Contents

• Library News
  • Staff News
  • Library in the News
  • Library Participates in Health Fair
  • Article Linker
  • Historical Government Documents Collection
• New Books in the Library
• Database News: WorldCat
• Staff Picks
• Notes from Historical Collections
• Notes from Conservation & Preservation

Library News

Staff News

We are pleased to welcome two new Stack Assistants.
Margaret Grysko is originally from Poland and came to the United States in 1991. She has a M.L.S. from Queens College and hopes to continue developing her skills for her future as a librarian.
Caroline Osei-Afrifa received her B.A. in English from Iona College, her Master's degree in Creative Writing from Manhattanville College, and is currently working on her M.L.S. at Queens College. We are pleased to have such a talented and creative individual working with us in the Access Department.

Dennis Campbell has been promoted from Stack Assistant in the Access Services Department to Technical Assistant in the Document Delivery Department, effective Monday, August 7th, 2006. Congratulations, Dennis.

Two interns have joined the staff.
Historical Collections has an intern from Long Island University’s Palmer School of Library and Information Science completing a practicum in the Malloch Rare Book Room this fall. Ted O’Reilly, who also works at the New-York Historical Society as an assistant in the Manuscript Department, has degrees from the College of the Holy Cross in Worcester, Massachusetts (History) and the National University of Ireland, Galway (Irish Studies). He has a strong interest in Irish music and culture. Ted will spend the fall assisting the rare book room staff with a project that involves transferring a number of important early nineteenth century books from the general collections to the rare book collection.

We are pleased to have Ilaria Papini, a graduate student from Pratt’s School of Library and Information Science, working as an intern on the Historical Government Documents Collection. Ilaria’s interests in cataloging, technical services and library automation, coupled with her enthusiasm for the work, have made her a valuable addition to the Library staff.

We welcome our new staff and interns.

Some people have left the library to pursue new work experiences and, while we are sorry to see them go, we wish them well in their new endeavors.

Tara Somersall has accepted a position as a librarian at the Grinton I. Will Library in Yonkers. Her job is to provide community outreach to elementary, middle school and physically challenged children and introduce them to the library and its resources. Tara continues to be at the Settlement Health Library for about 8 hours a week. We wish her well in her new position.

Anthony Taylor, Document Delivery, Patrick Clancy, Director of the Department of Information, IST Department, and Diffy Paljevic, IST Department, all left to pursue exciting new jobs.
Anthony, who was with the Academy for over 25 years, is now the Stacks Manager at Manhattanville College, Patrick is at the New York Botanical Gardens working on digital projects, and Diffy is the Assistant Director of Technology at Carnegie Mellon University's Tepper School of Business, New York Campus. Good Luck to them all!

Library in the News

The Library has been featured recently on the local news. On Monday, September 25, WNBC Channel 4 aired a segment about the Academy Library's medical information classes, reported by Dr. Max Gomez. The segment featured footage of the Library's Introduction to Alternative Medicine Resources class, taught by Elizabeth Taylor. Janie Kaplan and Winifred King were also interviewed for the piece. The segment has spread the word about the Library to a larger audience and you can view the video, Health Research on the Web, at the health video index page of WNBC.

Library Participates in Health Fair

On Sunday, October 8, Tara Somersall represented the Academy and Settlement Health, the ambulatory care center on 106th street where the Library has helped to establish a patient library, at the "Health Mix" sponsored by Harlem Children's Zone at 35 East 125th Street. This event was done in collaboration with the Farmers Market. Tara attended the fair and took with her health information to distribute. The health fair linked health information to children and families within the community. The families that attended were able to take part in fun activities such as hoola-hooping, jumping rope, relay racing and face-painting.

Some of the organizations that participated in this event were: NYC Department of Health and Mental Hygiene, Cornell, North General Hospital, Child Health Plus and Harlem Children's Health Project, a collaborative effort with Columbia University's Mailman School of Public Health, and New York Presbyterian Hospital. Many of the patrons who visited the Academy's table were interested in asthma and diabetes information. Because of the successful turnout of this event, Harlem Children's Zone (HCZ) is planning another "Health Mix" and will announce the date when it is known.

Article Linker

Article Linker will help you get from a citation in one of our subscription databases to the full-text in another. When searching our databases, you will see this new icon for Article Linker. If the full-text is not available in the database you are searching, simply click on the Article Linker link and all of our databases will be searched for the desired article. You’ll be brought to a result screen indicating where you can link to the full-text or you’ll receive a message if we do not have access to the journal. If we don’t have access to what you are looking for, please remember that our Document Delivery Department can help. For inter-library loans contact Rochelle Castillo , or call (212) 822-7362. You can also call your library liasion for help finding articles.

