Levy Library

Memorial Day Hours

The Library will be open this weekend but with reduced hours on Monday. We'll be open our regular 9am-7:50pm on Saturday and 10am-1:50am on Sunday, then reduced hours of 8am-7:50pm on Monday. Check out the library hours here.

Commencement: Endings and Beginnings

This week Mount Sinai School of Medicine holds its 43rd commencement ceremony. Think about it: we use the word commencement - which can mean the beginning of something - to mark the end of our academic training.   So, let's look back 40 years to the beginning of the School and the first time Mount Sinai graduated a group that had spent all four years of their training here. 

When the School first opened in 1968, the administration was honored to be able to recruit both a first year and a third year class. This was in recognition of the many years Mount Sinai faculty had spent teaching the medical students from other schools.  Thus the first commencement ceremony was held in 1970, two years after opening, and marked a milestone for the young school.

 

 

Happy parents after the 1972 commencement ceremony; the Class of 1972 reciting the Hippocratic Oath. [Click on the photo to see a larger image]
    


The 1972 graduation of the first ever first year class was also eagerly anticipated.  The students, faculty, and families gathered at the Hunter College Assembly Hall on June 4th. There were 47 students graduating. (Last year Mount Sinai awarded 249 Masters, Ph.D. and MD degrees.)  The ceremony was led by Hans Popper, MD, Ph.D., the Acting Dean and President who had stepped in when Dean George James had died suddenly in March 1972. Gustave L. Levy, the Chairman of the Boards of Trustees, spoke and also awarded the diplomas.  The commencement address was delivered by Thomas S. Szasz, MD, a well known psychiatrist who discussed the ethics involved in medicine and being a physician.  Jeffrey S. Flier spoke as the Student Representative. (Dr. Flier is today the Dean of Harvard's Medical Faculty.)  It was a momentous occasion for all involved and remains a powerful memory for those who were there.

In many ways, the 1972 commencement marked the end of the beginning for the young medical school, just as all commencements represent an ending and a new beginning for the students themselves. Congratulations to the Mount Sinai School of Medicine Class of 2012!

A Golden Anniversary for Patient Wrist Bands

    The hospital patient ID wrist band is one of those things that everyone recognizes. Show up at any event with one of these on and people immediately know that you have been to the hospital. (And if you are still wearing it out in public, you probably want to share the whole story!)   Although they have certainly evolved and become more high tech over the years, they remain a clearly identifiable object in our society.  But they have not always been a part of hospital life.

    The Mount Sinai Hospital began using the wrist identification on April 2, 1962 - 50 years ago this month. It was such an important change in policy that the Hospital newsletter contained a small blurb about it on the front page: 

Patient ID Bands

Since April 2, all patients admitted to the Hospital are given an identification band, which lists the patient's full name and unit number in the Hospital.  It is put on the patient's right wrist at admission, and assures the proper identication for such procedures as diagnosis, treatments, transportation and transfer.

So, happy birthday to all those plastic bands. Who would have ever guessed that 50 years later they would still be going strong?

Spring Cleaning for Authors

Citation databases create author profiles where all of that author’s citations are collected. This lets authors see all their works in one place for CV updates and metrics calculations. However, due to changes in affiliation, name format and many other reasons, there are frequently more than one profile for the same author. This is your chance to fix problems like:

• Which name variations should be grouped together in your profile?  Which spelling variation should be used as the primary name under which all documents are listed?
• Are all the articles listed as yours by you?  Are all of your articles listed?

You can help clean up these records and make sure that all of your articles are credited to you under one profile. It’s a good idea to suggest changes to your profile now. That way when it’s time to find every article you’ve published or check your h factor, you’re ready to go.

And, you can do it right from the databases…

Here are instructions for cleaning up author records in Scopus:

1. In Scopus, click on the author search tab and search for yourself.

2. Identify your records. Place a checkmark next to each one. Then click on Request to merge authors.

3. Ensure these are the records you’d like to merge. Then click Start.

4. Select the name you would like to use as the primary name under which all documents will be listed. Then click next.

5. Review the documents listed. If you need to edit the list, click on Edit Documents.

6. Click on the red buttons to exclude articles or the green buttons to include articles. When you're finished click next.

7. Fill in your contact details and any information that may assist the Scopus folks in verifying your submission. Click Submit.

Voila! You’re finished. Pat yourself on the back. It takes about 6-8 weeks for changes to appear in the database.

