This past Friday, February 3rd, was National Wear Red Day, a campaign of the American Heart Association to raise awareness of women's heart health issues. Many Tompkins-McCaw faculty and staff members showed their support by wearing red!
You can read more about the American Heart Association's campaign at
http://www.goredforwomen.org/
Early in February 2012, the Tompkins-McCaw Library (TML) is
kicking off the renovation of the basement Multimedia Collaboration Room, B-037. The
renovation will take the existing room to bare bones and then add layers to
create an exciting, contemporary space focused on collaborative learning.
Existing furniture and equipment will be removed or
relocated February 2-3; demolition begins Monday, February 6. The five week process will transform the room
from dated 1970s shabby to 21st century chic.
With the exception of workstations and café booths,
furniture in the room is designed to be moveable and configurable by
users. There will be mobile soft seating
and white boards too. Walls at the end
of the room will be finished with whiteboard material. The color scheme of the room is shades of
charcoal with pops of fuchsia, green and gold.
The design board showing all the exciting changes for B-037 is on
display at the TML Service Desk.
Enjoy the pictures of the planned renovation. We'll be posting photos as the project
progresses.
The staff at the Tompkins-McCaw Library invites all MCV Campus students, faculty, and staff to join us as we celebrate National Medical
Librarians Month by joining us at these exciting events and workshops:
- Attend the 2011 Cyber security Fair
to learn about the many options for protecting personal information from
cybercriminals, as well as ways to secure your electronic devices at home and
at work on October 5, 2011
- Refresh your research skills by attending an open workshop:
o
PubMed, October 17 at Noon - Hunton Student
Center
o
Drug Information Resources, Wednesday, October
19 at Noon - Tompkins-McCaw Library
o
Finding Health Statistics Online, Thursday,
October 20 at Noon - Hunton Student Center
o
RefWorks, Monday, October 24 at 10:00 a.m. - Sanger Hall
o
Where's the Evidence, Tuesday, October 25 at
4:00 p.m. - Tompkins-McCaw Library
o
Effective Literature Searching to Support
Your Research, Thursday, October 27 at Noon - Tompkins-McCaw Library
Thanks for your Support!
Here's a new way to support Virginia Commonwealth
University and VCU Libraries: Vote in Virginia's Top 10 Endangered
Artifacts campaign. This public awareness campaign is designed to show
the importance of preserving artifacts in care at collecting
institutions such as museums, libraries and archives.
"It is important to save and preserve these artifacts and other items
that comprise our material culture because they hold much symbolic,
research and educational value," says Jodi L. Koste, archivist at
Tompkins-McCaw Library for the Health Sciences.
VCU Libraries has nominated two artifacts in need of preservation
that tell significant stories about its special collections. They are:
- Matriculation Book of the Medical College of Virginia, 1838-1871.
In this book all the names of students were recorded along with the
student's address, preceptor and previous schools attended. Student
entries are annotated when the individual graduated. The book is of high
value for the information it provides on early students. It is also an
interesting artifact because it includes the signatures of several Union
soldiers who left their "mark" in the book during the occupation of the
college's building after the Civil War.
- The office door of pioneering cartoonist Billy DeBeck featuring an oil painting of Barney Google
and his equine sidekick. William Morgan DeBeck, 1890-1942, was a giant
in the "comic strip" art form. To readers in the Jazz Age and Depression
era, his characters were as beloved as Superman, Peanuts and Doonesbury
became to later generations. Dialog from Barney Google became part of
the cultural syntax. Catchphrases from his strips included:
"Horsefeathers!" "Heebie-jeebies;" "Jeepers Creepers!" "Bus' Mah
Britches!" and "Time's a'wastin'!" DeBeck invented the moniker "Google"
for his character.
These two artifacts are examples of
the content of VCU Libraries' special collections. Tompkins-McCaw
Library for the Health Sciences houses archives, artifacts, books,
manuscripts, photographs, portraits and prints related to the history of
health care in Virginia. The archives for the Medical College of
Virginia campus are also located in the library on the MCV Campus. On
the Monroe Park campus, James Branch Cabell Library is home to
significant collections in comic and graphic arts, artist's books,
modern Richmond history and culture, oral histories, literary
manuscripts, and documentation of Central Virginia minority and activist
communities.
