Venting

I love the Internet. I love Google. I use both (and other search engines) many, many, many times a day. I can’t believe I use to be able to live without them. However, I realize that much, if not most, of the information found in the wonders of online is not accurate. Sometimes the information is off by a couple non-critical points, sometimes it is a complete and utter falsehood, and sometimes is falls somewhere in between. What drives me absolutely crazy is people believing anything and everything they see online, especially when it confirms something they already believe. You can ask almost anyone and they will tell you they know this. That they are aware of the information they are looking at. That they search smartly. Bull. Not a day goes by that I don’t see something in my email, on facebook, on twitter, or hear in a conversation, that is a piece of false or misguided information gathered from online and proudly displayed as news. Is it really so difficult to think “geeze that sounds interesting, I wonder if it is true” and then do a simple 2-min search to see if it is? Especially when there are sites (such as snopes.com) that will do the in-dept searching for you? Why is this so difficult?

I understand it is tempting to go with information that supports your life views, or even information that is fun or interesting, but are people really happy believing whatever they want to, and ignoring everything else? Is ignorance really bliss? I get excited when I see something online that I find exciting, or helpful, or that I can add to my collection of things that prove I am right. In fact I get so excited I immediately spend the next couple minuetes of my life trying to find more corroborating information and trying to confirm that the information is correct. I want it to be right. I want to be able to tell everyone I know about it. I guess what I am not understanding is why people would be so excited to share information that isn’t true? Do they really fool themselves into thinking it is true? Or think that “it is just for fun” and no one really cares if it is accurate? Has our society really got to the point that no one realizes, or cares about, the power of information? I don’t get it!

It frustrates me, it concerns me, and overall it makes me sad.

Now, for the funny part. This is what started this whole rant:

Enter your ATM password backwards to signal the police? LIES!!

I was thinking “hmmmm, that is cool. Although… I don’t think I would be able to bust out my password backwards with a gun aimed at me… in fact it is taking me a second to do it right now sitting on the couch. It would be cool if this was true though, I’ll see if snopes has any info.” About 2.7 seconds later I was reading how this could not possibly be true. Sigh. I saw this on facebook. As of now this has been shared 634 times. Although most of the comments I saw (I just skimmed the first bunch) say how good this is to know, there are a few people who point out its falsehood. Those people give me hope. Follow their example. Especially when it is something you want to believe. The only way to grow is to learn, and the only way to learn is to think beyond what we know and believe. Also, if you don’t do this and continue to share these uninformed falsehoods with me, I’ll add you to those in my “skip-inbox” (aka ignore/block) list.

Where does the time go?

The History of Medicine (HoM) department had three (that I know of) human skulls in the collection. One of them has the front part of the lower jaw removed to better show the teeth. I decided I wanted to move this skull from the trepanning (cutting holes in the skull) display to the dental display. Apparently this is one of those skulls that is only gingerly held together by flimsy pieces of metal. Needless to say I spent the next few minutes carefully putting a skull back together. I guess it is a good think I like puzzels (and also a good thing I was being careful and didn’t actually drop anything!).

I only have one official week to spend working in HoM. I think I am planning on coming in at least one extra week… and possibly asking my boss if I can devote some of my hours to continuing my work in History. I know I have said all this before but, I really want to be able to finish all of these displays! I thought I would be able to get a lot farther today than I did but there were a couple dental instruments that turned out to be a lot more difficult to find information about than I initially thought. I only managed to get information on items from that one display. At least I was able to get all the displays looking the way I want. I moved things around (such as fragile skulls), put things away, and made room for all the instruments I found and want to display. I even managed to have one empty shelf. (Unfortunately it is a top shelf in a tall display, meaning that anything that goes there needs to be fairly large and tall to be able to be seen.) I am happy with the way the displays are turning out and am excited to get them all completed.

Having this directed study be in the same library that I work in has turned out to be even more beneficial than I was anticipating. I would have still been grateful for either experience, but they compliment each other and doing them together provides me with a more  complete understanding of the library. Even though these last couple months in HoM have been largely devoted to building these displays, and researching the items in them, I have been able to understand this special collection as it relates to the Health Sciences Library (HSL) as a whole. It has also been working in HoM where I have had the most experience seeing how it, and all of HSL, fit into the system of UB libraries.

