Page Forward - Fall 2018

PAGEforward FALL 2018

DAVID L. RICE LIBRARY NEWSLETTER EDITOR, MONA MEYER

WHAT'S INSIDE THIS ISSUE? page 2 Meet our staff page 3 Deaconess Archives Internship page 4 Open Access pages 4-5 A picture is worth a thousand words page 7 You asked. We listened.

100 Years Later: The Spanish Influenza Pandemic by Mona Meyer This year marks the 100th anniversary of the outbreak of the Spanish influenza. The Spanish flu raged for approximately 12 months and it was incredibly deadly. More than 50 million died worldwide, 675,000 of them Americans. More Americans died than were killed in WWI (American war casualties were 116,000). In the month of October 1918 alone, 195,000 Americans succumbed.

One thing the Spanish influenza was not, was contained to Spain. With Europe and the United States subject to strict wartime censorship, information about the flu in those areas was not reported. Spain was a neutral country, however,

and its press was free to report on the crisis, thus giving the false impression that Spain was the center of the pandemic and suffering more than other regions.

One factor that made this flu so deadly was who it killed. Flu is normally hardest on the very young, those with other health issues and the elderly; those populations were indeed hit hard by the 1918 pandemic. However, this flu also targeted and killed healthy adults ages 20-40.

Death came fast—there were many stories of people waking up sick and dying before they got to work. Why was this age group hit so hard?

According to an article by John M. Barry in the November 2017 issue of Smithsonian, “Journal of the Plague Year,” “As it happens, young adults have the strongest immune systems, which attacked the virus with every weapon possible—including chemicals called cytokines and other microbe-fighting toxins—and the battlefield was the lung. These 'cytokine storms' further damaged the patient’s own tissue. The destruction, according to the noted influenza continued on page 2

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Meet Rice Library’s newest librarian, Assistant Director and Head of Public Services Andrea M. Wright, who came to work with us on July 16 of this year. She earned her MLIS from the University of South Carolina in 2007.

Andrea’s story is one of how plans change, how you can go down a path other than the one you initially intended to follow. She attended Furman University in Greenville, South Carolina, as a chemistry major, fully planning to eventually pursue a PhD. She unfortunately learned that she hated the lab work, but really enjoyed the research and citation tracking aspect. As she neared graduation she thought that perhaps she’d teach chemistry in high school, until she saw an advertisement for a new position as a Science Librarian at Furman. The position required a masters of library science, a degree with which she was unfamiliar. Upon investigation, she learned that earning this degree would equip her for positions that played to her strength and preference for research; she then enrolled in the masters of library and

The Spanish Influenza Pandemic expert Edwin Kilbourne, resembled nothing so much as the lesions from breathing poison gas.” (p. 42) The flu spread rapidly—within a mere 18 months, fully one third of the world’s population of 300 million were infected. Great Britain lost 228,000 citizens. India was overwhelmed. It even reached Australia and more remote Pacific islands—Western Samoa (contemporary Samoa) lost

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information science program at the University of South Carolina in Columbia, South Carolina, part time while working as a secretary at a law firm. Fast forward to the summer of 2007, when she saw that there was a Science Librarian position open at USC. With the understanding that she would finish her masters level degree in December, she was hired by the Thomas Cooper Library. She met our library director, Marna Hostetler, who was working there at the time, although their paths did not often cross.

In 2011, the Science Librarian position at Furman was once again open and, eager to return to her alma mater, Andrea applied and was hired. For the next eight years she focused on growing both outreach and instruction. During this time the concept of open access gained momentum, and she became the university’s copyright officer.

Andrea really, really loves citation tracking and metrics! She’s glad that her position here incorporates reference, instruction and scholarly communication, giving her the opportunity to connect and collaborate with many different people across campus to improve student and faculty success. She sees her work as two buckets—helping to integrate student instruction into the curriculum and addressing scholarly communication with faculty members, assisting them in dealing with its impact, rights in publishing, etc. Andrea is off to a great start and we're so glad she's here! continued from front page

one fifth of its population.

The year 2018 also marks the 100th anniversary of the United States’ entry into World War I, and the war played a role in the rapid spread of the flu. First, there was the issue of population density.

Families often consolidated households to conserve resources and share child care while a husband/father was away at war.

Soldiers themselves were

gathered together in greater numbers at camp, in training, aboard transport ships, etc.

