Louise M. Darling Biomedical Library Blog

MEDUCLA 1958 (UCLA School of Medicine student yearbook)

On Earth Day, April 22nd, the whole of UCLA joined the hospitals and health science campuses to become tobacco- and smoke-free environments, according to an announcement from the UCLA Newsroom.

A mini-exhibit in History & Special Collections for the Sciences, in the Biomedical Library (4^th floor, up the ramp from Stack level 9), uses yearbooks, archival photos, postcards, and advertisements to show the other side of the coin, when smoking and tobacco use were taken for granted in surprising (to us) circumstances.

UCLA’s Tobacco-Free Campus [facebook page]

UCLA Tobacco-Free Task Force

UCLA’s Tobacco-Free Policy

UCLA Policy 810: Tobacco-Free Environment

Russell Johnson
History & Special Collections for the Sciences
UCLA Library Special Collections

History & Special Collections for the Sciences has purchased each new release of GIANTmicrobes® since 2004 and recently passed the century mark. 108 “plush stuffed-animal microbes [realia]” currently are on display in a case in the lobby of the Biomedical Library.

GIANTmicrobes are made to look like bacteria, blood cells, viruses, and other microbes and critters magnified up to a million times, but in plush fabric with added eyes. Each toy is accompanied by explanatory text on a hangtag card with a color illustration of the actual microbe on which the toy is based.

The Library uses GIANTmicrobes in exhibits and classes alongside rare books and manuscripts on related subjects, from bed bugs to cholera to typhoid fever. We are one of a very few libraries which are cataloging and preserving the educational toys for future generations, so that in 50 or 100 years researchers and visitors may come across a rack of carefully-stored “plush stuffed-animal microbes” and wonder, “what the heck are …”

(Image from <http://www.giantmicrobes.com> is reproduced with permission of the company.)

Russell Johnson
History & Special Collections for the Sciences
UCLA Library Special Collections

An undergraduate student-curated exhibition of scientific objects from UCLA Library Special Collections continues through September in three locations on campus: Biomedical Library (4^th floor), Powell Library Building Rotunda, and Department of Special Collections (A-level, Young Research Library).

Marissa Petrou, the History of Science doctoral student whose GE Cluster seminar students created the project from concept to completion, provided an introduction to the exhibit, which we share here with her permission:

Peepshows, caskets, and microscopes all are things found in vaults and back-room storage areas in UCLA Library Special Collections that have a wealth of historical value. Yet the lives of these objects extend beyond the Library.

(more…)

A mini-exhibit of reproductions of the late Where the Wild Things Are children’s book author/artist Maurice Sendak’s first illustrations in a mass-market  publication, Atomics for the Millions, is on display in the Science and Engineering Library (SEL, 8270 Boelter Hall) this month.

Sendak’s high school physics teacher, Hyman Ruchlis, co-authored the book in 1947 with Maxwell Leigh Eidenhoff, who had been a research group supervisor of Manhattan Project laboratories at Columbia University and Chicago University. Atomics was pitched as an “amazingly clear and non-technical book [that] actually enables the reader to understand the basic principles behind the development of atomic energy – - without any previous scientific or mathematical training.”

Peter D. Sieruta’s blog, Collecting Children’s Books, describes the origins and contents of this early popular-press science book, and how Ruchlis recruited Sendak to illustrate it.

Since Sendak’s death last month, bloggers have posted accounts of earlier appearances of Sendak illustrations in high school and other local Brooklyn, New York publications.

SEL is displaying UCLA’s two copies of the first edition of Atomics for the Millions: a circulating, library cloth-bound copy, and a “special collections” copy with the elusive and sought-after illustrated dustjacket. The paper in both copies has a slightly-browned but still very serviceable appearance because, as the back of the title page notes, “the quality of the materials used in the manufacture of this book is governed by continued postwar shortages.”

Russell Johnson
History & Special Collections for the Sciences
UCLA Library Special Collections

UCLA astronomers invite the public to join them at the head of Janss Steps on Tuesday, June 5, from 3:06 pm until sunset, to safely use their filter-equipped telescopes to watch Venus cross the face of the Sun.

Library Special Collections will bring a rolling exhibit case to join part of the festivities (3:00-4:30pm) in order to show half a dozen reports from an earlier Transit of Venus … the renowned 1769 event for which scientific teams were sent worldwide to make observations. We will have a  paper from Lt. (later Captain) James Cook’s voyage on the Endeavour to the south Pacific Ocean, Jean-Baptiste Chappe d’Auteroche’s posthumous report from Baja California, and James Ferguson’s 1769 astronomy textbook “for young gentlemen and ladies.”

For more about the history of the Transit of Venus, visit NASA’s website for the 2012 event.

Please be sure to read the advisory on the UCLA Planets website about viewing the Transit of Venus phenomenon ONLY with proper protection!

Russell Johnson
History & Special Collections for the Sciences
UCLA Library Special Collections

One of the lead characters in Aardman Animations’ new 3D adventure flick, The Pirates! Band of Misfits, is Pirate Captain’s apparently not-extinct ornithological companion, Polly the Dodo.