Historical Government Documents Collection

A project to electronically catalog our Historical Government Documents Collection is underway to make the important materials that make up this collection available to researchers worldwide via our online catalog and through WorldCat.

This vast collection includes national and international annual public health reports, vital statistics, municipal criminal statistics, local occupational studies and other local, state and national government publications dating primarily from the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Containing materials from around the globe, many of the documents in this collection are unique to the Academy Library. As you may suspect, this collection is particularly rich in New York City and New York State documents and we are currently focusing on processing these materials to augment the collections currently held by the New York Public Library and the New York State Library in this area.

If you think this collection could help with your research, please contact Arlene Shaner for more information.

New Books in the Library

Please view new items added to the general collection of the library in the last 3 months. This does not include items in the reference section, journals or the grey literature. "General collection" includes items not included in the other categories so may include gifts that the library has received.

Here are 3 books that have recently been catalogued.

Diabetes information for teens : health tips about managing diabetes and preventing related complications including information about insulin, glucose control, healthy eating, physical activity, and learning to live with diabetes.
1st ed.
Ed. Lawton, Sandra Augustyn.
Detroit, MI : Omnigraphics, c2006.
QZ 42 K29p 2006

This volume will form part of the collection supporting the Junior Fellows Program. Part of the Teen Health Series, from the popular consumer health publisher, Omnigraphics, this book uses eye-catching questions and answers, bullet points, highlighted text boxes and fairly simple language to reach teen diabetes sufferers in middle and high schools.
More and more teens are getting type-2 diabetes in addition to the type-1, or juvenile, diabetes. This book aims to inform them and their families about the signs, diagnosis, treatment and coping strategies for the different kinds of diabetes. Tips on eating, weight management, exercise, and emergencies are included. The book is divided into 6 parts— Part I, Basic Information About Diabetes; Part II, Diabetes Treatment and Management; Part III, Diabetes and Related Health Concerns; Part IV, Day-to-Day Living with Diabetes; Part V, Coping With Feelings and Relationships and Part VI, If You Need More Information.

Health literacy from A to Z : practical ways to communicate your health message .
Osborne, Helen.
Sudbury, Mass : Jones and Bartlett, c2005
WK 810 D5366 2006

As patients play a greater role in their own care, it becomes more and more important for them to understand what their health care providers are saying and writing. This book on health literacy is written to give providers, educators, librarians, teachers and patients a simple overview on communicating more effectively. The alphabetically arranged chapters have 3 sections—Starting Points; Strategies, Ideas, and Suggestions and Sources to Learn More. Topics include About Health Literacy, which defines the topic, Plain Language, to make medical literature more easily understandable and Visuals, the use of artwork to improve health communication.

Methods for disaster mental health research .
Eds. Norris, Fran H., Galea, Sandro et al.
New York : The Guilford Press, c2006
WM 170 M592 2006

This book on disaster research has been written by well-known experts in the field for novice disaster researchers, with the purpose of educating them about research methods that can be used to study the effects of disasters on mental health and the effectiveness of interventions to reduce the effects of disasters on mental health. The authors discuss the planning, methodology, results dissemination and special challenges of disaster research from a public health point of view and will be of interest to everyone interested in disaster mental health.

Database News: WorldCat

We have long had access to the WorldCat database through FirstSearch, from its provider OCLC Online Computer Library Center, but the database is now freely available on the web. Use WorldCat to find library materials around the world. This huge cooperative database contains records and holdings of libraries around the world, including the Library of Congress, the British Library and numerous small libraries, both public and private. WorldCat contains more than 70 million entries for books, videos, music CDs, and other formats and lists more than 1 billion locations for these materials in libraries around the world. Searching take place in the whole database but holdings results are only shown from those libraries that fulfill member requirements. We are a member so our library holdings are displayed. You can try it by searching for the book "Diabetes information for teens" and getting 7 results. Select the first item and enter 10003 in the location box. You will see a list of libraries that have this book and you can select the Academy Library to look at the record in our library catalog.

A sub-set of about 3.45 million records is also available to Google and Yahoo, so using these search engines may also lead your to WorldCat records.

Look at the Frequently Asked Questions for more information and you can also call your library liasion if you wish for help with WorldCat.

Staff Picks

Submitted by Jonathan Frater

Locating government documents using the internet can be a trying effort. Oftentimes you find that each department and bureau controls its own website and there are few standards as to how each of them is laid out, and topics have a way of morphing or vanishing without notice. Needless to say this limits access to all but the most persistent researchers.

