SuperHack/SuperHack CD.bin/INTERNET/MEDICINE.ZIP/MEDICINE

Text File | 1995-08-22 | 24KB | 463 lines

SURFING THE INTERNET FOR THE HISTORY OF MEDICINE by Peter Hirtle
of the National Archives was first presented at the 1993 annual
meeting of the American Association for the History of Medicine,
and recently printed in The Watermark (Fall 1993, Vol.16, No.4),
the newsletter of Archivists and Librarians in the History of
the Health Sciences.

Hirtle describes electronic conferences (discussion lists) relating
to history and health sciences; access to library catalogs with
strong medical history collections; online searching; full-text
files and electronic publishing that may be of interest to individuals
working in the history of health sciences.  The document is 460 lines
long, and may be retrieved by anonymous FTP.
(Host: Beach.UTMB.Edu; Directory: CADUCEUS; File name: Hist.Med.Resources).
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        SURFING THE INTERNET FOR THE HISTORY OF MEDICINE

                          Peter Hirtle
         National Archives and Records Administration (1)


Introduction

     The Internet is an outgrowth of ARPANET, funded by the
Department of Defense, and NFSNET, the National Science
Foundation network backbone.  This genesis has two implications
when considering the possible resources of interest to historians
and librarians of medicine.  First, material related to the
humanities has come to the network relatively late.  It is still
easier, for example, to find molecular sequence data on the
network than it is to find source material for the history of
medicine, though this is rapidly changing as more and more
specialists in the humanities take advantage of the power of the
network.

     Secondly, the networks have been designed by computer
specialists, and not by librarians or other informational
professionals.  This means that much of the information on the
`net is not readily identifiable or available; one almost has to
know that information exists and where it exists before one
starts to use the network.  It has also led to the practice known
as "surfing the Internet," the habit of wandering around in
electronic space looking for things that may be of potential
interest.  When the networks were small, the kind of material
available on them limited, and the people doing the searching
computer professionals, the inchoate nature of the network did
not matter too much.  As the network has grown, however, new
approaches have had to be developed to locate information of
interest.  I will discuss some of the tools that have appeared
that make using Internet resources easier, and even better tools
are under development.  While looking for information on the
Internet may not yet be as easy as using a card catalog in a
library, one no longer needs to be a computer "hacker" to
retrieve something of value.

     I have identified two major areas of activity on the network
that may be of interest to this workshop.  They are electronic
conferences and resource collections, including library catalogs,
databases, and electronic texts.  There are probably others, and
I would be interested in learning the readers' experience with
the Internet and what they have found to be useful.

Electronic conferences (2)

     One common use of the Internet is for electronic mail (e-
mail).  A specialized application of e-mail is the electronic
conference.  Electronic conferences provide a place for opinions,
queries, conference announcements, job offerings, and
disciplinary chit-chat.  While there are several different forms
of electronic conferences, they all work in basically the same
way.  Once you have subscribed to the list, any message you send
to the list will be forwarded to all other subscribers.
Similarly, you will receive a copy of any mail message sent to
the list by any other subscriber.

     Most of the electronic conferences on the Internet run some
form of LISTSERV technology to manage the list.  To subscribe to
a list run by a listserv, one needs to know the address of the
listserv (i.e., listserv@rutvm1).  Simply send the message
"SUBSCRIBE <name of list> <your name>" to the listserv.  You
should shortly receive a welcome message from the listserv
management, and soon messages from the list should appear in your
mailbox.

     There are many different ways to identify lists of possible
interest.  Perhaps the simplest, but most unwieldy, is to send
the command LIST GLOBAL to your local listserv.   The listserv
will send you a large file listing all lists known to that
listserv.  The listing is by name, with little other information
available.  It is more efficient to take advantage of one of the
specialized lists categorizing electronic lists.  One of the best
is the list compiled by Diane Kovacs of scholarly electronic
conferences.  Kovacs's compilation identifies "scholarly" lists
in a range of fields, and provides information as to subject
matter. (See Appendix).

History Lists

     An excellent guide to lists specifically devoted to
historical topics has been prepared by the History Network (or H-
NET, See Appendix).  There are history electronic conferences for
regional, chronological, and topical areas.  Examples of regional
lists are ALBION-L@ucsbvm for British history; FranceHS@uwavm,
a low activity list for French history; and World-L@ubvm for world
history.  Period lists include MEDTEXTL@uiucvmd for medieval
texts and codicology; C18-L@psuvm for 18th century studies; and
FICINO@utoronto for Renaissance and Reformation studies.