Haskell County, Kansas may have been ground zero for the Spanish flu—the outbreak there in January 1918 was severe enough for a local physician to report it to the U.S. Public Health Service even though such reporting was not mandatory. Several men from Haskell reported to Camp Funston, a training facility at Fort

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Deaconess Archives Internship

This view of the 1899 hospital has the 1893 house version in the background. This photograph is from Rice Library’s digital collections, RH 033-242. The time of this postcard is believed to be circa 1927.

The University of Southern Indiana’s History Department offers an internship for undergraduate students at the Deaconess Midtown Hospital archives. The internship requires 150 hours of work per semester, with one internship offered each spring and fall semester.

The student who is chosen for this internship receives credit for History 490, Internship/Special Studies in History, and earns an hourly wage, thanks to the USI Foundation. University archivist Jennifer Greene supervises the intern, meeting with the student on an almost weekly basis. Students who have taken or are currently enrolled in History 439, Introduction to Archives, may apply for this internship, submitting both a cover letter and two letters of recommendation. History Department faculty members select the winner.

Deaconess Hospital has a rich history, celebrating its 125th anniversary in 2017. “Evansville was a flourishing river city with a population of more than 50,000, and a new hospital was badly needed. At that time, an amazing discovery called electricity was promising a better way of life, and the country was enjoying an era that would later be known as the 'Gay Nineties.' Following the tradition of the Deaconess Movement, the Protestant Deaconess Association called on Bethesda Deaconess Hospital in Chicago, Illinois, for the guidance it needed to plan a new hospital. One year later, a nurse arrived from Chicago, and four Evansville physicians were appointed as Deaconess staff members. The hospital's first work was restricted to private medical care, but in June 1893, the Association bought a home on the corner of Mary and Iowa streets which was converted to a 19-bed hospital. It was a crude beginning for an institution that would become the largest hospital in southern Indiana. A three-story brick hospital was completed in 1899 and was celebrated as one of the most impressive Deaconess institutions in the country. The new Protestant Deaconess Hospital had beds for more than 60 patients. It boasted three operating rooms with hot and cold sterilized water and 'good lighting, so that operations could be performed with the same degree of safety day or night.' " (Deaconess: About Us/Our History) The Deaconess Healthcare System has expanded greatly since this time, but archival material dates back to the earliest days, when a converted house accommodated the first hospital. The collection includes administrative logs, which show how much services cost. In addition, there is an extensive collection of more than 10,000 photos and a small vintage nursing uniform collection that contains pre-WWI styles. The largest portion of the archives covers the Deaconess nursing school before it closed its doors.

The Deaconess Archives are located on the midtown campus of the hospital, in the Health Sciences Building. The internship position began with the spring 2018 semester, and the initial goal was organizing and structuring the collection.

Subsequent interns will compile inventories so that finding aids can be created and will also begin scanning the large collection of photographs.

First internship recipient, Lacee Clement, delving into the collections.

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A picture is If a picture is indeed worth a thousand words, then Rice Library has several employees who have written volumes! These creative Open Access Week is October 22-28. According to SPARC (the Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition), “Open Access is the free, immediate, online availability of research articles, coupled with the rights to use these articles fully in the digital environment.”

Society progresses when breakthroughs in research are clearly and equitably communicated. Cures or new treatments for diseases, methods of addressing ethical issues such as genetic engineering, or dealing with an epidemic of mass shootings—these are concerns where research, if freely and easily available, can promote progress. Yet, this is often not the case.

“Our current system for communicating research uses a print-based model in the digital age. Even though research is largely produced with public dollars by researchers who share it freely, the results are hidden behind technical, legal and financial barriers. These artificial barriers are maintained by legacy publishers and restrict access to a small fraction of users, locking out most of the world’s population and preventing the use of new research techniques. This fundamental mismatch between what is possible with digital technology—an open system for communicating research results in which anyone, anywhere can contribute—and our outdated publishing system has led to the call for Open Access.” (SPARC website)

individuals design and construct the wonderful displays you see in the library. Three of them are senior library assistants in Checkout: Nancy Langley, Janice Morgan and Cecilia Pryor. Displays on the 3rd floor of the library are managed by the library assistant for University Archives/Special Collections, James Wethington.

