readers of comics, like doctors in the exam room, must determine meaning by inferring what happens out of sight and without words.”

From a patient perspective the use of graphic stories is nothing new. Graphic images have been used in public health education for decades covering a range of topics from seat belt use to vaccination awareness to pain scales. These graphic campaigns have been so successful because the images bridge the divide where there are verbal communication challenges.

With your UR ID you can borrow items from our graphic medicine collection for three weeks.

Want to browse through the titles in our graphic medicine collection from your own comfy chair? Just throw “graphic medicine” in to the basic “Title Keyword(s)” search box in Voyager (our online catalog).

 

 

We think this collection is marvelous, and we look forward to expanding it in the future. What do you think?

Let us know.

Getting the Most from EndNote – Capture Reference Feature

It is easy to export articles from scholarly databases like PubMed or Web of Science into EndNote, but how can you do insert a reference from popular media sources like the New York Times or government websites like CDC.gov?

Typically, you would have to create a new reference manually.  Now you can use the capture reference feature to export this information directly into EndNote.  It will not work for all websites, and you may only get partial data from others. So, you may still have to use the New Reference and Edit Reference features.  But using Capture Reference could make getting the reference data from many websites much easier.

• If you have not already set up an account with EndNote, you will have to do this first.

• From EndNote, click on References and then Preferences (For Mac users: Click on EndNote in the toolbar and then click on Preferences)

 

• From here select Sync and click on the button labeled Enable Sync.

• From here, you will have the option to create a new EndNote account by clicking on the Sign Up button.

• Once you have your account set up, enter this web address into your browser:

http://www.myendnoteweb.com/EndNoteWeb.html?func=downloadInstallers&cat=download&

• Login using your account information.

• From here, select the Downloads tab.

• To install the capture tool you will need to add this to your Bookmarks/Favorites bar – depending on your browser there might be two ways to do this:

• Drag the Capture Reference button to your Bookmarks/Favorites bar

         or

• Right-click and select Add to Favorites or Bookmark this Link

• Navigate to a website that you would like to cite.

• Click on the Capture Reference bookmark.

• In the pop-up window, make sure to select EndNote.

• You may have to add some information manually.

• In the example below you would want to add the appropriate information to the Author, Access Year, and Access Date fields. You can also do this by using the Edit Reference feature in EndNote.

• Tip: Include a comma at the end of the author field when using an organization’s name. This will ensure that EndNote formats the name properly for in-text and bibliography citations.

• Click on the Save To button and the reference will be added to your library.

EndNote is a citation management tool that can help you organize your research and save invaluable time creating your in-text citations and bibliographies.

To learn more about EndNote, sign up for one of our classes or schedule a meeting with Daniel Castillo.

September 2018 Classes by Miner Library

Here are the classes offered by Miner Library for the upcoming month:

EndNote Basics

Date: Friday, September 14, 2018 Time: 10:00am – 11:00am

Register

Podcast Basics

Date: Thursday, September 27, 2018 Time: 2:00pm – 3:00pm

Register

RefWorks Basics

Date: Friday, September 28, 2018 Time: 10:00am – 11:00am

Register

EndNote Basics

Date: Wednesday, October 3, 2018 Time: 2:00pm – 3:00pm

Register

For a full list of Miner Library’s classes, visit our Classes page.

Have a question? Contact Miner Library’s Answer Desk @ 585-275-3361.