MRC publishing – 100 years on

Posted on August 7, 2013 by Frank Norman

It may have escaped your notice that this year is the 100th anniversary of the Medical Research Council, and there has been a cornucopia of celebratory activities to mark the occasion.  One aspect that has not been much remarked on is the history of the MRC as a publisher. Since I have a Library store full of MRC publications I think it is probably down to me to wave this particular flag. Our recent open day motivated me to put together a little exhibition about MRC publishing, and I thought I might as well inflict it on my blog too.

Here are the notes about, and some photos of, the exhibits. I know the photos aren’t very exciting. In truth, the exhibition wasn’t very exciting either. In the feedback one person commented that it was a bit dull and “not interactive”. I know it is a niche interest but I  hope that this blogpost might find that niche.

One half of the exhibition.

MRC as a publisher

The Medical Research Committee (this was the original title of the MRC until it was reconstituted and renamed ‘Council’ in 1920) encouraged investigators to publish their results independently, in order to make them “readily available in the general pool of scientific knowledge”. MRC investigators had “freedom to publish without official approval”.

This policy helped to enhance MRC’s scientific credibility: MRC was about science not about politics. In the 1925-6 annual report the MRC said:

There is no certitude in science except that which is gained by the free and gradual suffrage of general scientific opinion based on repetition at will of the experimental facts reported.

The great bulk of MRC-funded research was (and still is) published in scientific journals, but MRC also had an extensive publishing programme itself, especially in earlier years.

Bear in mind that the range of journals available in 1913 was rather different, and more limited, than it is today. Looking in the MRC Annual Report for 1915-1916 (the first one with detailed listings of publications) the dominant journals are BMJ and Lancet, with about 30 publications each.  Next comes the Journal of the Royal Army Medical Corps with 11 then Biochemical Journal with eight, and Journal of Physiology with four.  There were one or two publications in each of another eight journals. This restricted choice of publishing venue makes it easier to understand why MRC considered it needed to publish some research itself, in dedicated channels.

1.       The earliest MRC book

One of the earliest actions of the MRC was to commission a book about milk. It was published by Longmans, but under the direction of the MRC. It gathered together knowledge about milk from a wide variety of disciplines and sources. Its author, Janet Lane-Claypon was a pioneer in epidemiology and the use of cohort studies. (Incidentally, she deserves a better Wikipedia page).

  • Milk and its hygienic relations by Janet Lane-Claypon (1916)

The first book the MRC commissioned.

2.         MRC Special Report Series (the green reports) and MRC Memoranda

MRC issued a small proportion of its researchers’ outputs in a series of Special Reports. These were published when results needed to be widely circulated, e.g. to medical services in the armed forces, or when sales to the general public were expected.  Many early Special Reports dealt with subjects relevant to the war effort. They were also used for reports of committees, assessments of the state of knowledge on a subject, and when results were too large for a journal article. The last Special Report was published in 1971.

MRC also issued short memoranda during the second world war. Subsequently some memoranda were issued for reports of ad hoc investigations and summaries of existing knowledge, aimed at medical practitioners.

The topics covered by the Special Reports and Memoranda illustrate the variety of MRC research. One day I will write a proposal to have the complete set digitised and deposited in PubMedCentral.  It has been talked of but no-one has done it yet.

a) A selection of Special Reports and Memoranda

  • Report of the committee on bed-bug infestation (1942). SRS 245
  • Hearing aids and audiometers (1947). SRS 261
  • The Rh blood groups and their clinical effects by P.L. Mollison et al (1952). MRC Memorandum 27
  • Employment problems of disabled youth in Glasgow by T. Ferguson et al (1952). MRC Memorandum 28

One of the Special Reports Series.

b) Special Reports on child health

  • The mortalities of birth, infancy & childhood (1917). SRS 10
  • A study of social and economic factors in the causation of rickets (1918). SRS 20
  • A study of growth and development: observations in successive years on the same children by R.M. Fleming (1933). SRS 190

Another volume in the Special Reports Series.

c) Special Reports on nutrition

An early bestseller was SRS no. 38, on vitamins, while no. 235 and its successor no. 297 (in several editions) became a classic work on the composition of foods.

  • Report on the present state of knowledge of accessory food factors (vitamins) (1924). SRS 38
  • Vitamins: a survey of present knowledge (1932). SRS 167

VItamins.

