Welcome!
Hardin staff would like to welcome new students and faculty to the Hardin Library, and to welcome back students and faculty we already know. This year promises to be an exciting and challenging year for all of us, and we hope to see you often! If we don’t see you in person, we hope you will visit us virtually from our newly re-designed Hardin Library homepage: http://www.lib.uiowa.edu/hardin/.
Read more about the new website in this issue of News@Hardin. From this site you have access to millions of dollars worth of resources the Library purchases each year for your convenience, your scholarship and research. You also can access many library services from the site. Please look it over and bookmark it for easy reference. We also love to hear the phone ring–you can reach reference services directly at 335-9151 or email us at lib-hardin@uiowa.edu. Also from the Hardin homepage, you can reach the unique services of the Hardin Information Commons. The Commons can make your life so much easier if you are an instructor or student and need guidance in using and applying technology, or if you need to schedule a fully equipped and up-to-date electronic classroom.
Besides the changes we have made in cyberspace, please notice also the changes we have made and continue to make in the physical surroundings in the Library. Per your requests, we have taken out many study carrels and replaced them with tables and chairs for group as well as individual study. We have made available two group study rooms on the 4th floor (no reservations necessary), and are in the process of remodeling the first floor, which will include a lounge/study area for students. We have improved the lighting throughout the library and have opened an entrance on the first floor from the galleria. This new, accessible entrance will make it easy for anyone to park in the Newton Road parking ramp or the Library lot and enter the Library without climbing many flights of stairs. Read more about this project in this issue of News@Hardin.
We strive to make the services of the Hardin Library responsive to the needs of our primary clientele–that is library jargon for you! Please contact me if you have ideas or issues to discuss. You may reach me at jean-sayre@uiowa.edu or at 319/335-9870.
Have a great year!
Jean Sayre, Director
Hardin Library
jean-sayre@uiowa.edu
A “Miserable Little Book”
William Harvey’s De Motu Cordis (“On the Motion of the Heart and Blood”)
During an interview conducted a decade ago, Dr. John Martin referred to William Harvey’s De Motu Cordis (“On the Motion of the Heart and Blood”) as “a miserable little book…only 68 pages, printed on terrible paper with only one illustration and written in poor Latin.” He went on to add, however, that most historians believe the book to be the most important single work in the history of medicine. Harvey wrote the work with great reluctance in 1628 after years of soul searching. The unassuming English physician and anatomist was afraid that his radical notion would ostracize him from his colleagues and hurt his practice. He was right on both counts but lived to see his idea gain full acceptance and his name revered.
Harvey had the temerity to claim and demonstrate that blood actually traveled through the body in a circuit—that the same blood that was pumped from the heart, returned to the heart. Harvey measured the volume of blood expelled from the heart and knew that the organs were incapable of absorbing so large an amount of fluid—“Since it all flows past in so short a time, it must be made to flow in a circle.” In making his measurements, Harvey not only proved his thesis but also ushered in the era of experimental physiology. Harvey knew the idea was revolutionary and, “…so strange and undreamed of, that not only do I fear danger to myself from the malice of a few, but I dread lest I have all men as enemies, so much does habit or doctrine once absorbed, driving deeply its roots, become second nature… But now the die is cast; my hope is in the love of truth and in the integrity of intelligence.”
The John Martin Rare Book Room is one of a handful of U.S. libraries to own a copy of the first edition of Harvey’s monumental work. Purchased only a few years before Dr. Martin’s death in 1996, the fragile little book went through two years of painstaking preservation before it was placed on the shelves and made accessible to visitors to the room.
[quoted translated passages from Exercitatio Anatomica de Motu Cordis… An English translation with annotations by Chauncey D. Leake, 3rd edition, 1949.]
For more information about the John Martin Rare Book Room please visit the Web site at http://www.lib.uiowa.edu/hardin/rbr/ or contact Ed Holtum, Assistant Director for Administrative Services and Special Collections, at 319/335-9154 or edwin-holtum@uiowa.edu.
The first floor entrance to the library opened for traffic on the first day of classes, Monday, August 25th. The new entrance allows direct access to the building from recently rerouted Newton Road and provides an ADA accessible route to the health sciences campus. Currently, the entryway is staffed but only marginally equipped; within the semester we hope to have the entire area painted, recarpeted and refurbished to allow patrons to check out books from that location. Plans are also underway to provide a small and attractive study/lounge area on the first floor for group study, conversation, and Internet connectivity.
The Hardin Web site has a new look and feel!
On August 4, 2003 we launched the redesigned site with expanded content, improved navigation, and we hope, easier access to our resources.
Many of the changes that were made were suggested by you, our users, based on surveys and usability tests conducted over the last year.
Links to important information are available from broader categories that include Resources, Subject Links, Library Services, Special Services and Library Information. News@Hardin is featured in the center of the homepage. Links across the top of the page in the blue banner also make it easy to get to the information you are looking for very quickly.
We hope you like it the new site. The Hardin Library staff welcomes feedback on the new site!
Q: Would you like library research advice for a project or term paper?
Q: Would you like to feel more comfortable in searching the library’s electronic databases?
A: Schedule a research consultation in your office or at the Hardin Library for the Health Sciences.
We can suggest time saving strategies and teach you how to locate and evaluate information in print, electronic, and Internet sources. A research consultation can be the first step in planning your research, finding information on your topic, or getting the most from the Hardin Library’s collections.
Use this web form or contact us at 319/335-9151 to schedule a research consultation.
Our PDAs are chock-full of drugs! Drug information, that is. Visit the Hardin Library to get a PDA loaded with Lexi-Drug Platinum, mobileMICROMEDEX, ePocrates and Tarascon Pocket Pharmacopoeia. Check it out for three days: take it home, use it in your office or clinic or simply play with it in your free time.
Hardin Library also has wireless laptops that you can check out for use in the library. If you have a laptop that isn’t compatible with the campus wireless network, check out a LEAP-compliant wireless network card for three days.
Do you need to learn a programming language or simply upgrade your Microsoft Word skills? Do you want to learn Photoshop or just take better pictures with your digital camera? If you answered yes to any of these questions then Books24×7 is for you!
Books24×7 contains the full text of almost 3,000 books on the following topics to help you with all of your information technology needs:
Business and Culture
Certification and Compliance
Databases
Desktop & Office Applications
Enterprise Computing
Graphic Design & Multimedia
Hardware
Networks & Protocols
Operating Systems
Programming
Telecommunications
Web Development
To access Books24×7 go to: http://purl.lib.uiowa.edu/books24×7
