Another NLS

I've been back in Scotland for two weeks now, but on my way back I stopped off at Singapore to break the journey.
For me, no visit to a city is complete without visiting its main library, so I went along to the National Library of Singapore. There was also the added attraction of air-conditioning, my respite from the relentless humid heat....
Seriously, it is an impressive set up. The Central Public Library, the 24-hour bookdrop, study lounge, Lee Kong Chian Reference Library, gardens, exhibition space, rental facilities and library e-kiosks are all housed in a 102.8m high environmentally-friendly building with 59,000 sqm floor space.
Like the National Library of Scotland, the Singapore library collects books under the provision of a Legal Deposit Act (Singapore's National Library Board Act 1995). Unlike the National Library of Scotland which collects one copy, it requires publishers to provide two copies of every publication.
In the northern hemisphere's NLS we have the Bibliography of Scotland; our southern counterpart has Singapore National Bibliography. Both libraries' main function is to preserve works of writers, publishers and producers in all forms and to make them available for public research. It made me feel very close to home.
One thing that is very different to my workplace in Edinburgh is the creation in Singapore's library of its own weather system. An auto irrigation system provides moisture and atrium spaces draw wind in, creating natural ventilation.
So on the next autumnal blustery day here I'll remember the thick heat of Singapore and smile!

(Photos show view of Singapore and the National Library of Singapore main sign)

Dancing and delicacies

It's officially spring here in Australia and the 10th International Congress on Medical Librarianship is in full swing. So far we've been treated to a Brisbane childrens' choir recital and an Aboriginal dance to welcome us to Queensland. We were privileged last night to attend a reception hosted by Her Excellency the Governor of Queensland at her beautiful Victorian home.
Jan has given a paper on the Medical History of British India project and I am due to present my poster this afternoon. We've been delighted to meet so many librarians from 44 countries and discuss our work and the weather (of course!).
There was a fascinating talk on the history of veterinary medicine through postcards yesterday. We learned that in some areas men castrated sheep with their teeth (hence the term "prairie oyster" as a delicacy). And we saw the picture to prove it!

(Photos show Brisbane Children's Choir at ICML 2009 opening ceremony and Francine Millard putting up the Medical History of British India poster)

Winter in Brisbane

ICML 2009 kicked off on Sunday 30th (I think - still a little jet-lagged) with a visit to Mount Coot-tha Botanic Gardens. The librarian, Linda MacMahon, introduced the speakers, Prof. John Pearn and Ross McKinnon.
Prof. Pearn spoke about ethnobotany (indigenous medicine), with fascinating facts such as: the average GP prescribes around 65 types of medicine, yet aboriginal children as young as 5 know 650 different medicinal plants. Of course this knowledge was transferred by oral history rather than written sources. A lot of the plants have both nutritional and medicinal qualities and were treated to extract their various compounds. In fact, one of the first exports from Australia after the "discovery" of the country in 1788 was eucalyptus, used for its many medicinal properties.
Ross McKinnon, director of the garden, gave an entertaining talk on the diverse enquiries a botanic curator can get, such as the case of the exploding trousers (really). In New Zealand, farmers clearing ragwort from their farms using sodium porate found that their clothes literally exploded. One unfortunate man exploded while on his horse (both died...). Of course, this was because the chemical weedkiller reacted to the cotton in the clothes and caused an explosive reaction, The botanical experts at the garden advised using a particular insect to destroy the ragwort rather than a dangerous chemical - problem solved. I think that beats any OPU enquiries into a cocked (bush) hat!

p.s. Winter in Brisbane reached 31 degrees...!

(Photos show Ross McKinnon showing librarians around the gardens and the inside of the BioDome)

A library for all

Jan and I are in Brisbane for the International Congress of Medical Librarianship. We have just had a fabulous and inspiring tour of Queensland State Library. Located on the South Bank, with wonderful views of the river, this library won awards for its architecture. The building has a light airy feel and blends well with the outside environment, with many outdoor spaces for events. Inside, readers can relax on sofas or in armchairs and sleeping is not discouraged.
The John Oxley Library, founded in 1934 by a group of interested members of the public, is a vital part of the State Library. It collects, by gift, donation and legal deposit, items relating to or published in Queensland. Some items on display include specimens of cloth from the three voyages of Captain Cook, a transcription of William Bligh's log from his ship Providence and some early estate maps of the Gold Coast. There are numerous art objects on show, plus a display of handbags.
A children's area, firepit for indigenous story sharing, meeting rooms, theatre, and a large Internet area (where I am now), make this a place for everyone to come and enjoy. Mind you, I would be too busy looking out of the window to do much reading!