  • Chemical composition of foods by R.A. McCance and E.M. Widdowson (1940). SRS 235
  • McCance and Widdowson’s The Composition of Foods (1978). SRS 297, 4th edition.

McCance and Widdowson – several editions.

3.         Bacteriology

The NCTC catalogue was a valuable tool for researchers needing access to bacterial strains.

  • Catalogue of the National Collection of Type Cultures (1931). SRS 64, 3rd edition.

A nine-volume work on bacteriology, edited by Paul Fildes and John Ledingham, was a monumental reference book in its day.

  • A system of bacteriology in relation to medicine (1930-31). 9 volumes

Fildes and Ledingham’s great work on bacteriology.

4a.         War medicine – First world war

Almost as soon as the MRC was formed, the onset of the first world war meant that war medicine became a priority in the early years. The good work carried out by the MRC meant that it emerged from the war with its reputation firmly established. The MRC Annual Report 1917-18 has an account of research directed to the war effort.

Some examples of research reports relevant to the war:

  • The classification and study of the anaerobic bacteria of war wounds (1917). SRS 12
  • An atlas of gas poisoning (1918)

Beautifully and disturbingly illustrated atlas of gas poisoning.

  • 656 cases of gunshot wound of the head (1918). Statistical report no. 1
  • An analysis of 8,670 ophthalmic cases treated at a home hospital (1919). Statistical report no. 3
  • Studies of influenza in hospitals of the British armies in France, 1918 (1919). SRS 36

Statistics of gunshot wounds.

4b.    War medicine – Second world war

Again in 1939 the MRC directed its energies to supporting the nation’s war effort. Much of the detail is in Medical research in war. Report of the MRC for the years 1939-45 and in the later Medical history of the second world war edited by F.H.K. Green and Gordon Covell (1953).

A synthesis of MRC work in the second world war.

Example of research reports:

  • Report of the committee on tuberculosis in war time (1942). SRS 246
  • MRC War Memoranda nos. 1-17 (1940-46)

One of the War Memoranda (number 7 – Aids to the investigation of peripheral nerve injuries) had a very large circulation.  It eventually became a key diagnostic textbook, that is now its 6th edition and has been translated into several languages (see this account).

5.         Guides to medical literature

Medical Science: abstracts and reviews developed from efforts during the first world war to keep British military physicians informed about advances in medical science. It includes collective abstracts (or review articles) on various subjects as well as abstracts of single articles which the editors thought to be of special importance. The first volume was in 1919 and it ceased publication in 1925, by which time other similar abstracting journals had appeared in a number of fields. Just imagine – if MRC had continued to publish Medical Science it might have lasted up to the digital age and we could have had a homegrown Medline/PubMed in the UK.

The Bulletin of war medicine was published during the second world war “for medical men deprived of normal access to medical literature”. The Influenza Bibliography was produced by the NIMR Library and sent to members of the WHO collaborating network of influenza centres around the world from 1971-2010.

6.         Health & Safety – accident prevention

The Industrial Health Research Board was part of the MRC and published most of its research in its own report series, mainly due to the lack of suitable scientific journals in this field.

  • The influence of alcohol on manual work and neuromuscular coordination (1919). SRS 34
  • The incidence of industrial accidents upon individuals with special reference to multiple accidents (1919). Reports of the Industrial Fatigue Research Board, no. 4
  • Some studies in the laundry trade by May Smith (1922). Reports of the Industrial Fatigue Research Board, no. 22

  • The incidence of neurosis among factory workers by Russell Fraser (1947). Industrial Health Research Board Report no. 90

  • Toxicity of industrial organic solvents by Ethel Browning (1952). Industrial Health Research Board Report no. 80

The book by Ethel Browning became a classic toxicity book. The safety guide Safety precautions in laboratories (1960) predates the Health & Safety at Work Act by many years.

7.         Other MRC publications

The definitive history of the MRC’s first 50 years is Half a century of medical research by A. Landsborough Thomson. (1973-5). 2 volumes. This is always the starting point for any research about the MRC and its scientific programme.

A report in 1991 looked at how genome research was developing. I recall that back in 1990, not long after I had joined the Institute, I was summoned to a meeting with Diane McLaren (the author of this report), Dai Rees (MRC Chief), Ben Martin (bibliometrics expert) and a couple of genome researchers.  As part of a grand survey of genome research MRC wanted a bibliometric analysis of genome research publications.  My role was to advise on a suitable Medline search strategy to extract the base data for the analysis. It was a bit scary at first, but interesting and flattering to be involved. I’m not sure what happened to that survey as it doesn’t seem to have been published in this review.

