Hardin News – Page 2

Brittney Thomas, MLIS | All of Us Manager

picture of Brittney Thomas on white background

Meet Brittney Thomas, Manager for the NNLM All of Us Coordinating Center. Brittney joined the Greater Midwest Region of the National Network of the Libraries of Medicine in November and has spent the last few weeks learning as much as she can about health librarianship.

In her new role, Brittney will be coordinating outreach and engagement efforts to targeted communities in collaboration with the 8 Regional Medial Libraries on genetics and precision medicine. She’s currently using Jacqueline’s workspace while she waits for her own to be created.

Prior to joining the All of Us National project Brittney worked at the Main Library as the Learning Commons Coordinator where she oversaw programming and outreach, facilities and technology maintenance, marketing, faculty and student support, and much, much more!

Brittney received a Masters in Library and Information Science from The University of Iowa and has a B.A. in Art & Design from Iowa State University. Welcome Brittney!

UI awarded $3.6M NIH Grant for “All of Us” personal medicine initiative

Originally published in IowaNow online.

UI to lead national campaign educating Americans, health care professionals about precision medicine

$3.6 million NIH grant will make the UI a national hub for creating and distributing educational information for the ‘All of Us’ initiative

By: Richard C. Lewis | 2017.11.29 | 09:45 am

The University of Iowa is poised to lead a new national campaign to educate Americans and health care professionals about personalized medicine.

The National Institutes of Health (NIH), through its National Library of Medicine, awarded the UI $3.6 million over three years to create and distribute educational information for the All of Us Research Program, an NIH-led effort “to gather data over many years from one million or more people living in the United States, with the ultimate goal of accelerating research and improving health,” according to the program’s website.

The UI will be a national coordinating center charged with creating content to prompt people to enroll in the All of Us initiative and to help health care providers—such as physicians, nurses, pharmacists, and genetic counselors—understand the promise of precision medicine.

The Hardin Library for the Health Sciences will partner with the National Library of Medicine on the funding award, which supplements a $6.5 million award to the Hardin Library in the spring of 2016 to support the National Library of Medicine’s goal to provide U.S. health professionals with equal access to biomedical information and to improve the public’s access to information so citizens can make informed decisions about their health.

“We are excited that the University of Iowa will be part of this very important NIH precision-medicine

initiative that may ultimately improve the health of all,” says Linda Walton, associate university librarian and director of the Hardin Library for the Health Sciences. “We have put together a strong team to develop the educational component for the All of Us research program, keeping in mind the many different biological, environmental, and behavioral influences that affect our citizenry.”

A primary focus of the new award is to demystify personalized medicine through educational materials, online courses, and seminars for the public and health care professionals. Among the ideas being considered are a traveling photographic exhibit, interactive online games, and various apps for mobile devices.

“We look forward to the opportunity to educate and empower all Americans on precision medicine topics,” says Colleen Campbell, assistant director at the Iowa Institute of Human Genetics based in the UI Roy J. and Lucille A. Carver College of Medicine and a co-principal investigator on the grant. “And, we are very excited to put into action the educational materials and activities we have proposed to help make personalized medicine easy to understand and accessible for the public and health care professionals.”

Campbell, Walton, and Rema Afifi, professor in the Department of Community and Behavioral Health in the UI College of Public Health, are the supplemental grant’s three co-principal investigators.

Other participants are Liz Hollingworth, professor in the College of Education; Elizabeth Kiscaden, associate director of the regional medical library at the Hardin Library; Edith Parker, professor and chair in the Department of Community and Behavioral Health in the College of Public Health; and Richard Smith, director of the Iowa Institute of Human Genetics.

November 2017 Notes from the John Martin Rare Book Room | Ars moriendi = The Art of Dying

woodblock image of impatience — Temptation Through Impatience

Ars moriendi. [Cologne, Heinrich Quentell, c. 1495]

Although the author of Ars moriendi is not known, the book is believed to have been written in Southern Germany at the time of the Council of Constance (1414-1418).

Ars moriendi, or The art of dying, was intended to instruct the reader on the proper modes of behavior when facing death. The book was one result of the Church’s effort to educate the laity in the fundamentals of Christianity during the late medieval period. Gerson’s Opus tripartitum is the source of much of the work, with other material being drawn from the Bible, liturgies, and devotional and doctrinal literature of the period.