Levy Library's Spring 2012 Newsletter

The Library recently published our Spring 2012 newsletter, featuring timely library news and searching tips. A lead story for this edition of the newsletter is that the ever-popular UpToDate has now been licensed for off-campus use! You can now access UpToDate through the library's website whether you are on or off-campus.

Other news items include: Downloading books from Ebrary, Using Stat!Ref's mobile app, Proquest's new look, new training opportunites in the Library: learn about Mendeley or MetaCore from GeneGo, and an update on the activities of the Mount Sinai Archvies Division of the Library. Visit the newsletter to read more.

 

Everything Old is New Again

On January 12, 2012 the Association of American Medical Colleges (AAMC) issued a report called "Behavioral and Social Science Foundation for Future Physicians."  This states that: "Understanding how lifestyle, behavior, and economic status affect health, and applying this knowledge to medical practice is vital for future physicians."  As always, good ideas are not always new ideas. 

In 1965, Hans Popper, MD, Ph.D. (below) published a paper called "A New Curriculum."¹  This outlined the early plans for the nascent Mount Sinai School of Medicine, set to open in 1968.  Hans Popper was the Dean for Academic Affairs, Chairman of the Pathology Department, and one of the faculty most involved in the School's founding.  In this article he described – very accurately - the directions in which he felt medicine was moving and some goals that a new medical curriculum must pursue.  He noted a "tremendous explosion of information" and that the advance of science was blurring the lines between the basic sciences.  He discussed the rise of "quantitative biology in medicine" and how technology had come to predominate diagnosis and therapy.  He also saw the changing role of the hospital and how medical students needed to be trained in out-patient settings.  Popper also pointed out the importance of community medicine, "which deals not only with continuous or comprehensive family care, but also with the establishment of patterns of medical care by physicians and nonphysican health workers with various levels of training."

Finally, Popper also stated that: "Human studies including social sciences and humanities should broaden the outlook of the specialist who, with the threatened vanishing of the family physician, must be better attuned to the mental and psychological needs of the patient and his family and to the problems of a changing society.  Neither modern technological methods nor multiplication of specialists will replace the continued need of the patient for the consideration of his personal and his family problems."¹  Popper thought the best way to achieve this was to create a small Graduate School for Human Studies that would have departments of sociology, anthropology, economics and psychology.  There might also be small groups in law, art, history, or communications as well.²

Hans Popper's plans were never fully realized but there have been efforts over the years. The School did create a Department of Community Medicine under Kurt Deuschle, the first such department in an urban setting and today's Department of Preventive Medicine.  One of the original divisions of this department was Behavioral Sciences, led by Samuel Bloom, Ph.D., a pioneer medical sociologist.  A separate Human Studies graduate school was never created, but electives in many of these areas have been taught at various times.  Twenty-five years ago, Mount Sinai created the Humanities in Medicine admissions program that recognized the value of students who had been trained in the humanities. 

Perhaps the new AAMC report will induce another look at the value of the humanities in medical education, and the future as envisioned by Hans Popper almost 50 years ago.

 

¹Hans Popper. A New Curriculum. Annals of the NY Acad of Sci, Sept. 27, 1965: v.128, art. 2, p. 552-560. (This is available online to Mount Sinai faculty and staff.)

²Hans Popper. The Mount Sinai Concept.  Clinical Research, 1965: v. 13, p. 500-504.

Uniquely Mount Sinai

The Mount Sinai Hospital had a nursing school from 1881-1971, known first as The Mount Sinai Hospital Training School for Nurses and then as The Mount Sinai Hospital School of Nursing.  It is a tradition that every nursing school has its own unique cap and pin.  This is a very old custom that lingers today.  Here you will find pictures of both Mount Sinai’s graduate cap and pin. A nurse was given these when she graduated from our school.  (Students wore a different, plain white cotton cap starched to cardboard-like stiffness.)  They were signs that you were a trained, professional nurse.  We also had a distinctive scotch blue plaid fabric from which our uniforms were made. (See the photo of our Class of 1904.)  The plaid was registered to our school and only we could use it.  We had supply problems in World War II, so we switched to a regular blue plaid after that.  And they say history is boring…..

              

From the Archives: Art at Mount Sinai

The Mount Sinai Medical Center in New York is a private institution with many public spaces.  Over the years, Mount Sinai has acquired, through donation and purchase, art to add vitality and interest to these public areas.  The reasons for this are many. A hospital is a place of science and fact, but it has long been thought that people who are ill or under stress do better when exposed to beauty.  Mount Sinai is also a busy place with thousands of employees, medical staff and visitors spending time at the institution.  It is of benefit to these groups to have visually stimulating artwork around the Medical Center.  And, in a larger sense, Mount Sinai is also a part of the urban landscape that is New York City.  These artworks help define Mount Sinai’s physical space as a landmark in the City.  Here is a quick look at one of those artworks found at Mount Sinai.