Snooping is fun!

I have decided to make an ear-nose-throat display. We have a lot of really cool ear trumpets (early hearing aids), an ear syringe, and tuning forks. See my dilema? Lots of ear stuff, no nose and throat stuff. There is actually an intubation set that I want to put in there… but only if I can find more nose and/or throat items (I don’t want it to be the only non-ear item in the display). So what to do? I decided to go snooping. There are cabinets under some of the displays full of stuff, and there are boxes and boxes of randomness back in the stacks. I had investigated a couple these areas before and I figured now is the time to go all out.

That back room is a gold mine! I found these two little triangular shaped cases that I almost ignored. When I actually picked them up I realized they screwed open and held small field microscopes! They are both monocular and the bigger one actually has three objectives. I immediately fell in love and added them to the microscope display. (Luckily we still don’t have the posting tape so I haven’t made the display key yet and it is easy to change it.

So cool!

As awesome as those microscopes are, I still hadn’t found any nose or throat instruments. I grabbed a flashlight and ventured further into the abyss. I found: more early pharmaceuticals (promptly added to the display), an early medical head-lamp, a “Relax-a-Cizor” (as featured on MadMen, except ours has FOUR dials!), an interesting syringe in a box with some skeleton keys, and an amazing brass motor and pestel (also promptly added to the display). Then I came across this beauty:

Open wide...

This is the crowning piece of the display. Keith was running around the library (I initially typed “lab” here… I guess old habits die hard) for a good hour pointing it at people. I figure it was used to examine the throat and sinuses, so it goes well in an ear-nose-throat display. Hopefully the posting tape comes in by next week so I can get these displays finished off. There is also one more area in the abyss that I want to explore for more treasures.

I realized that there are only three more weeks in the semester. I am excited for a break but I am really going to miss my time here in HoM. I hope that I will be able to continue working on these displays during the summer. I love working with Keith and Linda and I hope to continue working with them through my job at the Health Sciences Library.

It is for your own good Linda!
(Photo by Keith Mages)

S is for Agriculture

As soon as I got to the end of the block this morning I realized that I had forgotten my map to the tiers of the library, as well as my nice little LC classification cheat-cheat. When I got to the library Meg gave me an extra map so I could figure out what section I wanted to work on next. Not really having any idea what the codes represent (all the ones I am familiar with are done) I decided on S. I choose S mostly because it was broken up into a few smaller clusters on the tiers. This would allow me to move around a bit and get some small sense of satisfaction as I finish each section. I am so glad I did! S, as it turns out, is agriculture. I was ecstatic when the first thing I saw was the “Cornell Countryman” journal form the early 1900′s. I couldn’t help looking through a couple. I keep finding myself surrounded by intriguing books and serials I want to look through. I do end up looking though some, sometimes to find out information I need (such as publication date) and sometimes just because I am curious. I decided to take a peek at a “Cornell Countryman” and the first thing I see is an article that happend to be written by Albert R. Mann, the namesake of Cornell’s health sciences library! Another find that I was excited by was when I randomly decided to look through a Secretary of Agriculture report from 1910 I found “microscopic investigation of the tea leaf” complete with images. Awesome!

Tea Leaf!

Lately I haven’t been blogging much about my time at the Buffalo and Erie County Public Library. Every Thursday is basically the same, and I felt as if my time was better spent on papers and assignments and work than on trying to think up things to say about every Thursday. Stumbling upon the S’s has inspired me to write this week.

The thing is, there actually have been things to talk about, they are just mostly things that I observe, rather than take part of. For example, March was women’s history month and there were quite a few events going on here at the library. In fact, there seemed to be something every Thursday. There were tables and displays for different women’s groups, speakers discussing a variety of topics, and even music. The music was fun. I was able to hear it while sitting in the Grosvenor room and enjoyed listening to it while I did my thing.