For one week only (to limit light exposure on hand-colored and color-printed illustrations), the Biomedical Library is exhibiting a treasure trove of two dimensional antiquarian bird booty about Didus ineptus (now Raphus cucullatus), the Dodo.

The mini-exhibit on the Louise M. Darling Biomedical Library’s first and fourth floors is part of an ongoing series, In the News (aka Now Playing, for film tie-ins), which relates items in the Library’s historical and special collections to current news stories.

Russell Johnson
History & Special Collections for the Sciences
UCLA Library Special Collections

In 1961, Los Angeles urologist, bibliophile, and UCLA School of Medicine mover-and-shaker Dr. Elmer Belt (1893-1980) donated to UCLA his magnificent collection of books and  materials about Leonardo da Vinci and the Italian Renaissance.  Elmer Belt, Collector of Ideas, a fiftieth anniversary tribute to the collector and his Elmer Belt Library of Vinciana, is on display in the lobby gallery of the Department of Special Collections (Charles E. Young Library, A-level) through January 6.

Elmer Belt, M.D. (1893-1980) was one of a growing number of local boosters who wanted to see UCLA form a medical school, after it moved to the Westwood campus and began granting graduate degrees. He reported meeting with continued resistance from Robert Gordon Sproul, president of the University of California from 1930 to 1958.  A sea-change came when Belt treated Governor Earl Warren as a patient. After hearing an impassioned pitch in the Belt Urological Group’s consultation offices, Warren took out his notebook and wrote his own prescription to his doctor:

“He said, ‘Now, there are ten things you have to do.’ So he wrote down one to ten on this sheet of paper, and he wrote after each one of them what he wanted me to do. The first was to select an assemblyman to introduce the [medical school appropriations] bill, ‘one that you can depend on.’ And the last was, ‘Come and stand behind me when I sign this.’” (Quotation from Surgeon and Bibliophile, Esther de Vécsey’s 1974-75 oral history interview with Dr. Belt.)

A black and white version of the official photograph, above, appeared in the Los Angeles Times on 20 February 1946 with the caption: “Gov. Warren signs bill providing $7,000,000 for medical school at Los Angeles campus of University of California. Looking on, from left, Speaker [Charles] Lyon of State Assembly; Dr. Elmer Belt of Los Angeles; James Corley, controller of the University; Assemblyman Phil Davis of Westwood, where campus is located; and State Sen. [Jack] Tunney.”

The newspaper quoted Governor Warren: “I don’t know of any appropriation bill before me that would give me more satisfaction to sign than this one. … I believe we can do as much good for the people of the State in this manner as any way of spending the money.”

Now known as the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA, the medical school opened its doors to classes in 1951 and is celebrating its 60th anniversary this year.

 <submitted by Russell Johnson, History & Special Collections for the Sciences>

Today, in concert with the 36^th annual Great American Smokeout, UCLA hospitals and health science campuses are becoming smoke-free environments, according to an announcement by UCLA Health System.

A mini-exhibit in the Biomedical Library (main floor) echoes the Smokeout theme with original century-old documents from the Anti-Cigarette League of America. The League, founded in 1890 by Woman’s Christian Temperance Union member Lucy Page Gaston, campaigned for smoking bans in public places as well as bans against the manufacture, sale, possession, and use of cigarettes. Gaston maintained that cigarette smoking was especially threatening to the young, hence the slogan, “Save the Boy”.  The League’s influence waned as the fight for alcohol prohibition became more prominent. Anti-cigarette and anti-smoking laws were repealed by states following World War I, with Kansas finally changing its legislation in 1927.

<submitted by Russell A. Johnson>

On display in the UCLA Louise M. Darling Biomedical Library lobby is one of 7,000 unused Space Shuttle tiles donated by NASA to schools and universities “that want to share technology and a piece of space history with their students,” according to the NASA Exploring Schools’ NES Teachers Corner blog.

Estimated to cost about $1,000 apiece, the lightweight silica-based “High-Temperature Reusable Surface Insulation” tiles were given to eligible institutions for only the cost of shipping and handling ($23.50) and the adventure of navigating NASA Space Program – Historic Artifacts Prescreening on the U.S. General Services Administration’s GSAXcess website.

According to William Gerstenmaier, NASA Administrator for Space Operations Mission Directorate, “Each space shuttle carried over 24,000 separate Thermal Protection Systems tiles, and each one was a different size and shape. This is an authentic tile and is presented to honor 30 years of Space Shuttle flights and the great achievements made by the men and women of NASA in science, aeronautics, and space exploration.”

The NASA shuttle tile is sealed in a protective plastic wrapping.  It is available for short-term loan to UCLA classes and laboratories. Faculty should contact History & Special Collections for the Sciences, 310.825.6940.

Also on display is the 18^th-century Greek and Latin edition of Hippocrates’ Aphorisms which accompanied UCLA alumna (Chemistry and Medicine) Dr. Anna Fisher on STS-51A, the 14th out of 135 missions of the Space Shuttle program and the second flight of Discovery, in November 1984.

Shuttle Tile

Credit: Tile Serial Numbers, Artifact Opportunities, Aeronautics Research Mission Directorate, NASA

http://artifacts.nasa.gov/tile_serial_numbers.htm

<submitted by Russell A. Johnson>