(Photos show side view of State Library of Queensland and the view from near the firepit of the riverfront)

We're moving!

We're moving offices, but our blog's staying right here. However, as we're up to our ears in skips, etc. our posts may be a little sparse for a few days, but keep popping in! (or better still, subscribe, so you don't miss anything).

OPU exhibition

Thousands of events are taking place over Edinburgh just now ....the fringe has arrived. However, there is one small event that you will love to see and that is the Offical Publications Exhibition. It is taking place at the National Library of Scotland for the month of August and it is a display entitled Celebrating a Decade of the Scottish Parliament.
Elaine Simpson and Catherine Davies have put a small collection of items together the display cases, outside the reading rooms.
Items on display will be a quiz about the Scottish Parliament, an item in Scots language, code of conduct for the Ministers and other interesting items from the Scottish Parliament first decade.

Celtic Connections?

We've been fortunate to be awarded more funds from the Wellcome Trust to digitise more material for the Medical History of British India Online project, this time the reports of the Lunatic Asylums. They're a fascinating resource for the study of mental illness, but also very revealing of social and moral attitudes of the day.

One, General report no. 6 on the lunatic asylums, vaccination and dispensaries in the Bengal Presidency, 1873 reports that "Burmans are like Celts - clannish; they associate and combine together for mischief ...they defy discipline...and incite misconduct in others..."

Of the types of mental illness documented, most are reported to be the result of ganja, but also includes "40 patients addicted to onanism, which I consider to be a predisposing cause to idiotcy ... in spite of every care and treatment, they still continue to practice this fatal vice, which has already deprived them of reason and is hurrying them to their graves."

These 40 are men, but the women are the subject of study because of the "[probability] of menstrual irregularity being the existing cause of insanity". Anyone who's had PMS ( or been on the receiving end!) will sympathise...

You are what you eat

The Food Standards Agency (FSA) caused a bit of a furore in the press this week when it published its report on organic food which claimed that there was no nutritional benefit in going for the organic food option. Pro-organic campaigners protested that the report had "missed the point", but the FSA had never intended to look at chemical residues in food, such as pesticides in veg. and anti-biotics and growth hormones in livestock. From a purely nutritional aspect, no difference was found in organic compared to non-organic, though of course many people choose organic to avoid chemicals, and for animal welfare and environmental reasons.

18 inches or less!

Lucile Ltd London, Paris, New York and Chicago 1890s – 1930s
By Valerie D. Mendes and Amy De La Haye
V&A Publishing

This delightful book is my coffee table book choice of the month.
It centres upon an album of fashion designs by Lucile.
Lucile is Lady Duff Gordon, who was an early divorcee and a Titanic survivor.

The dress and coat designs are beautiful, the range and depth of colours is a visual treat. You want to touch the designs as they are rich and vibrant; the sheen of fabric and the drape of material makes you forget that these are pictures and not the real thing.
One thing that stands out is the very noticeable narrow waists 18 inches or less. Even though the women look stunning, what would it have been like to have been pulled and prodded into a corset to achieve the hourglass figure?
Lucile was probably the first designer to have fashion houses in London, Paris, New York and Chicago. She has been credited with starting the first fashion parade now known as the catwalk show.

The all seeing eye

The telescope: a short history has just been catalogued.

Richard Dunn’s book offers an illustrated overview of the history of the telescope. He writes that the telescope’s true inventor may never be known. Surviving records suggest 1608 when Hans Lipperhey and others applied for a patent. The name ‘telescopium’ was formally announced in 1611, two years after Galileo began making telescopes.
Dunn’s lively narrative chronicles Galileo’s first astronomical observations and Draper’s moon photographs of 1840. He describes the 1957 Jodrell Bank radio telescope dish as Britain’s post-war national pride and tourist attraction. The epilogue looks to the future, building on the legacy of the Hubble Space Telescope and Large Binocular Telescope. The telescope has developed from small instruments to giant radio arrays; beginning as an extension of human sight it allows man to see in previously unimagined ways. From looking out at space to understanding the origin of the universe, this book shows both history and potential of this remarkable instrument.

Vanity Fair portraits and other coffee table books

Sometimes a book comes in that we can all drool over (not literally - we are much too preservation conscious for that), and Vanity Fair Portraits is a beauty. It was published to accompany a major exhibition at the National Portrait Gallery, London, and the Scottish National Portrait Gallery, Edinburgh, last year, and the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, earlier this year. If you missed it you can always hop over to Australia to catch it at the Portrait Gallery in Canberra, 12 June-30 August 2009...