 

“Gene Segment”
Artist: Ivan Chermayeff (1932-)
Location:  Outside the Carl Icahn Medical Institute Building, Madison Ave. at 98th St.
Date:  1998

As noted in the January 5, 1998 issue of Inside Mount Sinai:

This piece…is an artistic representation and symbol of the cutting-edge research and exploration taking place in the building’s laboratories and across our campus.  Consisting of orange-colored steel and aluminum forms revolving and rising 28 feet, it is animated by spiraling, mirrored surfaces that reflect the changing seasons, clouds, and people walking by against the background of Mount Sinai’s newest Building.  
The artist, Ivan Chermayeff, is a principal and founder of the New York design firm, Chermayeff and Geismar Inc. The firm is known for many designs, including the iconic number 9, at 9 West 57 Street in New York and the logo for the Chase Manhattan Bank. Chermayeff studied at Harvard University, the Chicago Institute of Design and graduated from Yale University School of Art and Architecture.  He is an honored member of many professional associations, including the Industrial Designers Society of America and the Alliance Graphique Internationale.  Chermayeff has received many honors and awards for his design work.

This information is taken from Niss, Barbara J., “Art at Mount Sinai,” The Mount Sinai Journal of Medicine, v. 72, n. 6, November 2005, p. 413-17.  To learn more about major art pieces at Mount Sinai, come to the Levy Library, pull out the Journal and enjoy!

Missing the New York Times?

Running into the new New York Times payment structure for articles?  You don't have to pay for access!  You can read any New York Times article ever written using the Levy Library's ProQuest database.  Either search the ProQuest Historical New York Times collection, with the full text of articles fro 1871-2007, or read today's articles in the current New York Times database.

Articles are available in ProQuest the same day they are published in the New York Times.  A word of warning, though: ProQuest does not include pictures for current articles.  You can also set up ProQuest article alerts to get an email notification any time articles on a certain topic come out in the New York Times.  The ProQuest search interface is also much better for finding a specific article than the New York Times website.

To get to ProQuest, go to the Levy Library Databases page: http:librarycf.mssm.edu/levy/databases  Browse under News, Legal and Business, or just type ProQuest into the search box. 

Archives Document of the Week: Mount Sinai's 1985 Annual Report

In early 1986, Mount Sinai was preparing a report about the events of the previous year.  And while they included the highs and lows of 1985, the theme of the report was the future, specifically building a new patient pavilion that would carry the institution into the 21st century.  In 1986 Mount Sinai started tearing down buildings to make way for this new hospital facility.  They had an architect and a plan, but they needed others to buy into their dream - literally.  And so the 1985 annual report was used as a vehicle to draw people into Mount Sinai's vision. Here are portions of that publication and the illustration that appeared on the cover of the 1985 Annual Report of The Mount Sinai Medical Center. The artwork is by Raphal Olbinski and shows the atrium of today's Guggenheim Pavilion as it was envisioned in early 1986.  Notice the red walkway across the second level connecting Stern Auditorium to GP 2.

The text below consists of the unedited introductory paragraph and then the first sentence of the rest of the paragraphs of the opening page of the report. Twenty-five years later, Mount Sinai is again constructing a new building.  Again, there is an architect and a plan.  But what is interesting is that the vision that was articulated in early 1986 is equally true today. 

 

Visions of the Future

Mount Sinai is at the center of a revolution in the health care delivery system.  It is a revolution that is occurring at a quickening pace; one that involves every aspect of operations at the medical center: the admission and care of patients, the teaching of medical students, the pursuit of medical research, and the hospital's fundamental role in the community.

Mount Sinai research scientists are taking the lead in the advancement of medical science and technology....

Mount Sinai School of Medicine is taking innovative steps in the formation of a new curriculum geared to the rapidly growing body of medical knowledge....

Over the past several years, The Mount Sinai Hospital has taken even more steps to assure its philosophy of patient care not only takes advantage of scientific progress but also reflects a humane approach....

Not surprisingly, in its long tradition of leadership, Mount Sinai is rebuilding itself to meet the emerging health care needs of the future....

Mount Sinai in not merely keeping pace with the rapid developments in health care - it is shaping them.