Nancy is responsible for one display case and displays within the children’s area on the 1st floor. The ideas for the display case, located on the 2nd floor at the top of the library's back staircase, come from whatever interests her—the current display is about gardening. It features books from our collection and personal items such as a small trellis, gardening hat, a trowel, and flowering boughs. In the children’s area her displays highlight new children’s books, award-winning children’s books, and themed displays.

Nancy is working on an upcoming display on Harry Potter and is looking forward to seeing her idea come to fruition.

Janice is our original display artist and is responsible for 3 cases

Librarians Becca Neel, Peter Whiting and Andrea

and the sign cases in the core area

Wright have been studying this issue and how Rice

(near the elevator). She highlights

Library should respond. As a first step, Becca and

library information and events, as

Peter identified and interviewed a small number of USI

well as campus, local and current

faculty members who published in open access

events. Her inspiration comes from

resources. During Open Access Week 2018, these

searching Pinterest for pictures of

interviews will be made available at usi.libguides.com/

department store windows, and

openaccessweek. Look for a “big” announcement

then working to create a diorama

about the Library’s open access response later this

with depth to it. She is proudest of

year!

a display she created several years

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worth a thousand words!

by Mona Meyer

ago about concentration

looks forward to highlighting books for middle-grades readers

camps. The library was

as these are frequently overlooked.

hosting a traveling Holocaust Museum display in the 2nd floor reading room, and the display reflected that. Janice made a striped jacket with

Most of these displays contain materials owned by the library, and it is important to note that these items ARE available to be checked out or viewed. The user does not have to wait until the display is over.

James’ domain is the

a yellow Star of David, similiar to those worn by those held in

flat display case in the

concentration camps, and added barbed wire and other 3-

University Archives/

dimensional objects to create a stark and effective display.

Special Collections department, the 2 cases

Cecilia’s work can be found on the

in the 3rd floor hallway,

information wall (across from the

the sign case in the core

photocopiers on the 1st floor) and

on the 3rd floor, and

on or atop the lower bookcases

another display area in the Liberal Arts building. Ideas for

near the reference desk. She

these displays are a collaborative effort with department

highlights recently-arrived items,

employees and highlight interesting items within its

creates themed e-books displays,

collections. James also likes to get student workers involved,

and other special displays as

and finds that they are helpful with the “crafty” part of

requested. She, too, likes to use

displays. James’ displays usually stay up for about a year, but

Pinterest for ideas—she looks for

the sign case in the core area is changed every other month.

displays that other libraries have created and then aims to make them more eye-catching and intriguing here. Cecilia likes her banned books displays; her work for National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo) in November pays homage to her undergraduate work in writing and psychology and her masters in writing for children and young adults. She was introduced to NaNoWriMo as an undergraduate and sees is as a great springboard to any kind of writing. Given that everyone has to write something (not necessarily a novel) sometime, Cecilia’s display encourages taking the first step and joining the NaNoWriMo community! In another upcoming display, she

He says that this case seems to really draw the attention of students, causing them to come into the department to seek further information. His favorite display was one he created about the evolution of how music is transmitted. It contained Edison phonograph spools from within the collection, CDs, cassette tapes, etc. Music is also transmitted via radio, and a radio in the display was tuned to a different station daily and turned on for passersby to enjoy. As with all library displays, materials within James’ displays are available upon request. He feels that if an item within one of his displays piques someone’s interest, his job is done!

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The Spanish Influenza Pandemic Funston, a training facility at Fort Riley, Kansas. On March 14, a sick soldier reported to the infirmary, and within a few hours more than 100 more arrived. Within the week, the number of sick soldiers quintupled. Second, soldiers don’t stay in one place—they moved to other camps, spreading the flu to at least 24 more large Army camps. Camp Devens, an Army base outside Boston, Massachusetts, held 45,000 soldiers and a 1,200 bed infirmary.

On September 1 there were 84 patients in the infirmary. On September 7 a man initially diagnosed with meningitis reported in and by the next day 12 more men from his company also were sick. As more grew ill, the diagnosis was changed to influenza, and at its peak 1,543 soldiers fell ill in one day. The hospital was overwhelmed— medical personnel were sick, too many cafeteria workers were sick to feed the healthy, and with all the beds full, many patients suffered and died in their barracks.

One Camp Devens doctor reported that they averaged 100 deaths daily, with insufficient coffins and bodies “piled up something fierce….” (p.37) It was inevitable that the disease would pass back to the civilian population, and when soldiers were sent overseas, they carried the disease with them.