Luckily, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control have built a comprehensive website that provides quick and easy access to its various departments. Their main web site is divided into three main sections. The left column is a collection of departmental links for Health & Safety topics, Publications, and Data & Statistics, from top to bottom. The center of the page is reserved for news stories or other items of interest to the public. Just lately the CDC created a new section of the web site devoted to CDC bulletins and news items; further down the right margin are sections for Programs & Campaigns, and Conferences & Events. If at first glance you don’t find what you’re interested in a search box sits on the upper right hand corner of the page. A Spanish language link can be found next to it.

As a point of illustration, let’s take a fast look through the Data and Statistics section:
There are four links under the Data and Statisics heading: Growth Charts , National Data and State Data, all of which take us to a particular section of the National Center for Health Statistics . There’s one more link titled More, which takes us to the more general Featured Items of the CDC statistics page. Clicking on Growth Data, for example brings us to the NCHS web page offering us the web page for 2000 CDC Growth Charts: United States. Notice the left hand side of the page. Each NCHS web page has the same information running down the left margin. These are all links to related sites: Surveys and Data Collection Systems, A-Z menu selection, Initiatives, Research and Development programs, press releases and publications. Any of these are accessible by the same link no matter which actual web site you look at—the links are consistent throughout these pages.

In a similar way, clicking on the National Data link takes us to the Health, United States, 2005, which is the collection of web pages takes from the content of the print publication of the same name. The State Data link takes us to the Fast Stats: A to Z web page. In each case you’ll find the same set of links down the left margin of the page. Something slightly different can be found beneath the header of these web sites: a collection of linked sub-menu that you can use to navigate within the news site you’ve just accessed. As an example, on the Fast Stats page we’re looking at, one sees links to Fast Facts Home, NCHS Home, CDC/NCHS Privacy Policy page, and a contact information page. Unlike the links embedded in the left margin, these selections vary with each new web page.

Notes from Historical Collections

On September 27, the Historical Collections staff of the Academy joined representatives of The Culinary Trust at L’Ecole, the restaurant school associated with the French Culinary Institute, at a press luncheon to celebrate the restoration and rebinding of the Academy’s 9th century manuscript copy of the second-century Roman cookbook, Apicii -- De Re Coquinaria. In conjunction with The Culinary Trust’s Endangered Treasures Program, Kitchen Aid and the Brown-Forman Corporation generously underwrote the restoration of the manuscript by Deborah Evetts, an internationally known book conservator.

A new critical edition of the Apicius, edited by Christopher Grocock and Sally Grainger, has just been published by Prospect Books, along with a companion volume of recipes from the work, Cooking Apicius: Roman Recipes for Today, written by Grainger. The menu, which was prepared by students at L’Ecole, drew on Grainger’s redacted recipes. As the guests ate, Grainger provided information about the different dishes and Roman dining customs. A toga-clad Marcus Apicius himself made a guest appearance at the luncheon, as the alter ego of culinary historian Ken Albala, a Professor of History at the University of the Pacific in Stockton, California.

The Apicius manuscript is the cornerstone of the Academy’s large collection of cookery books. Margaret Barclay Wilson, a fellow of the Academy, donated about ten thousand cookbooks, books about the relation of nutrition to cookery, pamphlets, and menus to the Academy’s library in the 1920s. Her generosity makes our collection one of the best places for research in culinary history and the intersection of cookery with nutrition in the country.

Notes from Conservation & Preservation

NYAM HOSTS GUILD OF BOOK WORKERS

The Guild of Book Workers is celebrating its centennial this year by holding a major conference at The New York Academy of Medicine from October 12-14. Preservation staff, Susan Martin and Anne Hillam, active members of the GBW, worked on the preparations for the event celebrating "The Art of the Book in America, 1906 - 2006" and the accomplishments of the Guild from its founding in 1906 until the present. As part of the celebration, NYAM conservators installed an exhibition in the main reading room and lobby of the library. This stunning collection of fine bindings has been loaned by Dr. and Mrs. Benjamin Levene.

As part of the Guild's program, Anne Hillam conducted a tour in the Gladys Brooks Laboratory on Thursday, October 12th, focusing on NYAM's conservation program. She was joined by Arlene Shaner who talked about bindings in the Library's collection of particular interest to GBW attendees. One of these is Peter Franck's A Lost Link in the Technique of Bookbinding and How I Found It, 1941, which is written by this book conservator about a sewing technique that he discovered while repairing one of the NYAM Library's treasures, Gesner, Historiae Animalium, Liber IV, 1558. Both of these books were on display in the lab during the tour and Anne and Arlene discussed the importance of these books to the history of bookbinding.

The centennial conference featured general and regional talks on the history of the book in America and the Guild's role on Friday, October 13 and Saturday, October 14.

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