  • Human genome research: a review of European and international contributions by Diane McLaren (1991)

The MRC produced a number of short guides on research ethics:

  • The ethical conduct of AIDS vaccine trials (1991)
  • The ethical conduct of research on children (1991)
  • Responsibility in investigations on human participants and material and on personal information (1991)

8.         MRC Annual Reports

These are less noteworthy – more like corporate documents. They were general accounts of the Council’s activity, and ‘yearbooks’ about research establishments, staff and programmes. The earlier reports have distinguished introductions drafted by Sir Walter Morley Fletcher, the first secretary of the MRC.

In the 1948-9 report a section Some Aspects of Medical Research appeared for the first time. Between 1955/6 and 1967/8 this section was reprinted as a separate pamphlet, as it provides a very useful overview of medical research topics. One day I hope that digital versions of all the MRC Annual reports will be published, as they are such a useful resource for the history of medical research in the UK.

In later years the annual publications were substantially slimmed down and became glossier and more colourful. The print runs were reduced, and they were also made available as pdfs on the MRC website. Now the Annual Review is also issued as an epub.

  • Annual Report 1914-15
  • Annual Report 1929-30
  • Annual Report 1948-50
  • Current Medical Research 1955-56
  • Current Medical Research 1959-60
  • Current Medical Research 1965-66
  • Annual Review 2001-2
  • Annual Review 2007-8

9.        Public-facing publications

More recently some MRC publications have focused explicitly on communication to the general public, with more readily understandable text and higher production values.

  • Mice and medicine (2000)
  • MRC Network Mar/Apr 2011
  • MRC Network Winter 2012/13
  • MRC Network Spring 2013

A selection of more recent MRC corporate publications.

NIMR started publishing the Mill Hill Essays, aimed at the general public, in 1995:

  • Mill Hill Essays 2003
  • Mill Hill Essays 2004
  • Mill Hill Essays 2010
  • Mill Hill Essays 2011/12

10.        Open Access and European PubMedCentral

After the US National Institutes of Health launched PubMedCentral (PMC) in 2000, changes began in the world of biomedical research publishing. Prompted by myself the MRC did take note of what was happening and in 2000/2001 there were quite serious discussions about creating a UK mirror of PMC, though these came to nought. A few years later in 2007 things had moved on and UK PMC was launched by a consortium led by Wellcome Trust but including the MRC. More recently it was renamed EuropePMC.  The European Research Council with 18 other UK and European funders fund this service.

The MRC now requires that electronic copies of research papers it funds are deposited in Europe PubMed Central, where they can be read freely.

Posted in Books, History, Scientific literature | Comments Off on MRC publishing – 100 years on

My six-monthsary

Posted on August 6, 2013 by Frank Norman

Anniversaries are all the rage these days, from the centenary of the MRC and the 80th anniversary of the flu virus, to the bicentenary and centenaries of Wagner, Britten, Lutoslawski and the Rite of Spring. But anniversaries are so slooooow to come around.

My husband and I, as the expression goes, just celebrated our six-monthsary. The concept of a ‘monthsary’ is not a commonplace here in the UK but I think it should be. The Urban Dictionary defines it as:

An important day, very much like an anniversary, but it is celebrated in terms of months, as opposed to anniversaries which are celebrated in terms of years.

I first encountered the word on Facebook, from one of my nieces in Manila as she proudly proclaimed her first, second, third etc monthsaries with her teenage beloved. Sweet. One source suggests that the very idea of a monthsary originates in the Philippines. They say:

Through monthsaries, couples can cherish their romantic moments together and celebrate them with dinner dates, sweet gifts, mushy lines, and beautiful kisses — without actually having to plod through a whole year. It’s romance in bite-size pieces.

I think monthsary-marking is a good idea – it maximises your opportunities for celebration. It is good to have the chance of extra mini-festivities before the first anniversary, a.k.a. 12-monthsary. I don’t think greetings card manufacturers have leapt on to the monthsary bandwagon yet, but it can only be a matter of time before they do.

But I wouldn’t want to take it too far – insisting on every single monthsary seems OTT. We marked our ter-monthsary with a little celebratory meal in a nice restaurant to celebrate our first three months as civil partners, and did something similar for the six-monthsary.

These occasions also provide an excuse to reflect back on that day in February. It was rather a good day, so why not?