     The history subject lists of possible interest to this
audience are fewer in number.  They include HOPOS-L@ukcc, devoted
to the History of the Philosophy of Science; HPSST-L@qucdn, for
the History and Philosophy of Science; HTECH-L@sivm, for the
History of Technology; and MEDSCI-L@brownvm, for medieval and
renaissance science.  The amount of activity of possible interest
to the history of medicine community on these subject lists
varies.  As a test, I searched for "medicine" or "medical" in the
text of messages sent to the first three lists from January to
April 1993.  Most active was HOPOS-L, with twenty-two hits -
mostly thanks to Ed Morman, who seemed to be an active
participant.  HPSST had six, HTech-L had four.  The same sort of
information was found on all three lists: job announcements;
announcements of conferences, including a conference on the human
body at the Hagley Museum; a call for contributors to a new
encyclopedia on the history of science, technology, and medicine
in non-Western cultures; and queries for research help in new
areas.  For example, someone requested help in identifying what
role animal research played in the development of antibiotics and
in AIDS research.

     Mention should also be made of some lists of general
historical interest.  Most active are HISTORY, a semi-popular
list, and HUMANIST@brownvm, a broad-ranging, moderated list from
Brown.  The latter has an extensive archive of old call for
papers, listings of electronic texts, and previous threads of
discussion grouped together.  For librarians, archivists, and
booksellers there are other lists.  ARCHIVES@arizvm1 is a very
active list of interest to archivists, while EXLIBRIS@rutvm1
discusses matters of interest to the rare book community.  A
brand new list is ANTIQUARIA.  "ANTIQUARIA," according to its
announcement, "is a subscription mail list that is expressly for
rare book dealers to exchange information and books amongst each
other and to meet with individuals and institutions looking for
specific books."  Subscription requests should be sent to
[e-mail].

Health Lists

     Lee Hancock of the University of Kansas Medical Center has
compiled a guide to Internet/BITNET health science resources.
(See Appendix).  Almost all the resources described in the Hancock
guide are contemporary, rather than historical.  Nevertheless,
some of the resources may have information of interest to people
working on contemporary history (i.e., the human genome project).
In addition, some of these conferences may be places where
historians can pose questions and ideas to contemporary
practitioners in specialized fields.  Conferences listed in
Hancock's guide include EPID-L, on Topics in Epidemiology and
Biostatistics; HUMBIO-L, the human biology, including
paleobiology, interest group discussion list; Hyperbar-L, the
hyperbaric and diving medicine list; and ETNET, more of a
bulletin board than a formal listserv, with forums on medical
education and the use of multimedia.

CADUCEUS

     Special mention must be made of CADUCEUS, organized by Inci
Bowman, Moody Medical Library, and owned by the University of
Texas Medical Branch at Galveston.  While Inci intended the list
to be of use to archivists and librarians in the history of the
health sciences, by default it has become the most important list
for the history of medicine in general.  Perhaps some day one of
the active institutional members of the AAHM will create a
discussion list specifically for historiographical issues, but
until such time CADUCEUS will remain fundamental.  CADUCEUS is
not a listserv list and requires special instructions to
subscribe. (Send e-mail to [e-mail] or CADUCEUS@
UTMBeach.Bitnet).

Hints on Managing Electronic Conferences

     Some lists generate much traffic, whereas others are
relatively quiet.  Some lists you may wish merely to monitor,
wile on others you may wish to participate actively.  There are
several features available in the most commonly used listserv
software that can make monitoring lists easier.  The following
suggestions will help insure that three hundred messages are not
in your mailbox each morning.

     Use the INDEX or DIGESTS feature if it is available.  When a
discussion list is set to INDEX or DIGESTS, you will receive one
message a day, with either an index of the day's messages or,
with DIGESTS, the index and messages for that day.  Both work
best with moderated lists where an actual editor adds a
consistent subject line to the messages.  Most lists, however,
are unmoderated, and merely distribute automatically whatever is
sent to them.

     Use a defined search strategy to search a list's archives.
Messages in a list's archives are filed topically.  You can, for
example, search for "Billings" or even names that sound like
"Billings" in all previous messages to a particular list and then
retrieve just those messages.

Online Resources: Access to Library Catalogs

     One of the most widespread uses of the Internet has been to
make library catalogues available to off-site patrons.  There are
literally hundreds of libraries whose holdings are now searchable
on the Internet.  There are several ways to access these
libraries.  The easiest way is to use one of the programs
specifically designed to connect you to library catalogs.  The
two most commonly found are HYTELNET and LIBS.  These can be run
as stand-alone programs, but are more commonly found as one
option in a university or library on-line information system.
Both programs automate the process of connecting to a different
library catalog and logging onto the system.  A printed guide to
Internet-accessible catalogs has been prepared by Dr. Art St.
George of the University of New Mexico and Dr. Ron Larsen of the
University of Maryland.  It is available by sending the e-mail
message "get library package" to listserv@umnvma or via anonymous
ftp at ariel.unm.edu.