This week I was able to get through one section of S. I should be able to make it through the other two next week. I took a sneak peak and it seems as if these last two sections have less of the troublesome serials and should go fairly quickly.

Herbs & Microscopes. Two of my favorite things!

I came in yesterday to Keith and Linda talking about getting rid of the old card catalogs. I know we don’t use them anymore, but I was still somewhat surprised to hear this. That is, until I heard why. Apparently the pharmacy museum is moving and HOM might take some of the display cases, as well as the items in the displays. Keith took pictures and showed them to me; there are some really really cool things. Even though the acquirement of these items won’t happen till the summer (after my directed study is over) I should still be able to be involved through my job here at the Health Sciences Library. Below are a couple pictures of cases/items we may get. Please excuse the quality, Keith just got a new camera and apparently didn’t realize he was on the wrong setting… or something.

A cool display case we may get (as well as the items - pharmaceuticals made here in Buffalo)
Photo by Keith Mages

Show Globes! (and other cool things)
Photo by Keith Mages

I spent the rest of the day yesterday and all day today working on the displays that Keith did awhile ago. One has old pharmaceuticals, including medicinal herbs, powders, soaps and even three vials of colloidal gold. There is even a suppository machine (pill press). There are herbs to clean your blood, help your kidneys, and even help with gout.  One of these medicinal herbs is alfalfa, and the container is still half full of seeds. I am taking some seeds home to see if I can get them to sprout.  The other display has some amazing microscopes. One, from around the 1880′s comes with a kit full of additional lenses and accessories. I really, really want to play with this microscope. O well. Here is a link to information on this microscope. Another one of the microscopes has some interesting slides. They are pieces of ivory with six small holes cut out. Each hole has a top and bottom piece of glass, and the specimen goes in between the two pieces of glass. The specimens currently in there look like algae and different scrapings.

I can not completely finish these displays yet since we are out of posting tape, but I have everything ready to go for when we get some. In the mean time I made a small tag for an awesome Navy surgical kit (a big one) and finished placing the little number tags in the other displays. By next Monday I should have all the displays in this first room (the main room of the collection) done!

Scalpel!

I love Tuesdays. I get to spend 5 solid hours in History of Medicine, and it is always a blast. My few hours here on Monday were great too. That day started off with Linda telling me about a show she watched called “Zombies : a Living History”. This conversation did not go where you might think. It wasn’t about zombie movies or scary, gory images. It was a discussion on the medical conditions that led to the tales of zombies, and vampires, and even werewolves. While talking about zombies, we also talked about the idea of people becoming zombies. Not literally walking around with their flesh falling off and saying “braaaiiinnns”. What we were talking about was being zombies in the sense of being mindless and also the idea that people will do whatever necessary to get what they need to survive, especially in a time of disaster. (Think ever apocalyptic movie you have ever saw with people violently raiding stores and even other peoples homes to get food.) Check out the CDC’s advice on zombies.

Anyways… after this wonderful discussion, I got to work. I was able to finish my displays on surgical instruments and started looking at the next displays. Both Linda and Keith seem most impressed by these two displays and the previous one on “sick-care”. This is because all of these display areas were previously filled with a mish-mosh of items displayed in a lackluster way. I took these items and divided them into more similar groups. I was then able to add more items and display them in a way that drew attention.

First display of surgical equipment.

Second display of surgical equipment, including the WWII Navy pocket instruments.

This week I also attempted to help Keith with some photoshopping… but although he keeps asking me for help with it, it seems he knows more about it than me. I am glad to be getting experience with it though, since it is such a useful program.

As for the next set of displays Keith designed them both and I think they look great as they are. I will just do research on the items already displayed and add the information I find to the display. We have already discovered some miroscope lenses, mirrors, and slides that we didn’t know we had. Next week should be fun.

Day of digging for instruments

It took me a few minutes this week to get out of spring break mode and figure out what I needed to do. I remembered that I was going to focus on the couple displays I had wanted to make about surgery. I went through the items already in the cases, laid things out and removed any that were not actually surgical. Knowing that there are a lot of items in the collection that are surgical in nature I decided to go look for more. The first cabinet  I opened I was greeted with:

What are you looking at?