To vote: www.vatop10artifacts.org/p/how-do-i-vote.html Voting
is online and there are two ways to vote. One is to go to the photo
album, create a free account in the Picasa platform, and "like" your
favorite artifact. Or, you may prefer to choose from a drop-down box in a
Google spreadsheet. Links to both voting methods.
If you have difficulty voting, send your choice by email to srobinson26@vcu.edu Use Internet Explorer.
Voting ends Sept. 20. Public voting will be considered by an
independent panel of collections and conservation experts who will
select the final Top 10. That list will be announced in November.
Follow on Twitter: #vatop10
* * *
Virginia's Top 10 Endangered Artifacts is a program of
the Virginia Collections Initiative, which is a project of the Virginia
Association of Museums, made possible by a grant from the U.S. Institute
of Museum and Library Services. The IMLS is the primary source of
federal support for the nation's 123,000 libraries and 17,500
museums.
VCU Libraries, serving the Monroe Park Campus and the MCV
Campus, offers major new collections of e-resources (e-books, streaming
audio, streaming video, and databases).
A comprehensive list of new collections--acquired during 2010-11--and available now is posted. All databases in the A-to-Z Guide. Some notable additions to the health sciences collection include:
- Methods in Enzymology
- New England Journal of Medicine
- Access Medicine
- Access Science
- LWW Nursing Health Assessment Video Series
STYLE Weekly's August 16, 2011 issue features VCU
Libraries supporter Edward H. Peeples, emeritus associate professor of
preventive medicine and community health at VCU. The James Branch Cabell
Library Special Collections houses papers documenting Peeples' work in
civil rights. The collection includes four surviving copies of The
Ghost, the underground newspaper Peeples circulated in 1960 and 1961.
Special Collections' Ray Bonis is quoted in the article, which mentions
VCU Libraries.
The article by Dale Brumfield:Much has been written of Richmond's paranormal past, but 50 years
ago, one particular Ghost spoke out against segregation, brutal local
police tactics and the College of William and Mary's patronizing
stranglehold on what one day would be Virginia Commonwealth University,
Nine issues of The Ghost were "published when needed" between
February 1960 and August 1961 by self-described 20th-century scalawag
Edward H. Peeples and his friend, transplanted New Yorker Richard
Kollin. Arguably the city's first modern-era true underground
publication, the Ghost was passed around the Fan and Richmond
Professional Institute, known colloquially as RPI, at the height of the
civil rights era.
The Ghost was launched out of Peeples' acute frustration with a
bigoted racist philosophy dubbed the Virginia Way, coined by Douglas S.
Freeman of the Richmond News Leader, supported by the Byrd political
machine and endorsed through vitriolic pro-segregationist editorials by
the News-Leader's James J. Kilpatrick; Virginians, as The Ghost
proclaimed sarcastically, were able to "segregate like gentlemen," not
like those "rubes in Alabama who give segregation a bad name."
"We feel that The Ghost should be provocative and 'newsy' and that it
will become the overt voice of your wishes and desires of RPI and the
Fan district," the 1960 debut issue announced. The magazine's primitive
mimeographed layout belied its authoritative skewering of sacred
Richmond cows, including the tacit acceptance of social injustices
against women and blacks that largely had gone unchanged since
post-Civil War days. "Challenging segregation and the Virginia way was
our main goal," Peeples explained.
A varsity basketball starter, 1957 RPI graduate and self-professed
"spy for the black community," Peeples helped to organize the infamous
late-1950s lunch counter sit-ins with other Richmond notables, including
Doug Wilder and Edward Meeks Gregory. "I was never arrested," the
Richmond native insists, "but I have been thrown out and fired from a
lot of places, including RPI."
RPI -- the grandfather of Virginia Commonwealth University -- was
considered a brash, blue-collar school -- "'College for the rest of us',"
according to Peeples, and "a hotbed of slanderous stereotypes"
according to the News Leader -- scorned in its own city and virtually
ignored by W&M overseers. Embracing its reputation as a
working-class upstart, RPI students maintained a strong sense of college
pride while attracting a large number of Northerners, mostly because of
the enormous respect that RPI art school President Theresa Pollock
commanded in New York.
After a post-graduation stint in the Navy, Peeples rejoined
Richmond's counterculture in 1959, excited to be "connecting with the
Richmond radicals -- both of them." He patronized the 900 block of West
Grace Street, where -- according to The Ghost -- 85 percent of all
Richmond's 1959 felony arrests occurred.