     Unlike the bibliographic utilities that collect information
from many libraries, you can only search one library at a time on
the Internet.  In addition, few libraries have their entire
holdings available on-line.  Most commonly, only the data for the
past decade or two is available, though this can serve as a guide
to recent secondary monographic research.  A list of libraries
with strong collections in the history of medicine appeared in
the summer issue of The Watermark. (For a copy, send e-mail to
[e-mail]).

     Special mention must be made of the catalogues of two of the
national libraries.  The National Library of Medicine (NLM) is of
special importance to researchers in the history of medicine.
NLM is one of the few libraries that has the bulk of its records
in machine-readable form; its catalogue is now accessible over
the Internet.  To access the library, telnet to
locator.nlm.nih.gov and login as "locator."  An interesting
feature of NLM's locator is that you can have the results of your
searches e-mailed to you!  One can search NLM's holdings for
books, audiovisuals, most manuscripts, and a list of the journals
at NLM - though not the index to the journals.  One caveat: with
any library, the catalog is only as good as the cataloging.  In
NLM's case, pre-1800 items do not have subject headings, so you
have to do word searches.  Locator will allow you to limit your
search by date.

     The Library of Congress has also made many of its holdings
available on-line.  Perhaps the easiest way to access the
library's catalogue, called LOCIS, is through the library's
gopher server called Marvel.  To access Marvel, telnet to
marvel.loc.gov and login as "marvel."  A gopher server, by the
way, is one of the most useful tools to have appeared in the
Internet world.  Developed by staff at the University of
Minnesota, home of the Golden Gophers, and hence the name, a
gopher lets a library or institution organize a large number of
text files, programs, and communication links to other computers
which can be easily browsed through a menu.  Some gophers, such
as the ones at Yale and Wheaton College, have made finding aids
to manuscript collections available on-line.  Oregon State has
made available its guide to its archives and its records
management handbook.  A member of the faculty of the Department
of the History of Science, Medicine, and Technology at Johns
Hopkins has established a gopher server for an experimental
project relating to Robert Oppenheimer, which includes other more
general items as well.  Found in the server, for example, are
descriptions of some of the history of medicine courses at Johns
Hopkins; digitized photographs of Andre Lwoff; and a copy of a
paper on the history of Merck, Inc., written by Louis Galambos
and Jeffrey Sturchio and delivered at the history of technology
meetings in Uppsala, Sweden in 1992.  Guest logins to the server
are allowed: telnet to gopher.hs.jhu.edu, and login as "guest".

Online Searching

     Bibliographic and index databases have been common staples
of on-line resources.  Most services allowed a telephone
connection to their service, either over leased or voice
telephone lines.  Today, however, more and more indexes and other
reference tools are available over the Internet.  For most index
databases, a user will be charged for his or her search, as in
the past.  But by using the Internet, additional telephone line
charges can be avoided.  For example, the MEDLARS databases can
be searched using Grateful Med over Internet if one has an
account with the National Library of Medicine.  Files which are
particularly useful for historical research include MEDLINE, a
general index to the current medical literature; BIOETHICSLINE,
for bioethics; POPLINE, devoted to population research; and
HISTLINE (though the latter is not available at this time from
the Grateful Med menu).  Similarly, the Research Libraries Group
(RLG) is making the ISIS bibliography available to subscribers,
and they have an Internet connect point.  One free, quick
resource is UnCover from CARL, the Colorado Alliance of Research
Libraries.  UnCover indexes over four million general interest
articles from a wide variety of scholarly and popular magazines.
While in most cases the full-text of the article is not available
on-line, for a fee the CARL service will fax any designated
articles directly to you.

Full-Text Files and Software

     Many full-text files and much software is available on the
`net.  While exact figures are difficult to determine, the last
ones I saw indicated that there were about 10 million files, and
1.6 million unique files, available on the Internet!  Some data
and software archives have been established, such as the Archive
of Biology Software and Data at Indiana University or the
nucleotide sequence information at the European Molecular Biology
Laboratory.  The Hancock guide to the health care resources to
which I referred to earlier, lists the most important health-
related sites.  A history archive has been established at
Washington University: ftp to wuarchive.wustl.edu to see what is
available.

     Useful tools found on most gopher servers for identifying
files that may be of interest are Veronica and WAIS.  Veronica
indexes the names of items found in gophers around the world,
whereas WAIS indexes the content of selected text files.  With
quick searches in Veronica and some WAIS files, I found a number
of items relating to the teaching of the history of medicine,
including course descriptions and syllabi.  Few documents or
sources for the history of medicine are available on-line;
however, the profession has yet to make more source material
available.  The Library of Congress recently mounted an exhibit
on treasures from the Vatican Library.  Included in the on-line
files accompanying the exhibit are the text and images of several
items from the section of the exhibit on medicine and biology.
The sorts of things historians might want to make available
include the full text in machine-readable form of books,
photographs, exhibits, or even audio-visuals.

