The 19th amendment to the constitution gave women the right to vote. Suffragists had cause to rejoice when it passed both houses of Congress in May and June 1919. Carol Skinner Cole (1888-1932) and Aphrodite Maria Jannopoulo (1896-1976) must have been on top of the world. They were the first women admitted as medical students at [Read more]
For the first time ever, Becker Library is participating in #ColorOurCollections, a week-long coloring fest on social media organized by libraries, archives and other cultural institutions around the world. Using materials from their collections, these institutions are sharing free coloring content with the hashtag #ColorOurCollections and inviting their followers to color and get creative with [Read more]
Bernard Becker Medical Library is fortunate to have robust collections in archives and rare books that document the history of medicine from the late 15th century up to the present. Subjects in which the library’s holdings are particularly strong include ophthalmology and optics, neurology, deaf education, and the history of dentistry. In order to encourage [Read more]
“…Lily was admitted to 7East. The nurses assigned to Lily’s care were very special. What was so amazing to us was their ability to see each child with a fresh new set of eyes. It is incredible to think that despite their work load during their 12-hour shifts that they could convey care, nurturing, and [Read more]
Anatomical flap books from the 16th and 19th century will be on display for First Fridays @ Becker on Jan. 4, 2019, in the Farrell Teaching and Learning Center (FLTC) hearth space from 11 a.m. to 1 p.m. Anatomical flap books contain anatomical illustrations with moveable parts. These visual aids simulate the process of anatomical [Read more]
Base Hospital 21 – the World War I U.S. military hospital base in Rouen, France that was staffed by doctors and nurses of the Washington University Medical Center and civilian volunteers from the St. Louis area – served with distinction during the war and after. Following the armistice ending the war on Nov. 11, 1918, [Read more]
The official project for which I was recently hired as the “project archivist” is to consolidate (and often create) metadata for our visual collections and make finding aids for them in our database. So I started with VC001 (i.e. “visual collection No. 1”) and have been going from there! Essentially, a lot of what I’ve [Read more]
Walk into any modern library, and you’ll come across the reference section. This section contains works that provide researchers with fast facts and general information. For example, here in the medical library, some of the reference works in Archives and Rare Books include: “Polk’s Medical Register and Directory of North America,” “Encyclopedia Britannica” and the [Read more]
In the early 20th century, a “new” medical center was created for Washington University largely due to the efforts of two men: Abraham Flexner and Robert Brookings. With funding from the Carnegie Foundation, Flexner traveled to 155 medical schools throughout the United States and Canada between 1908 and 1910. His goal was to assess each institution [Read more]
Washington University’s medical library is named after Bernard Becker, MD (1920-2013), who served as head of the university’s Department of Ophthalmology from 1953 to 1988. During his remarkable 35-year tenure as department chair, Becker established one of the most outstanding academic ophthalmology departments and residency programs in the country and became a world-renowned expert on [Read more]