"The Village Restaurant was the gathering place," Peeples
says, explaining that the communists, leftists, beats and artists all
staked out their corners of the restaurant to pontificate on their pet
causes. Nearby on that block was the Meadow Laundry and art gallery
(where the Village Restaurant stands today) and the reopened Lee
Theater: "The Ghost offers three hearty cheers to the Lee Theater
opening, and particularly, for [Ingmar Bergman's film] 'Wild
Strawberries.' We need the Lee Theater, and they need us." Also on this
strip -- and a possible reason for the high number of arrests -- was the
presence of a gay beer joint, Eton's.
Peeples and his small number of like-minded radicals worked
tirelessly to drive their egalitarian causes into the hearts of the
Richmond aristocracy. "We were shakers, but not movers," he says,
laughing, recalling an Adlai Stevenson rally organized in Monroe Park in
1960 that drew "about a dozen supporters" -- and sadly, no Adlai.
During its brief run, The Ghost was fearless in exposing racial
inequities in college sports. One scheduled basketball game between RPI
and Union Theological Seminary was "mysteriously called off" because
there was a "negro player" on Union's team. "There is a vague policy,"
The Ghost opined, "enforced by some vague bureaucrat somewhere in the
W&M administrative scheme, restricting RPI and Norfolk Division from
competing against anyone but bright blue-eyed Aryans."
Suffocating rules enforced on female RPI students by dorm mothers was
another thorny issue. The Ghost noted, "We still enjoy the puritanical
delusion that a thick, gooey subterfuge of archaic rules will preserve
chastity and repute." Women who served as army WACS weren't permitted to
live in the RPI dorms, the mag reported. "It seems the administration
feels these girls are much too worldly for OUR little women!"
A regular feature, "Les Gendarmes," charted the actions of the
Richmond police. It featured a cartoon of a snarling police dog, along
with a caption: "The Ghost submits this drawing to city council as a
possible substitution for the present Richmond city seal." Some articles
remind us that times haven't changed. One recalled how the police's
"intolerant, tactless handling of noise complaints" resulted in students
getting dismissed from the institute.
The editors eventually accepted future author and then-recent RPI
graduate Tom Robbins into their fold. "Robbins was not interested in the
social issues," Peeples recalls. "He just enjoyed savaging Southern
culture. ... My friendship with Robbins ended when he said that using
drugs was OK."
By August 1961, Peeples became heavily involved in numerous civil
rights causes, including documenting the Prince Edward County school
closings. Kollin, meanwhile, went back to Columbia University for his
master degree (he died last year). This forced an end to The Ghost.
Peeples is now retired, as emeritus associate professor of preventive
medicine and community health at VCU, but he remains as fiercely loyal
to his alma mater as to the social causes he pursued more than 50 years
ago. "Ed is one of VCU Libraries' biggest supporters and is a wealth of
knowledge," says Special Collections archivist Ray Bonis, who maintains a
large, collection of papers in the James Branch Cabell Library
documenting Peeples' work in civil rights. This includes four surviving
copies of The Ghost, housed in Cabell's Special Collections.
"We nailed and eliminated the de facto expressions of white
supremacy. ... We took that as far as we knew how," Peeples says of the
seminal tract. "We now ask this generation to kick democracy up another
notch."
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) recently announced a list of their "Ten Great Public Health Achievements, Worldwide, 2001-10." While major disparities continue to exist between low-income and high-income countries, some important progress can be seen in areas such as child mortality rate and access to safe water.
This report follows the release of a similar report for the United States in May 2011.
Tompkins-McCaw Library will be closed Saturday, May 28 to Monday, May 30 in observance of Memorial Day. We will reopen Tuesday, May 31.
The Periodicals Price Survey reports that 2011 journal prices have gone up again and projects an increase of seven to nine percent for academic journal titles in 2012. The survey is published annually in Library Journal.
Hello, my name is Roy Brown and I am one of the newer members of the Tompkins-McCaw Library staff. I have only been here since after Thanksgiving, and I am really enjoying getting to know about VCU and exploring the Richmond area. I am originally from North Carolina so coming to VCU was very exciting as it has allowed me to move back closer to home after living Oklahoma the past five years. I come to TML after spending 14 years as a high school teacher both in the classroom and in the online environment, before receiving my Masters of Library and Information Science from the University of Oklahoma. After attaining my MLIS I worked for a time as a reference librarian the University of Oklahoma Health Sciences Center and also as a solo librarian for a state psychiatric hospital.
