African-American surgeon Charles R. Drew (1904-1950) organized and directed America’s first large-scale blood bank program during the early years of World War II. He also worked tirelessly to provide access to medical training to African American students, and to improve the quality of that training. The Charles R. Drew Papers on Profiles in Science makes available an extensive selection of digitized documents and visual materials about and by Dr. Drew, in collaboration with the Moorland-Spingarn Research Center at Howard University, which holds the original papers. Dr. Drew’s life and legacy add unique perspectives and rich historical materials to the study of history of African Americans.

Now available from the National Library of Medicine is a new suite of educational resources for The Charles R. Drew Papers. These new resources offer hands-on activities for students to explore the challenges and achievements of Dr. Drew’s life, by examining primary and secondary sources from The Charles R. Drew Papers on Profiles in Science. Three lesson plans are designed for middle and high school levels:

• “Charles R. Drew: Athlete, Surgeon, Innovator, Mentor!” (7-8 grades),
• “Charles R. Drew Through Digital Primary and Secondary Sources” (9-10 grades), and
• “Reading and Understanding Charles R. Drew” (11-12 grades and undergraduate introductory level).

These lesson plans provide detailed class procedures, background information, suggested extension activities, relevant standards, and learning outcomes, as well as a complete set of instructional materials.

The fourth resource, “Life after Death: Dr. Charles Drew, Civil Rights, and the Legacy of Race,” is a higher education module that outlines six one-hour classes, each of which offers an introduction, a list of readings and other instructional materials, and class discussion questions.

The educational resources for Charles Drew allow students at all levels to engage in a hands-on exploration of history through primary sources and scholarly commentary. In so doing, students acquire knowledge and skills that align with educational standards for literacy and higher-order thinking. Educators are welcome to adapt these resources in whole or in part for their students’ interests and academic goals. These new resources are developed by educators in collaboration with the Exhibition Program and the Images and Archives Section of the History of Medicine Division, and bring the Library’s digitized collections to secondary and post-secondary educators and students, while addressing current educational standards.

In November, 2012, NIH announced upcoming changes to the public access policy reporting requirements, and funding delays for grant awards that are not in compliance with the policy. This week, NIH announced that the compliance measures outlined in the November guide notice will be implemented for all awards with anticipated start dates on or after July 1, 2013, as stated in NIH Guide Notice NOT-13-042. The public access compliance monitor is a web-based tool that allows administrators to monitor policy compliance across their particular institution. A three-minute YouTube video is available for a quick look at its features. More in-depth training is available from a recording of a public webinar, held in January, 2013, and designed for compliance officials at grantee institutions. Additionally, the NIH Office of Extramural Research (OER) presents conversations with NIH staff members, through its All About Grants podcast series. Check out the new episodes on public access, designed for researchers and compliance officials, featuring NIH staff involved in public access policy implementation.

PubMed now displays author keywords when supplied by publishers. NLM will not review author keywords for accuracy or add them to non-publisher supplied citations. Author keywords can be searched untagged or using the Other Term [OT] or Text Words [TW] tags. Author Keywords are available on the Abstract, MEDLINE, and XML displays. Author keywords are preceded by a KEYWORDS label and appear below the abstract text on the Abstract display:

Author keywords also appear in the OT field of the MEDLINE display, and users of the XML display will see author keywords in the Keyword element of KeywordList.

A “Download History” link will be added to the PubMed, MeSH and NLM Catalog Advanced page History feature. Using this link will generate History entries in the file “history.csv.” Since Microsoft Excel is typically unable to display or print more than a maximum of 1024 characters in a cell, users with long queries may want to open the CSV file with a text editor to display the complete searches.

The search bar will be updated to list up to the last four databases searched at the top of the pull-down database menu. The alphabetic list with all the databases will also include the recently searched databases. Further details about these changes are available in the 2013 January/February issue of the NLM Technical Bulletin.

In January 2013, NCBI released a new blog called NCBI Insights. The National Center for Biotechnology Information (NCBI), a division of the U.S. National Library of Medicine, provides access to scientific and biomedical databases, software tools for analyzing molecular data, and performs research in computational biology. Some NCBI resources include PubMed, GenBank, and BLAST. NCBI Insights was created to provide an insider’s perspective to help you better understand NCBI resources, explore issues of scientific interest that drive NCBI resource development, and demonstrate how you can use NCBI resources to help enhance your research.

