The historical book collection provides a rich resource for studying every aspect of medicine and health in the past, including related areas of social, economic, and intellectual history.


What the collection includes - The collection includes about 500 incunabula (books printed before 1501), some 57,000 16th-18th century books, and 95,000 items published between 1801 and 1913. Nearly every European language and many Asian languages are represented. The book collection includes monographs, serials, pamphlets, medical school dissertations and catalogs, hospital, health department and other government reports.


Popular and ephemeral items - Among works of popular and ephemeral interest are home health guides, pharmaceutical almanacs, patent medicine catalogs, medical equipment catalogs, personal narratives, first-hand accounts, broadsides, pharmacopoeias, illustrated herbals, and botanical name indexes (materia medica).


Treasures - Medical history landmarks in the collection include Andreas Vesalius' De humani corporis fabrica (1543), William Harvey's Exercitatio anatomica de motu cordis (1628), William Withering's An Account of the Foxglove (1785), and Edward Jenner's An Inquiry into the Causes and Effects of the Variolae Vaccinae (1798), as well as comprehensive holdings of the works of major medical figures such as Hippocrates, Galen, Paracelsus, Boerhaave, and Osler.

The National Library of Medicine (NLM), on the campus of the National Institutes of Health in Bethesda, Maryland, is the world's largest medical library. The Library collects materials in all areas of biomedicine and health care, as well as works on biomedical aspects of technology, the humanities, and the physical, life, and social sciences. The collections stand at more than 9 million items--books, journals, technical reports, manuscripts, microfilms, photographs and images. Housed within the Library is one of the world's finest medical history collections of old and rare medical works. The Library's collection may be consulted in the reading room or requested on interlibrary loan. NLM is a national resource for all U.S. health science libraries through a National Network of Libraries of Medicine.

For 125 years, the Library published the Index Medicus, a monthly subject/author guide to articles in 4000 journals. This information, and much more, is today available in the database MEDLINE, the major component of PubMed, freely accessible via the World Wide Web. PubMed has more than 16 million MEDLINE journal article references and abstracts going back to the mid-1960's with another 1.5 million references back to the early 1950's. NLM plans to add more references back through time.Other databases provide information on monographs (books), audiovisual materials, and on such specialized subjects as toxicology, environmental health, and molecular biology. Through the Web at http://www.nlm.nih.gov some 900 million searches of MEDLINE are done each year by health professionals, scientists, librarians, and the public. There are increasing links between article references and full text, and a new service called PubMed Central allows free access to a central repository of journal articles. The NLM has created a special Web site, MedlinePlus, to link the general public to many sources of consumer health information.
Address: 8600 Rockville Pike, Bethesda, MD 20894; Phone toll-free: 888-346-3656.

In a ceremony held September 18, 2008 at CIA Headquarters, Director Mike Hayden presented the Agency's Distinguished Intelligence Medal to Maj. Gen. Michael E. Ennis, USMC, who served as the National Clandestine Service's first Deputy Director for Community Human Intelligence (HUMINT) from May 2006 to August 2008.


In this newly created position, a product of CIA's expanded HUMINT management responsibilities, Gen. Ennis was responsible for integrating the clandestine HUMINT capabilities of the United States Intelligence Community. This included establishing HUMINT best practices and standards across the Community, and supporting the coordination of vital HUMINT operations designed to protect our nation's security.


In awarding one of the Agency's highest honors, Director Hayden paid tribute to Gen. Ennis service, saying, "Clearly, Mike's distinguished record at CIA has been one of moving to contact on some of the most challenging issues we face. Thanks in large part to his energy, pragmatism, expertise, and good humor, we're making HUMINT collection a joint effort in ways that were hard to imagine before September 2001."


In March 2007, Director Hayden ordered the creation of the HUMINT Enterprise Board of Governors, a CIA-led body consisting of 31 government organizations that conduct or enable HUMINT operations. Gen. Ennis played a crucial role in the Board's establishment and crucial work, including a landmark Intelligence Community Directive on HUMINT.


"If there was a single greatest difficulty or greatest feat in putting together this enterprise, it was hashing out the Intelligence Community Directive governing how we do HUMINT. That was a tough bureaucratic slog, and Mike was instrumental in reaching consensus and getting it done," Director Hayden said.The Distinguished Intelligence Medal is presented for performance of outstanding services or for achievement of a distinctly exceptional nature in a duty or responsibility.Earlier this month, Gen. Ennis was succeeded by Brig. Gen. Richard T. Ellis, USA.