I am the liaison to the VCU School of Nursing and I am here to support the research and educational needs of the students here at VCU. I am here to provide library instruction classes, as well as one-on-one or group consultations. My main focus is to insure that those I help gain the knowledge and skills necessary to meet their literature searching needs, as well as gain information literacy skills needed to become a lifelong learner.
I am interested in making information more accessible and helping people become more information literate. People are bombarded with information from a myriad of sources on a day-to-day basis. It is crucial that individuals be able to effectively discern what is credible and what is not. Without these skills people cannot make well-informed decisions and can be easily mislead. Whether you need help with a specific assignment, just want to know more about one of the library's databases, or just want to know where the research guides are on the library website, I am here to help.
Please feel free to contact me at 804-828-1592 or send me an email at rebrown2@vcu.edu, if I can be of any assistance.
My Vita
As of July 23, 2010, NIH PD/PIs will be unable to enter citations manually into eRA Commons and must use My NCBI's "My Bibliography" tool to manage their professional bibliographies.
In the interest of easing investigators' bibliography management, improving data quality, and ensuring compliance with the NIH Public Access Policy , eRA Commons has partnered with the National Center for Biotechnology Information (NCBI) to link NCBI's personal online tool, "MyNCBI," to Commons. MyNCBI offers an online portal--"My Bibliography"--for users to maintain and manage a list of all types of their authored works, such as articles, presentations and books. [See entire press release or the official notice ]
Please don't hesitate to contact VCU Libraries staff if you need help setting up or maintaining your MyNCBI or My Bibliography account.
Margaret Henderson
MyNCBI is a feature of the Entrez databases, such as PubMed or Entrez Gene, which allows you to save PubMed searches, collections of articles or gene records, etc., and update your searches automatically.
But MyNCBI can also be used to manage your personal list of publications for use with the eRA Commons, making sure you are in compliance with the NIH Public Access Policy. Complete information is available in the NLM Technical Bulletin.
NOTE: The Awards View is only available to eRA Commons users with active grants in their portfolios who have linked their My NCBI account with their eRA Commons account
For more information about the NIH Public Access Policy please see our Resource Guide.
If you have any questions about MyNCBI , PubMed , or gene or protein databse searching, please email Tompkins-McCaw Library Research Services
After a false start, it looks like the redesigned PubMed is up and running. Tompkins-McCaw Library is offering classes to show you where things have moved, but if you can't make it to a class, there are some online tools from other sources that will help.
There are a couple of articles in the NLM Technical Bulletin explaining the changes:
PubMed Redesign
PubMed Now Using the Redesigned Interface
Also from NLM
The PubMed Basics trifold brochure (pdf link)
All the tutorials have been updated on the PubMed Online Training page
University of Washington Health Sciences Libraries created a comparison chart
There is a 3 minute YouTube video (except use the VCU Libraries page to get to PubMed)
As always, we will be happy to answer questions and arrange for large and small training sessions.
Call us 804-828-0636
Or email your question using the 'Ask a Librarian' online form
VCU Libraries has compiled a page of resources on H1N1 Influenza from a variety of sources. You will find links to government and other official web sites around the world, as well medical journals, news sources and articles, maps, and reputable medical blogs. Professional and consumer resources are included.
Teresa L. Knott, AHIP, has been appointed Director, Tompkins-McCaw Library for the Health Sciences and Associate University Librarian, VCU Libraries.
Ms. Knott has held a variety of increasingly responsible roles during her career, including positions at Texas Tech University Health Sciences Center in Lubbock; Texas Tech University Health Sciences Center in El Paso; and the University of Maryland, Baltimore. She comes to VCU from her latest role as Deputy Director, Health Sciences and Human Services Library, University of Maryland, Baltimore.
In her new role, Ms. Knott will lead the VCU Libraries in developing and advancing library collections, services, and health information outreach for biomedical, health, and life sciences on the MCV Campus and for the University as a whole. In addition, she will have a leadership role in overall governance, strategic planning, administration, and budgeting for the VCU Libraries system.