After opening the cabinet a couple times, I placed him fully in the bag and turned him around. I continued to look and came across some really cool things. One of the first thing was an awesome sphygmomanometer. I decided it NEEDED to be out on display. The display with the other sphygmomanometer is too small, so I placed this beauty out on top of one of shelves.

A sphygmomanometer (blood pressure instrument). (Here is how it works.)

I also found an old apothecary scale with gold weights and many “pocket” surgical kits. A Navy one from WWII is making its way into the display.

After I finished snooping I started looking up information on all of my new finds. The aspirator from a previous post is still giving me trouble. I am certain it is an aspirator, and now believe it to be a Potain’s aspirator, but I can not find much information on it at all. The metal case it comes is stamped with “patent pending”, maybe the patent never got finalized and there was never many made? I have no idea. I looked for quite awhile and then passed it on to Linda. So far it is still a mystery!

I spent a lot of time this week looking into a variety of surgical instruments. I had trouble finding some, and came across others that I wasn’t even looking for. (While looking for skin grafting forceps in a catalog I discovered that an unknown instrument in our collection is actually an Engels Plaster Saw.) For some items I went to the catalogs we have in the collection, but for others I either went to known sites such as phisick or used the good ol’ Google. It was during these later searches when I was weeding through all the irrelevant (some very irrelevant) junk that I realized doing online searches for anything medical can become slightly disturbing. It also made me think of all the people who ask “why do we need libraries / librarians, everyone has Google”. Not only is the idea that everyone has access to the internet naive and drastically wrong, but the idea of using any search engine as a sole source of information is scary. All the digging that was necessary to find even the smallest amount of reputable information makes me worry about all the people who put minimal effort into searching.

From one comes two

I got some very cool news this week. Apparently the history of medicine collection (and possibly some of my displays) is going to be in an episode of “Haunted Collector” on the syfy channel this summer! They were in the library on Sunday filming one of our librarians talking about leeches and tuberculoses. It is quite exciting. I can’t wait to see the episode when it comes out!

Besides that I was able to get two new displays done! I ended up dividing up one display into two and I think “themes” of the displays works better this way. Initially this display had some 18th and 19th century gynecological instruments, early contraceptives (IUD, pessaries, etc.), baby bottles, and “sick-room” items. I separated these out and added a few items to each. The gynecological instruments and contraceptives now make up a “reproductive health” display, while the baby bottles and miscellaneous items (lice comb, bed warmer, etc.) make up a “nursing” or “sick-care” display. I managed to get both of these displays done today with time to spare.

(I apologize for these images… I was in a hurry and had to take them with my phone. I will take better pics next week to replace these.)

"sick-care" display

"reproductive health" display

The other day we received the little tags we are using to number the items in the displays. With the time I had left I decided to start numbering and getting these cases finalized. I started with the first case I did… and noticed things were different. To be specific, one item seemed to be gone, and there was something different in its place. I am not sure if this is a temporary thing (Keith went kinda spazzy trying to make things look better for the film crew) or if this is to be a permanent change. I am not in everyday, so it is kind of difficult to maintain full communication. I did what I could, and sent off an email to clarify the status of the case. It should not be too dificult to go in and change whatever needs to be changed.

In two weeks (next week is spring break) I will start on some displays with surgical equipment. This is going to be VERY enjoyable and somewhat difficult. We have a lot of surgical equipment, and all of it is something that I would want to display. It will take some time weeding through it all and deciding on what exactly we want to show. There are two cases set aside for these displays.

A day of good finds.

