LIBR538F Library

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LIBR538F - Library Information Services in the
Health Sciences

• Instructors
• Dean Giustini Greg Rowell

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Overview of course

• Introduction
• Class 1
• Course overview (1 hour)
• NLM History video 26 minutes
• Break (20 minutes)
• Small group discussion
• Raising your awareness of the history of medicine
  (10 minutes)
• Health libraries

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Overview of course 1 hr.

• Website for LIBR538F
• Course description
• Weekly lectures
• Syllabus

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More overview to LIBR 538F

• Required readings
• Discussion - class participation, blog, listserv
• Expectations? Instructors students
• Other

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Context

• Historical perspectives
• Medical library movement to 2000
• The 21st century health context

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Context

• Historical perspectives
• Video History of NLM (26 minutes)
• As told by Dr. Martin Cummings

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Break

• 20 minutes

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Context

• Raising your awareness
• of the history of medicine
• Small group discussion (10 minutes)

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Ancient period

• 3000 1000 years BC
• Idea that ill-health caused by demons/spirits
  refuted by Greeks
• logic, reason and philosophy

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Greek physicians in antiquity

• Hippocrates (c. 460-c.377 B.C.)
• Galen (A.D. c. 129-c.216)
• Other Greek physicians

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Middle Ages to 1400

• Political religious turmoil
• Diseases considered God sent faith healing
• Plague, epidemic disease
• Madness insanity, leprosy hospitals in 11th C.
  

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1500-1900 The Boom

• Renaissance of scientific inquiry learning
• First human dissections cadaver studies
• Andreas Vesalius (1514-1564)
• Giovanni Morgagni (1682-1771)
• Blood circulation theory
• William Harvey (1578-1657)

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Medicines renaissance

• Rene Descartes (1596-1650)
• Mind-body duality theory
• Scientific revolution 16/17th centuries
• Copernicus, Galileo, Newton
• Invention of microscopy
• Birth of demography

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Nineteenth century The Lab

• Laboratory research
• Rudolf Virchow (1821-1902) German school
• Louis Pasteur (1822-1895)
• paved way for antisepsis - Joseph Lister
  (1827-1912)
• Bacteriology as a scientific discipline
• Robert Koch (1843-1910)
• New Science Darwin, Freud, Einstein

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20th Century

• Biomedical model central
• Disease caused by pathogens
• Health defined as absence of disease
• Behavioural sciences, interdisciplinarity
• Post-Freudian integration
• Case study research

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Rise of pharmacy as dominant force

• Sulfa drugs (1930s), penicillin/antibiotics
  (1940s)
• Magic pill medicine - creating resistance
  superbugs
• Pharmaceutical companies profits
• Technological advances specialization in 21st
  C.
• But in early 21st C., medical systems seen to be
  failing

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Review

• Quick tour of history of medicine shows
• medicines roots back in antiquity
• accelerated growth in knowledge from renaissance
• history of medicine closely linked with science
• science and medicine are interdependent
• medical knowledge built on previous evidence

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1875 Medical libraries

• Major medical libraries established in 19th C.
• early libraries grew out of private collections
• Hospitals were established in US Canada
• Libraries followed

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Physicians libraries -

• Helped establish medical libraries in 19th C
• William OSLER, Canadian physician, on evidence
• We doctors have always been a simple, trusting
  folk! Did we not believe Galen implicitly for
  fifteen hundred years and Hippocrates for more
  than two thousand years?
• Speech given to Ontario Medical Association,
  Toronto, June 3, 1909. Canada Lancet. 1909
  42899-912

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American influence

• John Shaw Billings, MD - His Role
• Led U.S. Surgeon Generals Library - 1865-1883
• Medical Library Association founded 1898
• MLA founding executive Margaret Charlton
  (Canadian librarian), William Osler George
  Gould (American physician)

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Medical library movement 20th C

• U.S. National Library of Medicine
• National Network of Libraries of Medicine (NNLM)
• Today, NLM coordinates a wide array of
  information services for libraries worldwide...

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Canada What were we doing?

• No national library of medicine
• CISTI (Canadian Institute for Science Technical
  Information) officially 1966/1974
• since 1970, MEDLARS coordinator DOCLINE
  coordinator since 1990s document delivery
  supplier
• McGill Medical School Library oldest in Canada
  (1823)

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CHLA/ABSC - Our Association

• Canadian Health Libraries Association founded in
  1976
• Canadian chapter of MLA from 1876-1976
• MLA Code of Ethics with Canadian preamble
• Romanow submission
• 400 members 10 in academic health
• 30 are solo librarians

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British Columbia 2005

• UBC Life Sciences Libraries
• largest in BC serving UBC health sciences
  community with one library on four sites
• HLABC (Health Libraries Assoc. of BC)
• almost 100 member librarians in hospitals, CHN,
  RNABC, BC Cancer Agency, BC College Library,
  government and public librarians

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Summary - 21st Century Context

• National local environmental influences
• Health care reform
• Romanow Commission
• Impact of educational trends
• Provincial and local context

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The Future for Health Librarians

• An awareness of the forces of the past provide
  librarians with a broader perspective of how the
  health care system evolved into its current form.
  Taken together, librarians gain a greater
  knowledge of the health care environment that can
  position them to be responsive members of the
  health care team.
• Holst, Ruth. Medical Library Association Guide to
  Managing Health Care Libraries. New York, NY
  Neal-Schuman Publishers, 2000. p20.