Ars moriendi is divided into six parts:

a selection of quotations on death from authoritative Christian sources;
advice to the dying on how to overcome faithlessness, despair, impatience, pride, worldliness, and other temptations;
a series of catechetical questions whose correct answers lead to salvation;
instructions and prayers for imitating the dying Christ;
practical advice for the dying individual; and,
prayers to be said by those attending the dying.

The title page scene is a well known and frequently studied woodcut. Designed by Heinrich Quentell, Cologne’s most successful and prolific printer of the late fifteenth century, it depicts St. Thomas instructing two children who are seated before him.

You may view this book in the John Martin Rare Book Room, Hardin Library for the Health Sciences. Make a gift to the Hardin Library for the Health Sciences by donating online or setting up a recurring gift with The University of Iowa Foundation.

religious woodblock image — Triumph Over Despair

woodblock image of infidelity — Temptation Through Infidelity

Meet The Expert: Jen DeBerg, Reference Services Librarian

Jen DeBerg, Reference Services Librarian

Master of Library Science, Emporia State University

Bachelor of Science, Occupational Therapy, Elizabethtown College

Areas of expertise:

Adjunct Lecturer, College of Nursing
Health sciences literature searching
Systematic reviews
EndNote
Teaching and training users
Finding evidence-based resources
Arthur Benton Excellence in Reference Services award winner

Outside the library:
Jen lives in Iowa City with her family: husband and 2 sons, aged 12 and 9. She enjoys music, reading, swimming, hiking, ice skating, snowboarding and watching all sports.

Paracelsus, father of toxicology | October 2017 Notes from the John Martin Rare Book Room @Hardin Library

PARACELSUS (1493-1541). Opera, Bücher und Schrifften. Strasbourg: In Verlegung L. Zetzners seligen Erben, 1616.

Philippus Theophrastus Bombastus von Hohenheim is universally known as Paracelsus. He was born in Switzerland and educated at Basel. Paracelsus unorthodox ideas and teachings put him in conflict with the orthodox establishment of his revolutionary time and he spent most of his life wandering through Europe as an itinerant physician, chemist, theologian, and philosopher.

Paracelsus ideas were still bound up in alchemy and astrology, and his writings imbued with a mysticism which makes them difficult to interpret. Paracelsus was usually in advance of his time in the area of practical medicine and attracted many followers. First, he applied chemical techniques to pharmacy and therapeutics. Secondly, in his medical teaching he abandoned the ruling system of humours. Paracelsus believed illness was from a body being attacked by outside agents. He administered specific medications for specific illnesses instead of common cure-alls.

Paracelsus influence on the Sixteenth and Seventeenth centuries was profound and the work of Helmont is unthinkable without him. Paracelsus is also credited with creating the terms chemistry, gas, and alcohol.

Librarian Activities at Midwest Chapter of Medical Library Association Annual Meeting 2017

The Midwest Chapter of The Medical Library Association (MLA) and Michigan Health Science Library Association joint annual conference is in Yipsilanti, Michigan this year. Our librarians are going to be busy!

Heather Healy, Clinical Education Librarian and Mahrya Carncross, Scholarly Communications Librarian for UI Libraries will present Picture This! Teaching Ethical Use of Health Sciences Images, about updating the Images in the Health Sciences guide after the retirement of Hardin MD, lessons learned, and results from teaching with it.

Matt Regan, Clinical Education Librarian, will present A Shot in the arm: fortifying an anemic institutional repository with faculty publication records.

Jen Deberg, User Services Librarian, Matt Regan, and Heather Healy will Clinical Education Librarian, will present a poster Pure Collaboration: Supporting EndNote Sharing Options.

The National Network of Libraries of Medicine, Greater Midwest Region (NNLM/GMR) located at Hardin Library will be sponsoring an Advanced PubMed program.

Darlene Kaskie, Outreach Specialist NNLM/GMR, will present Getting Started with Community Outreach.

Jacqueline Leskovic, NNLM/GMR, will host the GMR Technology Topic on Virtual Reality.

Linda Walton, Associate University Librarian and Director of NNLM/GMR and Elizabeth Kiscaden, Associate Director of NNLM/GMR will be presenting GMR Update.

In addition, some of our staff provide service to Midwest MLA.
Janna Lawrence, Deputy Director of Hardin Library, is Midwest MLA Representative to the Medical Library Association Chapter Council and is a member of the Midwest MLA Board.

Elizabeth Kiscaden is chapter treasurer.

Jen Deberg is recording secretary.