I did not want to go to BECPL today. I was tired, and grumpy, and did not feel like going out in the cold for an hour commute to go do the exact same thing I do every other Thursday. I realize that I have this thought most Thursdays morning around 8:30am. However, by the time 11am hits I am usually glad that I went. This isn’t necessarily because the work I am doing is so exciting and fulfilling. If it wasn’t for the material I am working with, I would be quite bored. (No mother, this is not what I am going back to school to do full time. I PROMISE I won’t get bored with my new career. This project is one insanely small piece of the MLS puzzel… it is just kinda prominent for me at this particular moment.) Anyways, I was up in the stacks this morning feeling sleepy and sorry for myself when I saw what looked like a few older interesting books. I picked the first one up and it turned out to be an original French Jules Verne “Les voyageurs du XIX siècle” from 1880. The other two were also Verne “Découverte de la terre” and “Les grands navigateurs du XVIII siècle”.  This is why I don’t mind doing this project, I am constantly stumbling across awesome things like these.

This was actually turning into a slight problem (I kept getting sucked into books last week too). I am supposed to be inventorying the periodicals, but in this section I keep getting distracted by really interesting books. There was “The picturesque world : or scenes in many lands” from 1878. I found myself flipping thorough this and comparing the images of places I have been to how I remember them being 130 years after this book was published. There was also “The hollow earth” with a front cover image of flying saucers coming out of a hollow earth. Really, how am I not going to look at this? This section (G) is full of maps, atlases, gazetteers, encyclopedias and all sorts of books and magazines on exploration, travel, the world, and folklore (dragons!). Every shelf seemed to have something I wanted to look at, just for a few minuetes. I came across a book from 1880 entitled “Grammar school geography”. I didn’t know what it was, and was not expecting to be too interested in it, but then I turned immediately to a page with a map of the U.S. and “directions for drawing the U.S.” This instantly made me think of a good friend who once gave himself the task of learning to draw the entire continental U.S. by memory. He did it! I couldn’t help but smile when I saw this page. Probably the only part of this section that I didn’t get sucked into was fashion… I passed that one by with no more than a glance to make sure I wan’t missing any periodicals.

Besides getting sucked into all the interesting books and magazines (did I mention “Arctic Anthropology”?) I did manage to get a fair amount done. I also made a couple other observations. First, I am really have a problem with things being out of order. I remember as a kid I would always want/need to organize and straighten up the magazines and candy and whatever else while waiting in the checkout line. As annoyed as I was back then when the a wintergreen gum packet was mixed in with the spearmint, it is nothing compared to how annoyed I get when books are placed back on the shelf incorrectly. Seriously, the call number is right there on the side, it should not be that difficult to put it in order. The other thing I noticed is that UB does not seem to have as large of a periodical collection as I originally thought. When I was working on the medical section (R), UB had almost all, if not more, of what BECPL has. With the G section though, there are a fair amount that UB  does not have. I guess it makes sense.

I am sure next week will be more of the same. I wonder what I will stumble across!?

Another good find

A post of mostly pictures. :)

Last week I discovered that what we thought was a direct blood transfusion apparatus actually is an aspirator. Linda did more research and feels confident that this is the case. I promised pictures so here they are:

The device in question

An aspirator listed in a catalog

A direct transfusion apparatus listed in a catalog

This week I made a few other discoveries. First, what was inventoried as a syringe is actually a trocar. Second, a syringe that was thought to be for blood draw, actually is a lacrimal syringe used for flushing, or withdrawing fluid from, that lacrimal (tear) glands. I also found that a lancet set that was listed as having 4 lancets, actually has 6. These discoveries are fun for me and is making the collection more accurate, but they are also kinda of a pain. A lot of research needs to be done to make sure that the new “discovery” is the actual reality and if it is, it needs to be updated in multiple places.

I find this kind of work very enjoyable and fulfilling. I am learning so much about medical devices, making displays, and about general research. I am so use to looking something up quickly and not worrying about the accuracy too much (for general “I wonder” questions). For these things though, I really really want to make sure that I am getting the correct information to display. Doing this type of research and doing everything I can to make sure I am categorizing an item correctly is addictive. I am starting to think that when I start looking for a job after graduation I will look in the direction of museums as well as medical/health sciences libraries.

I managed to finish another display this week too! This display focuses on blood. We have leech jars, bloodletting instruments and a modern(ish) hemacytometer (also mentioned last week). Moving onto the next display!