A Handbook for the Study of Book History in the United States, by Ronald J. Zboray and Mary Saracino Zboray, has been published by the Library of Congress. Sponsored by the Library's Center for the Book, the 155-page paperbound volume is an introduction for researchers to the literature and subject of book history.

In the first part of the volume, the authors explain why the field of the history of the book is important and discuss its major concerns. Most of the book describes how to locate and use source material. It concludes with observations about the future of book history, an appendix describing important periodicals for book historians and a 52-page list of suggested readings.

Ronald J. Zboray is associate professor of history at Georgia State University, and Mary Saracino Zboray is a research associate at the same institution. Together they have published extensively on antebellum cultural history, including recent articles in many scholarly journals and essays in two collections, on Boston business history and on the Massachusetts Historical Society. In 1998-99, the Zborays were Honorary Visiting Fellows at the Schlesinger Library, Radcliffe College, while completing a book on the experience of reading in antebellum New England.

The Handbook is the Center for the Book's second resource publication about book history. The first, The History of Books: A Guide to Selected Resources in the Library of Congress (1987), by Alice D. Schreyer, is out of print but available in many libraries.

The Center for the Book was established in 1977 to stimulate public interest in books, reading and libraries. For information about its programs, publications and the activities of its affiliated centers in 40 states and the District of Columbia, visit its Web site at www.loc.gov/loc/cfbook.

Source: http://www.loc.gov/today/pr/2000/00-108.html

Madrid, Spain (PRWEB) October 2, 2008 -- In what is believed to be first deal of its kind, a private equity company is financing the writing of a non-fiction book.

The Complete Kant will be the story of Cathal Morrow's year without lying and his search for truth. The European-based Thaler Fund is financing the project and will receive a share of all associated revenues.

Thaler Fund founder Edward Fitzpatrick explained: "Cathal sent me the first chapter of The Complete Kant and I found it funny, touching and intelligently written. The Thaler Fund is always looking for innovative investments, and I think The Complete Kant has incredible potential, not just as a book, but across a number of other media as well."

The Thaler Fund is a European-based fund for high net worth individuals, private banks and pension funds. Current Thaler Fund investments also include media, technology and luxury goods companies.

The Complete Kant uses Immanuel Kant's assertion that lying is always morally wrong as its starting point, and is both a personal journey and an investigation into the philosophy of truth.

The first chapter can be viewed at www.thecompletekant.com.At the request of Cathal Morrow the deal has been struck without written contracts. Cathal explains: "My book is about honesty and truth. I trust the Thaler Fund team, and they trust me. We have established the details of our relationship so a verbal agreement is enough"

Perhaps best known for his Edge of Sportscolumn and radio show, Dave Zirin is the award-winning antithesis of the mainstream sportswriter. A contributor to journals ranging from Sports Illustrated to The Progressive and The Nation, he is the author of the Muhammad Ali Handbook, What's My Name, Fool: Sports and Resistance in the United States and Welcome to the Terrordome: The Pain, Politics and Promise of Sports.


His new volume, A People's History of Sports in the United States, was published last month as part of historian Howard Zinn's People's History series for New Press. In 320 pages, Zirin places sports in the socio political and cultural contexts where they belong, tracing the most courageous and ignominious sports episodes in U.S. history calling out villains who disguised themselves as sports heroes, while rescuing from obscurity many athletes whose moral courage merited glory but too often came at the cost of public condemnation, and analyzing trends such as the rise of what Zirin describes as "muscular Christianity."


At the Wisconsin Book Festival, Zirin is scheduled to discuss A People's History of Sports in the United States during an appearance with Madison poet Matthew Guenette at 6 p.m. Wednesday, Oct. 15, in the Overture Center's Promenade Hall. In anticipation of his appearance here, Zirin called time-out to participate in a wide-ranging email interview in which he addresses the ideals and shortcomings of his beat, identifies a handful of sports journalists who have risen above the profession to distinguish themselves, outlines his vision for sports in the 21st century and nominates five athletes to the inaugural induction class for the Dave Zirin Sports Hall of Fame.
For more information: http://www.thedailypage.com/daily/article.php?article=23942