Deciding to get CP’d was not an impulse thing. We had been together several years before finally tying this knot, so I had the feeling that we were mainly tying up loose ends – making sure the legal niceties were all in their proper places. It’s a cliche but you could say that we didn’t need the piece of paper, as we already knew we loved each other. However it turned out that it meant much much more to me than just loose ends being tidied up.

On the morning of the ceremony I felt calm, mostly. I was just a little bit anxious about the practical arrangements: we got up early and had to pick up the flowers, deliver the cake to the reception venue, put up a banner there, get ourselves ready, wait for the taxi and pick up a couple of the guests. All of that went to plan, except for a minor problem with the roses for our buttonholes: they were not very fresh and rather brown round the edges. After my sister did a bit of surgery on them to excise the wilted petals with some nail scissors they looked fine.

We got to the registry office in plenty of time. It was a lovely sunny day, but very cold. We took a few photos outside then guests started arriving and we took some photos of them.  I still felt calm. As the appointed time drew closer we wondered about missing guests yet to arrive, but it didn’t seem all that important. We nobbled one friend to take charge of the video camera during the ceremony.

We went to sit in a room with the registrar’s assistant, making sure we were the people named on the documents. Guests sat themselves in the ceremony room. There was a slight mix-up over music. I had selected a couple of short piano pieces to be played while the guests were waiting for the ceremony to start: one of Messiaen’s piano preludes (Colombe) and the final movement from A Lincolnshire Posy by Percy Grainger. I gave the CDs to the registry office attendant and she put them on, but she left the first CD playing, so that the guests had a rather larger and more animated dose of Messiaen piano music than I had intended. No one complained – I think they were all chatting too much to notice. Then the ceremony began.

Gerry and I walked in and sat at the top table with our two witnesses, opposite the registrar. He introduced the proceedings in a pleasantly informal tone, then started the proceedings. I went first (age before beauty is their principle). I repeated the words after the registrar, as I had seen and heard other couples do in so many weddings that I had attended over the years. It was a familiar scenario, but…

… then I felt a pricking at my eyes and a constriction in my throat. The words of the vows were not especially poetic or beautiful but they were simply and directly meaningful. I wasn’t just reciting a standard set of words, a formula. I was saying something that had a meaning and represented what I felt inside. The words were about my future life. They meant that Gerry and me  wanted to be together for the rest of our lives… that we loved each other.

I paused and swallowed, and regained my composure so that I could continue saying the vows. Then it was Gerry’s turn to make the same declaration which he managed without problem. Then, after a few signatures – lo, we were officially partnered!

The day continued with lunch in a local Thai restaurant attached to a pub (named after the television pioneer, but that is by the by). We and our 40 guests occupied the whole restaurant for the afternoon, enjoying some delicious food, including a splendid cake.

The tone was generally informal, but we did have a few short speeches. Gerry said something, my sister (unplanned!) said something, then I made a vaguely humorous speech, finishing with a declaration of my feelings for my new husband. But… what was this?  Again I had the same eye-pricking throat-constricting feeling that I had experienced earlier in the Registry office. I choked and had to pause for a couple of seconds before I recovered the power of speech to utter those final words. Later one or two of the guests said they too had tears in their eyes at that moment.

So, tying up loose ends? No! Important life-changing experience? Yes!

I was happy. Happy that all the planning was over and that things had gone so well. Happy that we had gone through this stage of life together, affirming that we meant what we said every day and telling the world that we meant it while receiving the blessing of the world in that official document.

Most of all though I was happy that we were receiving the blessing of all our friends and family and that they shared in our happiness. All those people came to be with US on that day. I felt a great wave of love from them. That was very special and remains very special. It means a tremendous amount.

 

Posted in Friends | 9 Comments

Envious admiration

Posted on August 1, 2013 by Frank Norman

There is a fine line between jealousy and envy. I had thought of them as pretty much the same thing until reading Stan Carey’s blog post on the subject. I think that admiration is also quite close; it is the nicer, more well-behaved cousin of envy. I have found myself admiring the work of some of my colleagues in other institutions, but also feeling jealous of their ability to make their work look easy and to bring off brilliant public engagement events.

My experience

I have just filed my report about a stint of science busking that I organised last month, as part of our MRC Centenary celebrations. This was inspired by the Francis Crick Institute’s science busking programme last year, organised by Lex Mannion. Lex helped me a great deal in defining our initial busking proposal and giving me practical advice.