The blog has four categories of posts:

• NCBI Explained – Provides an insider’s perspective on NCBI resources and policies to help you better understand NCBI, and avoid some common misconceptions and misunderstandings.
• What’s New – Introduces new and updated resources, including specific examples that demonstrate how you can use them to enhance your research.
• Quick Tips and Tricks – Explains how to perform specific tasks using the NCBI website. Selected topics will be chosen based on questions asked and suggestions provided by users.
• Science Features – Explores current topics in science and demonstrates how you can find relevant data or resources on the NCBI website for further exploration.

This blog is a complement to existing NCBI education and outreach efforts, such as News and Social Media publicity, Webinar and Workshop training programs, and Help Desk user support. Refer to the NCBI Educational Resources web page for more details on these programs. Be sure to check the NCBI Insights Blog regularly!

The National Library of Medicine and the Alexandria Waterfront Museum will host a special traveling banner exhibition exploring the Colonial-era healing practices used by George Washington on the battlefield, during his presidency, and home at his beloved Virginia estate. Co-produced by the National Library of Medicine (a division of the National Institutes of Health), and George Washington’s Mount Vernon, Every Necessary Care and Attention: George Washington and Medicine, features a compelling collection of images and rich online companion resources drawn from the world’s largest medical library and the nation’s oldest historic preservation organization. Before embarking on a national tour, the exhibition will be on display at the History of Medicine Division Reading Room, National Library of Medicine, on the NIH campus in Bethesda, Maryland, January 30, 2013, to March 1, 2013, and at the Alexandria Waterfront Museum in Alexandria, Virginia, from January 17, 2013, to April 27, 2013.

The banner display incorporates the use of QR codes allowing visitors to access transcripts and audio recordings of some key documents. The online companion exhibition features educational resources for K-12 teachers and students, and a higher education module for professors and undergraduates. In addition, the online exhibition showcases a “Digital Gallery,” a collection of digitized books, pamphlets, and illustrations about Colonial-era medicine, healing practices, and medical practitioners from the History of Medicine Division collections.

Every Necessary Care and Attention: George Washington and Medicine marks the first formal collaboration between the National Library of Medicine and Mount Vernon. The exhibition was curated by Mary V. Thompson, Dawn Bonner, and Michele R. Lee from Mount Vernon. The banner exhibition was designed by Howard + Revis Design Services. The website was designed by Link Studio.

After its display in the Washington, D.C. metro area at the National Library of Medicine, and the Alexandria Waterfront Museum, the exhibition is expected to travel to other venues throughout the country. For more information about booking the exhibition, please visit the traveling exhibition website.

The History of Medicine Division of the National Library of Medicine (NLM), the world’s largest medical library and a component of the National Institutes of Health, is pleased to announce the latest release of its History of Medicine Finding Aids Consortium.

Now indexing over 3,600 finding aids from 35 institutions, the Consortium is a discovery tool providing keyword search services across a union catalog of descriptions of primary source materials found in special collections and archives throughout the United States and Canada. The Consortium leads you to the rich information found in historical documents, personal papers, business records, and more. Finding aids provide contextual information about these collections, along with detailed inventories to help researchers locate relevant materials. As with the initial release, the new content consists of finding aids delivered as EAD, PDF and HTML from a diverse institutional cohort.

The new content contributors (finding aid count) are:

• American Philosophical Society (80)
• Bellevue Alumnae Center for Nursing History (12)
• Boston Children’s Hospital Archives (36)
• Duke Medical Center Archives (147)
• George Washington University (20)
• Rockefeller Archive Center (69)
• Sophia Smith Collection at Smith College (82)
• State Historical Society of Missouri Research Center (22)
• University of Maryland, Baltimore County Center for Biological Sciences Archives (8)
• University of Mississippi Archives and Special Collections (69)
• University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio (20)
• University of Texas Medical Branch, Galveston (148)
• Eskind Biomedical Library, Vanderbilt University (87)
• DeWitt Wallace Institute for the History of Psychiatry, Weill Cornell Medical College (22)
• Wright State University Special Collections and Archives (59)

NLM invites libraries, archives and museums with finding aids for collections in the history of medicine and health sciences to join the Consortium.