Ms. Knott has held many elected and appointed positions within the Medical Library Association (MLA) and its regional chapters, among them MLA's National Program Committee for 2007-09, MLA Nominating Committee, MLA Membership Committee (including its Chair), President of the South Central Chapter of MLA, and South Central Chapter Council representative to MLA. She participated in the NLM/AAHSL Leadership Fellows Program and is a Distinguished Member of the Academy of Health Information Professionals.
Ms. Knott will join VCU on March 10, 2009.
Take advantage of a number of upcoming classes offered by the Tompkins-McCaw Library for the Health Sciences on a variety of topics, including PubMed, RefWorks, Tests and Measurements, and the Instructional Media Workshop. A complete list of upcoming training and orientations is available through the VCU Libraries Events calendar. Sign-up today!
To schedule a training session at the Tompkins-McCaw Library, contact Thelma Mack, Education Services Coordinator, 828-0017.
The July issue of NIH News in Health is available. Featured stories cover medical imaging and carpal tunnel syndrome. View the full-text of the July 2008 issue online.
RefWorks has updated their "Write-N-Cite" tool so that it is now compatible with users running Microsoft Vista and Word 2007. For more information on downloading and using the new version of "Write-N-Cite" called "Write-N-Cite III" please visit here or contact Tompkins-McCaw Library.
In the fall of 1932, the Medical College of Virginia dedicated its first library building to great fanfare. As one contemporary described it, the new College Library was "a gem architecturally, faithfully carried out in the Georgian manner." 75 years later, that same structure continues to serve the needs of students, faculty, and clinicians on VCU's Medical College of Virginia Campus with the latest technology and most up-to-date resources.
As part of the celebration of the 75th anniversary of the Tompkins-McCaw Library building and the 110th anniversary of library service on the MCV Campus, an exhibit has opened on the first floor chronicling the history of this campus fixture. The exhibit includes historical images of the library, information about major milestones, and an illustration of the massive growth of library collections constructed with imprints from the Classics of Medicine Library.
The exhibit is located next to Current Periodicals on the first floor of Tompkins-McCaw Library, and may be seen during normal library hours. A companion Web page is also available.
For more information about this exhibit or the history of Tompkins-McCaw Library for the Health Sciences, contact Andrew Bain, TML Special Collections and Archives, at 828-9898.
The newly renovated Hunton Student Center celebrated a grand re-opening on January 24. Included in the remodeled historic building is the Hunton Learning Center operated by the VCU Libraries. Located on the second floor, this Learning Center offers students from all VCU departments convenient access to twelve Internet-networked computers, including the wealth of online journals, books, and databases licensed by the VCU Libraries. Free workshops and one-on-one consultations will provide customized instruction on how to use information resources more effectively. The Learning Center is open 7 days per week. This staffed student learning commons is yet another outstanding example of VCU's engagement in the success of its students.
Student Learning Center Hours:
Monday - Friday: 7:30 am - 11 pm
Saturday: 10 am - 5 pm
Sunday: 1:00 pm - 8 pm
Learn more about the Hunton Student Center, view floor plans for the renovated spaces, or find directions to Hunton Student Center online.
Have you noticed recent changes in the VCU Libraries' web site? In the spring, the VCU Libraries will debut an all new web site.
We invite you to preview the new site and to share your feedback by participating in a focus group discussion. Lunch and other incentives will be provided.
Focus Group Schedule for Tompkins-McCaw Library:
Graduate and Professional Student Sessions
Monday, October 16th 12:00 - 1:30 pm
Tuesday, October 17th 12:00 - 1:30 pm
Faculty and Staff Sessions
Wednesday, October 18th 12:00 - 1:30 pm
Friday, October 20th 12:00 - 1:30 pm
For more information, download the flyer
Sign up today to participate in a Focus Group session; please contact Shannon Jones at sdjones@vcu.edu or 828-0626.
The Tompkins-McCaw Library offers a podcast of the latest library news. Tune in to the VCU Libraries Help page, or the Tompkins-McCaw Library page, to hear the latest news. Additional podcasts will be integrated into the VCU Libraries Search Guides, Tips, Handouts, and Tutorials resource guide.
If you have suggestions for new podcasts on health sciences topics, please contact Bob Johnson, Tompkins-McCaw Library Education Services Librarian.
