Welcome to The Cornflower, the online blog/newsletter of the Greater Midwest Region of the National Network of Libraries of Medicine. With this issue, we have transitioned from the traditional newsletter format to a blog, or weblog. Like ESources, The Cornflower features news and articles on topics of interest to members of the GMR. Earlier issues of ESources–and its predecessor, 3Sources–are available in our newsletter archive. If you have questions about the new GMR blog, see FAQs–Frequently Asked Questions, a page linked from the right-hand column on our blog.

Why The Cornflower? The cornflower, Centaurea cyanus, has been grown for thousands of years and is one of our most striking wild flowers. The cornflower gets its name from the centaur, Chiron, who is said in mythology to have taught us the healing power of herbs. Cornflowers are reliable plants and are easy to grow, even in poor soil conditions. It has been used medicinally as an astringent, and extracts of cornflower are added to hair shampoos and rinses. The flower of the plant is one of the few true blue flowers of nature, and the Greater Midwest Region has been identified by the color blue in National Network maps. Hopefully The Cornflower will be identified by our readers and members as stable, reliable, easily adaptable and medically useful.

Thank you to contest entrants. We wish to thank the network members who submitted ideas for naming the blog. They are: Dave Boilard, Alice D Turner, Frances Cockrum, Valerie Purvis, Deborah Adams, Darlene G Ward, Cleo Pappas, Kathy Struby, Nancy Dale, Nandita Mani, and Martha Airth-Kindree. Although we decided to take a totally new direction with the name of the blog, we appreciate the great suggestions that were made.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, June 27th, 2006 at 9:32 am and is filed under From the GMR. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.