Just in case you haven’t come across science busking before it is:

a small-scale public outreach technique – a way to engage the public with science – that has become very popular in the last few years. It is science by stealth: fun, informal and entertaining. The aim of science busking is both to entertain and to engage people with science.

I didn’t actually do any busking myself but I recruited volunteers from among our researchers, I organised the training, and on the day we did the busking for real I carried the props (and umbrella), and bought the coffees.

The first success of the programme was the training, provided by Ken Farquhar. He showed us how to communicate, how to attract attention, and how to be persistent without being annoying. He also helped us to develop some busking routines that could link in to conversations about our science. The only problem is that Ken is so gifted at public performance and interacting with people that he makes you feel incredibly clumsy in comparison. However he has figured what it is that he does to make this all work for him, and he is good at passing on this skill to his trainees.

Originally I had planned to have 20 teams of buskers working across four days in a big indoor shopping centre in north London, but bit by bit the plans were scaled back. First the shopping centre turned down our proposal, and then one by one my volunteers pulled out, leaving me with a much-reduced team.  In truth, I think I should have been managing the volunteers more actively, reminding them and meeting up with them to keep it in their minds (and diaries).

Eventually the day for our busking came. We had three teams, working in shifts, and in total they talked with about 50 people for between 2 minutes and 20 minutes each. It worked, though the day we had chosen was particularly windy and increasingly wet so we finished earlier than planned. But, 50 people is 50 people!

It was quite a new departure for us as most previous outreach here has been targeted at schools, and largely at groups visiting the Institute rather than randomly targeting people out on the street.  I felt very isolated, being the only voice trying to make this event happen in the midst of  scepticism all around (“Science busking? What’s that? It’ll never work!”). But, we did it; the buskers enjoyed it; the victims audience enjoyed it. We put out the word on to the wild streets of North Finchley about science, the Institute and the MRC.  The positive things I will carry forward are those memories of successful interactions – all the people who had their eyes opened, their curiosity tickled, their lives changed. We hope to do some more science busking later this year, ideally on a day without wind and rain, and possibly in collaboration with the Crick’s science buskers or another group we made contact with, the London Science buskers.

How to do it properly

Thus I was bruised but unbowed by my experience of organising outreach stuff.  I am not sure if I want to do any more of it, but I enjoy seeing the results of other people’s efforts.

About the same time I was in thick of my science busking project I attended the launch of a series of three booklets aimed at children, published by the Francis Crick Institute. However this wasn’t just the launch of three booklets, but the culmination of a few months of work involving a range of different people working together to produce the books. The Science and Story project was organised by Lex Mannion, the Crick’s brilliant Education and Outreach Manager. I loved everything about this project. It linked up a children’s writer, three designer/illustrators, a handful of scientists, groups of children and community groups. The principal outputs were three illustrated children’s books, but the route to their production entailed running a series of workshops, which sounded like great fun for everyone involved, and there was also a 5 minute video about the whole process. You can read more about the project on the Crick website, and I urge you to watch the video; it is charming.

The three books covered Francis Crick and the structure of DNA; research about malaria and cancer; what the Francis Crick Institute is.

Francis Crick Institute Malaria and cancer research  Francis Crick and DNA

What I love about the project is the mixture of different outputs, and the fact that there is a lasting result from it (i.e. the books).  The children involved in the workshops are also featured in the books – either through pictures they drew of themselves or other artwork that they contributed.  In the workshops the children interacted with the writer, designers and scientists. And of course the children are also the target audience for the books.

I am reminded of another brilliant project conceived by another brilliant public engagement practitioner.  Brona McVittie from the MRC Clinical Sciences Centre  launched the Suffrage Science project a couple of years ago. Again it involves a range of activities and outputs, from fabrics, jewellery, books, and events, and it has a long-range effect as the Suffrage Science process continues year after year.

I wish that one day I could dream up something like these projects, and see it realised.

Posted in Communicating science | 2 Comments

Library Day in the Life 2013 – Friday

Posted on July 29, 2013 by Frank Norman

My last daily report (for Friday 26 July, but written on the following Monday). See previous reports for Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday.

I didn’t have time to do my daily blog report on Thursday night so I came in early and posted it on Friday morning. I always think that it’ll only take 20 minutes to type something up but it was more like an hour.

I did my daily policy/news scan. Highlights were something about London’s medical city, a post excruciatingly entitled Postdocalypse by Austin, a Dean Burnett piece about the term ‘boffins’ and something on Independent scientists.

