Thursday 22 March 2012

Search25 Survey


Posted on behalf of the Search25 project

We want to find out your views on library catalogues and the existing InforM25 service; to help us design and evaluate the new SEARCH25 service with users' needs in mind. 

SEARCH25 aims to develop a system that will provide improved access to the library catalogues of 57 academic and research institutions in the M25 Consortium of Academic Libraries. Our goal is to make it easier to discover and locate resources at any library in the consortium, enabling users to benefit from the wealth of materials available to them.

The survey will take approximately 10-15 minutes to complete. If you wish to be entered into a prize draw to win a £30 Amazon voucher, please give your email address at the end of the survey.

Collection of the Month: World TB Day and Sir Arthur Newsholme, 1857-1943


Drawings by Sir Arthur Newsholme for his studies on tuberculosis, c.1907. Image Credit: LSHTM Library and Archive Services.
To mark World Tuberculosis Day on Saturday 24th of March, we would like to highlight the archive of Sir Arthur Newsholme, a pioneer in public health who took a special interest in TB. 

Sir
Arthur, who was born in Haworth, Yorkshire, took his medical qualifications in London and went on to serve as the Medical Officer of Health for the parish of Clapham in the late Nineteenth Century. In the same role in the parish of Brighton, he campaigned against the contamination of the local milk supply by the use of cows suffering from tuberculosis, even bringing an infected cow’s udder to a meeting in 1897 to dramatise his case.

Whilst serving as a Medical Officer of Health, Sir Arthur conducted research in epidemiology, particularly relating to tuberculosis. He has been credited with demonstrating that the decline in tuberculosis in England and Wales from 1838- 1894 was due to the segregation of poverty-stricken sufferers into workhouses, rather than improvements in public living standards. He noticed that in Ireland, where Poor Relief continued to take place in the home, the death rate from TB rose instead of falling during the same period.


Sir Arthur continued to do battle with the disease as Principal Medical Officer for the Local Government Board from 1908-1918 and as a member of the Army Sanitary Committee during the First World War. He was knighted in 1917 and retired in 1919 but continued to consult, write and lecture on public health until his death in 1943.

Sir Arthur’s papers are held in the LSHTM Archives and include private correspondence, Annual Reports of Local Government Boards and articles, reports and notes on tuberculosis, with particular reference to compulsory notification. The archive also holds his writings on other areas of medicine, notably infectious and epidemic diseases and all aspects of public health including its 'social' and 'moral' dimensions.

If you would like to view or find out more about Sir Arthur Newsholme’s papers, or the records of other scientists involved in the fight against TB, please visit our webpage at http://www.lshtm.ac.uk/library/archives/ or contact us at
archives@lshtm.ac.uk.

Wednesday 14 March 2012

Library Student Survey

The Library student survey is now running, please let us know what you think about the Library. Your feedback is essential for our future planning and helps us shape services to meet you needs.

Just go to

https://www.survey.lshtm.ac.uk/library12

The survey ends 15th April

Thursday 8 March 2012

TODAY - International Women’s Day and Gems of the Collections

The Mary Kingsley medal awarded to Sir Patrick Manson in 1905. Image credit: LSHTM
We are celebrating International Women’s Day in the Library & Archives Service with an exhibition in the Library and ‘Gems from the Collection’ session in the South courtyard.

This lunchtime, staff and students are invited to have a closer look at the fascinating historical collections that are held at the School. In a 'Gems from the Collections' session Between 12pm and 2pm on the ground floor of the South Courtyard, staff will be available to show you some of the rare and unique documents, artefacts and books that we hold relating to Women in Public Health and Tropical Medicine. Women represented will include:

Cicely Williams – Doctor and child health Pioneer
Mary Kingsley – Traveller, writer and Boer war nurse in whose memory the Mary Kingsley medal was instituted.
Mabel Clark – influential nutritionist of the 1920s and 30s who helped lay the basis for the British food policy of the Second World War.
Florence Nightingale – well-known nurse of the Crimean War
Amy Carpenter - wife and research partner of entomologist Geoffrey Carpenter
Janet Lane-Claypon – English physician who was one of the earliest pioneers of epidemiology.
There is no need to make an appointment, just drop by and see us outside the Manson Lecture Theatre and find out more about the School's historical collections
The related exhibition will be available to view in the Library until April.
For further information, please contact Philippa Mole, Temporary Assistant Archivist at archives@lshtm.ac.uk.

Wednesday 7 March 2012

Library closure - 9th March

The Library will be closed from 1.30pm on Friday 9th March to host a reception for distance learning students and alumni.

We will re-open at 9am on Saturday 10th March.