Under a recent agreement with the American Medical Association (AMA), the National Library of Medicine (NLM) will be including the AMA’s Current Procedural Terminology (CPT) codes for molecular pathology tests in the National Institutes of Health’s Genetic Testing Registry (GTR). GTR is operated by NLM’s National Center for Biotechnology Information (NCBI), and provides a resource for comprehensive information about genetic tests. The database provides a central location for voluntary submission of test information by providers. Content includes the test’s purpose, methodology, validity, evidence of the test’s usefulness, and laboratory contacts and credentials.

Under the new agreement, AMA’s CPT codes for molecular pathology tests will be integrated into GTR. The AMA-created codes describe the latest advances in genetic testing and molecular diagnostic services for reporting and tracking purposes. AMA’s new, more detailed CPT codes for molecular pathology became effective in 2012. Inclusion of the CPT codes in GTR further enhances the database’s interoperability with electronic medical records and laboratory information management systems. GTR also incorporates SNOMED CT (Systematized Nomenclature of Medicine – Clinical Terms), an extensive clinical terminology produced by the International Health Terminology Standards Development Organisation (IHTSDO), and LOINC (Logical Observation Identifiers Names and Codes), produced by the Regenstrief Institute, which provides standardized terms and codes for identifying laboratory and clinical observations. NLM is the US Member of the IHTSDO and provides support for the development and free US-wide use of both SNOMED CT and LOINC. CPT, SNOMED CT, and LOINC are required standards in the certification criteria for electronic health record products issued by the Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology, Department of Health and Human Services.

In December, 2012, NLM’s Division of Specialized Information Services (SIS) released a major update for the Radiation Emergency Medical Management (REMM) tool. REMM provides guidance for health care providers about the clinical diagnosis and treatment of radiation injury during radiological or nuclear emergencies. It is web-based, but also downloadable to your Windows or Mac, and key information is also available on the mobile apps for Android, iPhone/iPod Touch/iPad & BlackBerry. Key changes are noted below. Many more updates and changes appear throughout REMM. You are strongly encouraged to update any versions of REMM you have previously downloaded to your computer, USB drive, or mobile device.

1. Creation of REMM Multimedia Library
   • Display of REMM multimedia items in carousel format
   • Items accessible by content category
   • New videos, illustrations, pictures, tables
2. REMM YouTube channel: 4 new videos uploaded
3. Improved REMM bibliography
   • New table of contents improves access to listings
   • Many new references and topics
4. Updated Prototype for Medical Orders
   • Now includes Pediatric information
   • Updated information in many sections, including use of anti-microbial drugs
5. New sections for “Other Audiences”
   • Senior Leaders
   • Legal advisors
   • Radiation Safety Officers
   • Public Health Officers
6. Updates to key pages
   • Nuclear Detonation: Weapons, INDs
   • Transportation Incidents
   • Triage Guidelines
   • Planners: Preparedness and Response
   • What is exposure?
   • What is contamination?
   • Emergency Contacts
7. Print output from Dose Estimator for Lymphocyte Depletion Kinetics and Time to Onset of Vomiting
8. Improved right navigation panel for accessing key items

New Features on Mobile REMM

1. Interactive tool for radiation unit conversions, e.g. curie to becquerel, rad to gray
2. Updates to Emergency Contacts

MedlinePlus.gov offers over 900 Health Topic pages covering a myriad of diseases, illnesses, health conditions, and wellness issues. Millions of users visited MedlinePlus Health Topic pages in 2012. Which were the most visited? Take a look at the list of “Top 10 Most Visited MedlinePlus Health Topics of 2012″:

• High Blood Pressure
• Exercise and Physical Fitness
• Diabetes
• Diabetic Diet
• COPD (Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease)
• Skin Conditions
• Autoimmune Diseases
• Herpes Simplex
• Herniated Disk
• Heart Diseases