Lived in London is all about those "blue plaques and the stories behind them", and is another richly illustrated official publication (English Heritage this time). A bit too hefty to carry with you on a London walk, nevertheless it is full of fascinating stuff about famous London inhabitants. In Bedford Square alone you can find such diverse figures as the Indian scholar and reformer Ram Mohun Roy, Anthony Hope (who wrote the Prisoner of Zenda), Thomas Wakley, founder of The Lancet,the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, and, just round the corner, Dame Millicent Garrett Fawcett, pioneer of women's suffrage.

We get lots of "art" books, usually exhibition catalogues from government-funded institutions, both UK and overseas, so don't think it's all "dry" government statistics here!

The Pound in your pocket

The Bank of England's Monetary Policy Committee (MPC) today (Thursday 9th July) decided to keep interest rates at .05%. If you're in the dark about how they reach their decisions, and wonder if black magic and possibly chicken's entrails are involved, then you can find out all about them on the Bank of England website (where you'll also read all you ever wanted to know about quantitative easing...).
We get lots of publications by the Bank and about the Bank, including those from the House of Commons Treasury Committee on appointments to the MPC, such as the scrutiny of Spencer Dale's appointment.

2009 influenza pandemic

Last week the World Health Organization announced the first flu pandemic since 1968.
The Lancet's H1N1 flu resource centre has free resources, pdf documents, video and links and is well worth a visit. You can sign up for email updates, too.

(Photo credit: The Lancet)

Knitty gritty

Knitting has become a very fashionable pastime; perhaps it is a bid to step out of our hi-tech busy lives and create handcrafted items and gifts at home or with others. This feature on the Victoria and Albert Museum's website includes 1940's knitting patterns and knitting podcasts.
A fine example of Official Publications white propaganda on the NLS Propaganda web feature shows a booklet of patterns. Dating from 1941 (see photo opposite) the booklet encourages women to do their bit for Britain by knitting for the army.

OPU also collects publications from the V&A. Recent acquisitions include:

Art Deco fashion
Hats: an anthology
Japanese art and design.

If you are feeling inspired to do your bit with yarn and needles, this month celebrates World Wide Knit in Public Day, with "knit-ins" happening all over the globe starting this weekend (13th June).

(Photo credit: National Library of Scotland)

Of germs and men

The third edition of Communicable disease epidemiology and control by Roger Webber has just been catalogued in OPU.
The steady progress of avian influenza and now the emergence and spread of A(H1N1) influenza ("swine flu") mean that communicable diseases are not just a concern for the medical fraternity. Disease seems to be in the headlines daily.
If you wish to find out more about disease, epidemics, sanitation and public health, this revised and updated book is a comprehensive guide. Clearly laid out, it features causes and characteristics of diseases along with methods of transmission, and includes the essentials of parasitology and entomology. New threats to health such as pox diseases, arboviruses and hospital infections are covered as well as bioterrorism.
Summary tables of clinical presentations, diagrams and maps, plus an extensive list of diseases make this book useful to health professionals, epidemiologists and the casual reader.

You are what you eat

In March 1919, the Royal Society Food (War) Committee published Report on the food requirements of man and their variations according to age, sex, size, and occupation. This fascinating study on diet, energy requirements and food quality has just been added to the online catalogue.
The average height of a man in 1883 was 5 ft 7.4 inches. Women averaged 5 ft 2.7 inches. American and Canadians, measured in 1912, were slightly taller.
Energy and food requirements are divided into job type. A stonemason was deemed to have the most food/energy requirements, at 5,500 calories, a tailor 2,750 calories per day.
"Brain workers" - as the report dubs those who did paperwork and "abstruse calculations" - required more consideration than that of the bodily labourer. It recommends providing these workers with "more expensive animal foods" than "the man who earns his living by the work of his muscles." The reason given was that the food consumed by the desk bound employee has to be light and digestible. This holds true today - most people know that sluggish feeling after a large carbohydrate-based lunch..!