Matt Regan is a member of the communications team.

picture of hands holding up globe

Major, Chirugia Infusoria | Blood Transfusion | September 2017 Notes from the John Martin Rare Book Room @Hardin Library

JOHANN DANIEL MAJOR (1634-1693). Chirurgia infusoria. Kiel: Sumptibus Joh. Lüdervvald, Impremebat Joach. Reumannus, 1667.

Major, a native of Breslau, Germany, received his second medical degree at Padua in 1660. He practiced medicine at Hamburg and Wittenberg before being appointed the first professor of medicine at Kiel in 1665.

Major was a physician, a naturalist, collector, and founder of museology.

There is some controversy with regard to priority in blood transfusion, but Major may be clearly credited with the first successful injection of a medicinal substance into the vein of a human in 1662. In the Prologue to this work, he explains his general intent and illustrates with a striking woodcut his method of performing intravenous infusion. In the Prodome, he reviews the work of other investigators who used animals and substances such as wine, water, and poisons in their experimentation with transfusion.

Major also argues the merit and originality of his own work with humans. His work included both blood transfusion and the injection of medicinal substances. Also included in the book are letters to Major from contemporaries who criticized his work and compared it with their own research. Major discusses their arguments and provides substantiation for his work.

Read First Blood Transfusion: A History by Elizabeth Yale, Department of History, University of Iowa.

Abu al-Qasim | August 2017 Notes from the John Martin Rare Book Room @Hardin Library

ABU AL-QASIM (d. 1013?). Liber theoricae necnon practicae Alsaharavii. [Augsburg: Impensis Sigismundi Grimm, & Marci Vuirsung, 1519].

Abu al-Qasim (or Abulcasis, or Albucasis, as he is variously known), a native of Cordova in Moorish Spain, may be classed with Avicenna in the importance of his great medical encyclopedia, al-Tasrif.

Kitab Al-Tasrif was originally published in 30 volumes in about 1000 CE, and then published in three parts after the invention of printing: the pharmaceutical part in 1471, the surgical in 1497, and the featured volume on general medicine, in 1519, edited by the Augsburg physician and printer Sigismund Grimm (fl. 1519).

The work was known to physicians and surgeons in the West as well as in the Muslim world. This book describes haemophilia for the first time.

Abu al-Qasim al-Zahrawi is considered the most influential Arab surgeon to date and is considered the father of modern surgery. More information about Abu al-Qasim Al-Zahrawi available from Muslim Heritage. Arabic Wikipedia entry on Albucasis.

ANDRÉ DU LAURENS | July 2017 Notes from the John Martin Rare Book Room @Hardin Library

ANDRÉ DU LAURENS (1558-1609). De mirabili strumas sanandi vi solis Galliae regi-bus christianissimis divinitus concessa liber unus. Paris: Apud Marcum Orry, 1609.

Du Laurens taught at Montpellier until 1598 when he was called to Paris as court physician. In this position he eventually became personal physician to Marie de Medici and King Henry IV.

During the Middle Ages, tuberculosis of the lymph glands of the neck was very common and was known variously as scrofula, struma, and the “King’s Evil.” For centuries it was believed that the “royal touch” could cure this disease and many English and French monarchs were in the habit of touching their afflicted subjects during major religious holidays.

Du Laurens was a firm believer in the effectiveness of the “royal touch” and, in this work, reports that King Henry IV often touched and healed as many as 1,500 individuals at a time.

The University of Iowa copy has an interesting provenance and can be traced back to original owner Jean Auguste de Thou, who died in 1617.

Meet The Expert: Janna Lawrence, Deputy Director, Hardin Library for the Health Sciences

Janna Lawrence, Deputy Director, Hardin Library for the Health Sciences

Master of Library and Information Science, University of Texas at Austin
Bachelor of Arts, Rhetoric, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

Areas of expertise:

- Health sciences literature searching
- Trends in health sciences publishing
- Copyright, fair use, appropriate use of resources
- Open access publishing
- Identifying predatory publishers
- EndNote
- Teaching and training users
- Library management
- Conference planning
- Library collection management

Outside the library:
Like the stereotypical librarian, Janna has 2 cats, Harley and Alice, and knits. She also loves to bake, and tries to bring baked goods for all Hardin staff members’ birthdays. Her favorite colors are currently pink and grey and her favorite city is San Antonio, where she lived for over 20 years. Janna loves hot weather and tries not to complain too much about winter.