New on the website: British Medical Journal video tutorial

We recently blogged about the launch of a new section of our website: Guides and Video Tutorials - which offers introductions to our online catalogues and full-text resources.

Another video tutorial has now been added to this section: so, joining videos on how to make the most of the Library catalogue, the Archives and Manuscripts catalogue, and Wellcome Images, is a video on how to access the British Medical Journal historical archive, from 1840-2008.

The video demonstrates how to access this online archive using PubMed Central. It also shows you how to browse for specific articles when you have a citation and also find obituaries, advertisements and biannual indexes.

Image: Plate from Augustus D. Waller, Introductory address on the electromotive properties of the human heart. British Medical Journal, Volume 2 (1449), 1888, pp751-752

New issue of 'Medical History'

The latest issue of journal Medical History - available free through PubMedCentral and UK PubMedCentral - carries two articles which offer interesting perspectives upon major collections held in the Wellcome Library.

Ian Burney and Neil Pemberton's article 'Bruised Witness: Bernard Spilsbury and the Performance of Early Twentieth-Century English Forensic Pathology' examines one of the many cases in which Spilsbury - the so-called 'Father of Modern Forensics', whose case notes we acquired in 2008 - acted as a key witness.

Claudia Stein and Roger Cooter's 'Visual Objects and Universal Meanings: AIDS Posters and the Politics of Globalisation and History', focuses particularly on such posters as collected material objects, and so has direct relevance to the collection of AIDS Posters in the Wellcome Library.

Image credit: Medical History website

Library Year In Review 2009 goes live

Last week the Library launched its latest Year In Review. This year, we have opted for an electronic-only format, and the PDF of the Review is available for viewing and downloading from our website.

2009 was the Library's busiest year to date, with visitor numbers topping the 38,000 mark. The Review focuses on services for our in-person visitors, and also showcases a number of initiatives which are available via the web for our users worldwide.

We hope you enjoy the Review. As ever we are keen to hear from our users about their research and how they make use of the Library and its resources, so please feel free to get in touch.

Download the Year In Review 2009 [PDF 3.3 MB] (Right click to save)

Epidemiology and Infection journal now online

Epidemiology and Infection journal backfiles are now freely available online in the PubMed Central archive. This journal runs from 1901 to 1996 (up to 1986 it was titled The Journal of Hygiene). The Wellcome Trust worked in collaboration with the National Library of Medicine (NLM) and the Joint Information Systems Committee (JISC) to digitise this journal back-run as part of a series of journals recently made available online, including the British Medical Journal, Medical History and many more. All of these titles are mirrored to UK PubMed Central.

Epidemiology and Infection contains classic research articles including the 1902 paper "Recent Researches concerning the Etiology, Propagation, and Prevention of Yellow Fever, by the United States Army Commission" by Walter Reed proving that yellow fever is transmitted by mosquitoes; the 1928 paper "Bacteriological and Clinical Study of One Hundred Cases of Scarlet Fever" by Gunn and Griffith demonstrating the significance of pneumococcal types; and a series of reports on plague investigations in early 20th century India including the 1907 report The diagnosis of natural rat plague.

Wellcome Trust research papers - now available as an RSS feed

An RSS feed has been setup to facilitate easy access to the latest research findings published by Wellcome Trust-funded authors.

All papers listed are freely available in full-text format from the UK PubMed Central repository.

View recent articles.

Open access and the Wellcome Trust

Presentation given on 29th October 2008 at UKSG conference on open access.

Mandating Open Access - Wellcome Trust

View SlideShare presentation or Upload your own. (tags: open access)

Medical History Supplements - now online

The Supplements to the journal Medical History (from 1981 - 2004) are now freely available online at PubMed Central and UK PubMed Central.

Readers interested in Medical London may find the 1991 supplement particularly interesting, with contributions from Roy Porter and Anne Hardy, amongst others.