Human Trafficking

The Trade in Human Beings : Human Trafficking in the UK
Sixth report of the Home Affairs Committee
HC paper 23 I-II


This two volume work has recently landed on my desk and as I was cataloguing it I was appalled at the key facts that were mentioned.
Some of the facts are :
1. At a conservative estimate there are at least 5,000 trafficking victims in the UK.
2. There are about 8,000 women work in off-street prostitution in London alone.
3. It is also estimated that 330 child victims will be trafficked into the UK each year 4. That each sex trafficker earns on average £500-£1000 per woman per week.
5. There are only 100-300 prosecutions for trafficking across the EU each year.
6. About 60% of suspected child victims in local authority care go missing and are not subsequently found.
In the introduction it mentions that although we are becoming more aware of human trafficking as we read in the news about the Chinese cockle-pickers that died in Morecombe Bay in 2004. It seems that although slavery has been abolished the insidious form of trading human beings for forced labour and sexual exploitation still takes place in this developed country.
What is Human Trafficking?
The Un defines human trafficking as: the recruitment, transportation, transfer harbouring or receipt of persons, by means of the threat to use force of other forms of coercion, of abduction, of fraud, or deception, of the abuse of power or of a position of vulnerability or of the giving or receiving of payments or benefits to achieve the consent of a person having control over another person, for the purpose of exploitation. Exploitation shall include, at a minimum, the exploitation of the prostitution of others or other forms of sexual exploitation, forced labour or services, slavery or practices similar to slavery, servitude or the removal of organs.

It boils down to the victims are in effect “owned” by the traffickers.

Bulletin of the World Health Organisation (WHO)

The Wellcome Library has digitised the WHO Bulletin right back to when it began in 1948 and it's now freely available on PubMed Central.

New Chief Veterinary Officer

It was announced today that Simon Hall has been appointed Chief Veterinary Officer for Scotland. Simon is currently Head of International Animal Health at the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs and will succeed Charles Milne in July.

It shouldn't happen to a vet

I’ve just read The Several lives of a Victorian vet by Jean Ware and Hugh Hunt, covering the career of Griffith Evans.
Evans arrived in Bombay in 1877 at the instigation of Queen Victoria’s Principal Veterinary Surgeon, and began work on anthrax at Sialkot. He was the first man to diagnose the disease in India and went on to discover the pathogenic trypanosome which caused the disease surra (meaning “gone rotten”). In 1880 he wrote his Report on surra disease, but his colleagues regarded him as a “crank”, and the Governor-General lamented that Evans had not managed to find a cure in the 4 week period he’d been given to research the disease.
Evans’ hope of being promoted to Principal Veterinary Surgeon of India was dashed when he was effectively banished to Madras.
Evans was serving as a Veterinary Surgeon in poor, hot conditions and trying to promote his findings on surra. Evans describes his daily work in trying to locate the surra parasite, “I had to work with the microscope for many hours a day out-of-doors at the sick lines, or else in a stable, when the thermometer was 82 degrees within a cool bungalow, and the sun pouring down its rays through a cloudless sky…very few investigators know what that means.”
However in the early 1880’s John Henry Steel (pictured courtesy of BVC), of Bombay Veterinary College, hailed Evans as the discoverer of the surra microbe. Abroad, Pasteur and Koch had also taken notice of Evans’ work and in 1883 Evans was promoted to Lieutenant Colonel, leaving India a year later. Steel’s own report on a fatal disease among transport mules in Burma contains Evans' original surra findings and is part of the Veterinary project I am working on.

Beavering away

After a 400 year absence, eleven beavers have been re-introduced in Argyll, Scotland. This is part of Scottish Natural Heritage's Species Action Framework, but is also the culmination of a 13-year investigation by SNH into the practicalities of the re-introduction. There were public consultations, and reports on possible risks to public health (apparently beavers can carry giardia and cryptosporidium bacteria).

There has been opposition, mainly from angling enthusiasts and some landowners, who are concerned at possible disruption to fisheries and damage to the landscape, but the scheme will be constantly monitored by a group including SNH and the Argyll Fisheries Trust.

I hope it's a success - people wiped out beavers through over-hunting, so it'd be great to see them back where they belong.

Rogue states

On Monday North Korea tested a nuclear device reportedly as large as the Hiroshima bomb (picture from U.S. National Archives and Records Administration), and has since then tested short range missiles, restarted its nuclear reactor and declared it is no longer bound by the terms of the ending of the 1953 Korean war.

North Korea objects to the Proliferation Security Initiative (PSI), a grouping initiated by the Bush Administration in 2003 to prevent weapons of mass destruction (WMD) from "reaching or leaving states or sub-state actors of proliferation concern" - in effect, to stop and search ships suspected of carrying WMD. The grouping is outwith the authority of the United Nations, reflecting the Bush's disdain for the UN. South Korea on Wednesday became the 95th member of the PSI.