Electronic Publishing

     One area in which there has been much work is in the area of
electronic publishing of primary and secondary literature.  There
have been two main trends.  The first has been the appearance of
electronic journals that only appear, or appear first, in
electronic form.  _Psycolloquy_, an interdisciplinary journal in
psychology, was one of the first electronic journals; there are
now more than one hundred, from the _Bryn Mawr Classical Reviews_
to _Post Modern Culture_ to the _Online Journal of Clinical
Trials_.  There is not as yet a general electronic history
journal.

     The second area of activity in electronic publishing is in
the publishing of the full text of books.  There are several
large efforts to convert texts into machine-readable form and
make them available over the network underway, and several
centers have been established to collect information about
electronic texts (e-texts).  One of the oldest centers is CETH,
the Center for Electronic Texts in the Humanities, at Rutgers and
Princeton.  CETH creates in the machine data file of the RLG
system catalog records for e-texts.  In addition to cataloging,
CETH is also working to make the texts themselves available on
Internet, and to promote use of the Text Encoding Initiative
(TEI) standard in conversion projects.  Similar research and
identification projects have begun at the University of Virginia
and at Georgetown University.

     One of the largest projects that is actively converting text
into machine readable form is Project Gutenberg.  Using volunteer
efforts to convert the text and check on the copyright status of
works, Project Gutenberg hopes "to give away one trillion e-texts
by December 31, 2001."  Project Gutenberg makes the text
available primarily in unformatted form.  The Oxford Text archive
has more than 1,000 texts in one gigabit of memory that they
store for free, and then distribute on disk.  The texts are not
on-line yet, although the indexes to the archive are available
via ftp.  The Women's Writer Project at Brown University is also
producing marked-up texts.  Though the project's primary goal has
been to print the texts, they also will be distributed as e-
texts, and Brown hopes to make them available on an ftp server by
the end of the summer.  Among the texts available is Jane Sharp's
late seventeenth-century treatise, _A Manual for Midwives_.  The
head of the project, Elaine Brennan, says that she would be
delighted to find other texts by early women writers on medical
issues.  As she noted in an e-mail communication to me, "One of
the joys of putting electronic texts online is the ease with
which certain kinds of comparisons can be made, and I would love
to have more medical material from women's points of view to make
available."

The Future (3)

     As I noted at the start of this paper, the history of the
Internet - the fact that it grew from defense and science-related
networks and interests - has limited the historical material
available on the `net.  New initiatives, however, are adding more
material of interest every day.  It is likely that humanities
scholarship in the future will come to rely just as much as the
scientific disciplines on networked resources for communication,
information retrieval, and primary source material.

     Go out and hunt on the network, and work to make your own
resources available.  Surf's up!


                            Endnotes

1.   The following has been written in my private capacity, and
the views expressed are my own.  Affiliation is provided for
identification purposes only.

2.    My discussion here is limited to the BITNET/INTERNET lists.
Historical topics are not discussed as frequently on the hundreds
of USENET lists, though individuals with an interest in a
specific country might wish to participate in one of the generic
geographic interest groups, such as soc.culture.australian, which
is devoted to Australian culture and society.

3.    For an excellent summary of trends in scholarly use of
networked resources, see Avra Michelson and Jeff Rothenberg,
"Scholarly communication and information technology: exploring
the impact of changes in the research process on archives,
American Archivist 55 (Spring 1992): 236-315.

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                              APPENDIX

DIRECTORY OF SCHOLARLY ELECTRONIC CONFERENCES, 6th Revision
By Diane Kovacs and the Directory Team, Kent State University
[e-mail] or [e-mail] (Internet)

This directory contains descriptions of electronic conferences on topics of
interest to scholars.  The term e-conference is the umbrella term that
includes discussion lists, interest groups and forums, electronic journals,
electronic newsletters, and Usenet newsgroups.

To retrieve the introductory file:
1. Send an e-mail message addressed to LISTSERV@KENTVM or
   [e-mail].
2. Leave the subject and other info lines blank.
3. The message must read: GET ACADLIST README
4. The file will be sent to you, as a file to be "received."
5. If you need assistance receiving, etc. contact your local
   Computer Services people.
              -------------------------------------------------

                 INTERNET/BITNET HEALTH SCIENCES RESOURCE

Compiled by Lee Hancock, University of Kansas Medical Center
[e-mail] or [e-mail]

This 30-page document includes discussion lists, Usenet groups, electronic
journals and newsletters in the health sciences.  To retrieve the file by
anonymous FTP:
                    Host: sura.net
                    Directory: pub/nic
                    File: medical.resources.2-23
              --------------------------------------------------

       H-NET GUIDE TO HISTORY CONFERENCES ON BITNET (5 April 1993)

This document includes 83 discussion groups relating to various
specialties in history.  Courtesy of H-Net, [e-mail].

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