It was the perfect storm, and the fury of the storm was exacerbated by its rapid spread, lack of medical understanding and unwillingness

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to face the facts. At first medical personnel misdiagnosed the flu as meningitis, pneumonia, etc. Many of the infected survived, making it seem no worse than any other flu outbreak. Most flus infiltrate the upper respiratory system, but this one also settled deep in the lungs.

When it became apparent that the situation was grave, one puzzled doctor wondered if this was a new disease. With about one half of all physicians under the age of 45 serving in the U.S. military, there were not enough left to address the problem. Because of the huge numbers of deaths, individual funerals were not always possible, and some were buried in mass graves.

According to Barry in his Smithsonian article, the way public information was handled in a time of war played a huge role. Once President Woodrow Wilson committed the U.S. to entering the war, he was adamant that the American public be fully on board.

One of his advisors wrote, “Truth and falsehood are arbitrary terms…The force of an idea lies in its inspirational value. It matters very little if it is true or false.” (p.

37) Congress passed the Sedition Act, making it a crime to do or say anything that might be construed as hindering the war effort. Public health officials, wishing to be seen as loyal Americans by keeping up morale, downplayed any talk of the flu as a serious health threat or pandemic. For instance, a large Liberty Loan parade was scheduled in Philadelphia. Doctors

urged those in charge to cancel the parade for fear of further spreading the disease, and even encouraged the press to investigate this. They further wrote letters to the editor. The newspapers refused to print any articles or letters, and the parade went on as scheduled.

Philadelphians paid the price. The flu killed 759 people in one day, and in the end, 12,000 died, most within a six week period.

In commemoration of those who died and honor of those who survived, the CDC (Centers for Disease Control) created “History of 1918 Flu Pandemic” on its website. In a section called “Storybook,” it gathered personal recollections of how the flu influenced so many people. A Pennsylvania man, whose mother was a young girl at the time, recalls, “Mom described standing on the porch and staring at the neighbors across the street. They were dead. Their bodies were lying in the front yard. Then she saw bodies in front of other houses and even in the street.

Even the pets were dead….From that day to the day she died, Mom maintained a vigil against a threatening world.”

A Virginia woman wrote of her father’s first wife, who, not a nurse and having five children of her own, “helped care for flu victims all over the city. No one she took care of died, but Emily herself became ill with the flu and did pass away in 1919 at the age of 35.”

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The Spanish Influenza Pandemic

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ill. Eleanor went into a coma for over a week with a very high fever. She was placed in a room by herself with the windows open and was packed in ice. The nurse who cared for her had to wear a very heavy fur coat when taking care of her. She lost all of her hair, had to learn to walk again, and missed school the rest of that year.”

A woman from Wyoming was told this story by her father, of a “country doctor who boasted that he had never lost a patient. His secret weapon was “rotgut” whiskey. He would pour the whiskey into the patient to get them to cough up the phlegm. During the pandemic, he ran out of whiskey and there was none to be had in the community. The only whiskey in Lusk was locked-up in the sheriff’s office as evidence for a bootlegger’s trial. The sheriff refused to release the liquor. So, the doctor got a few prominent citizens together for a kind of vigilante committee that promptly seized the whiskey, depriving the sheriff of his evidence.”

Rice Library has many resources available that made researching this article easy. The specific ones consulted and quoted are listed below, but many more

can be found by using fUSIon from its link on the Library’s homepage. Click here to see the results of a search on Influenza Epidemic, 1918-1919 OR Spanish flu OR Spanish influenza. This is a very broad search that includes all types of media—books, articles, DVDs, etc. in multiple languages. You can refine your results by choosing limits appropriate for you—English language only, peer-reviewed journals, etc. If you need help, be sure to ask one of our reference librarians!

Barry, John M. “Journal of the Plague Year.”

Smithsonian, v.48:no.7, November 2017. p. 34-43.

Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases (NCIRD). 1918 Flu Pandemic: 100 Years.

Saul, Toby. “Inside the Swift, Deadly History of the Spanish Flu Pandemic.” Inside the Swift, Deadly History of the Spanish Flu Pandemic. National Geographic History Magazine. (online, date uncertain) Taubenberger, Jeffery K. and David M. Morens. “1918 Influenza: the Mother of All Pandemics.” Emerging Infections Diseases, v.12:no.1, January 2006. p. 15-22.

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