On a Friday I also do a weekly round-up. I select between a dozen and 20 of the most interesting items from the previous week’s policy news. That gets squirted into the weekly internal newsletter (communicate) that comes out on Friday afternoon. Sometimes I think that I should write a weekly round-up and put it on this blog.  But then reality kicks in (NO TIME!).

I received an amended version, plus image, of the website news item about the Science paper, so put that up as a draft. The title and standfirst are a bit long so I asked the author to shorten those. It’s not the end of the world, but it makes it harder to fit things in if we have very long titles for news items.

The paper on PolyQ has been published so I was able to make that news item live. I also made a link to it from our intranet home page and tweeted it.

I was delighted that one of yesterday’s attendees sent me a piece she had written about the Wikpedia edit-a-thon – it meant I didn’t have to write something.  I edited it a little to go into the internal newsletter (hope I did not mangle anything). There was quite a bit more to-ing and fro-ing, mainly by email,  connected with yesterday’s events and some photos too to be digested.

The Crick Institute has a new Transition Director, i.e. responsible for ensuring that the creation of the new Institute goes smoothly. We have been encouraged to talk with him, so I arranged a meeting.  I don’t know that the Library will be top of his priorities, but perhaps I can persuade him that it shouldn’t be right at the bottom (or absent).

Today is our trainee librarian’s last day here.  One of her more visible tasks is to prepare communicate, the internal newsletter, so I wrote a piece about her to go in this week’s issue. Then the Library team all went off for a special lunch to mark her departure.

After that I checked through communicate, made a few edits and then gave it the thumbs-up to go live. It was quite a bumper issue this week. During August I will have to create each issue on my own, so they will be rather thin (it’s usually a quiet time in any case due to holidays).

Late in the day I remembered about an email from one of our Lab Managers that I had not yet replied to. A publisher said they needed an OA payment within 5 days of receipt of the email announcing that a paper had been accepted. Failure to comply would mean an additional £50 payable to make the article OA (on top of the £1400+VAT). We struggle to make payments within 30 days, so 5 days is pretty much a non-starter. There was not much I could do to help, sadly. This is another reason why I am looking forward to the JISC APC service.

That was about it. Not a bad week, but I still have too many things to finish off:

  • two sets of minutes
  • two or three evaluation reports
  • three or four news items for the website
  • journal renewals
  • transition funding bid
  • promotion for the innovative journals publishing day in October
  • Alumni newsletters
  • Get the ebook authentication sorted and the service launched

Plus everything else on lower priority to-do lists. Maybe next week I can finally clear most of those things off my desk.  Here’s hoping.

Posted in Libraries and librarians | Tagged | Comments Off on Library Day in the Life 2013 – Friday

Library Day in the Life 2013 – Thursday (Wikipedia edit-a-thon)

Posted on July 26, 2013 by Frank Norman

My latest daily report. See previous reports for Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday.

Today’s the day it’s all happening. Fingers crossed. I am hosting a Wikipedia edit-a-thon in the Library and there also be a talk/discussion about women in science (not in the Library). A blogpost is coming out, and we have a poster exhibition on the same topic.

I made an early start. I opened all the upper windows first thing to get some fresh air in to the reading room. The man who cleans the Library was still around when I arrived, and he kindly helped me with a bit of furniture shifting first thing, starting to prepare the area for today’s event.

I had an email from Science notifying me that one of our researchers has a paper coming out next week. I have already done a draft news item for this one but am awaiting revisions back from the paper’s author. I forwarded the notification to them as a “hurry up and get back to me”.

Then I saw that the Occam’s Corner blogpost by Athene and myself had been published.  It was about women in science and the Wikipedia edit-a-thon that we are hosting. It is only my second Occam’s Corner contribution, so was pleased to see it there. It started getting noticed on Twitter.

I then did my daily scan for science news/policy items. Highlights were (immodestly) the Occam’s Corner post, the Rosalind Franklin Google doodle, and something about university-industry collaborations. I was in a bit of a rush so didn’t search quite as thoroughly as usual.

Then Mel Nunn, the MRC Head of Diversity and Equality, arrived.  He is co-ordinating a series of MRC Wikipedia edit-a-thons (for the MRC Centenary) so has been doing much of the organising of this event. We got the area set-up – more furniture shifting and power cable plugging (I had to run round and find an extra extension lead as ours had disappeared). I know from bitter experience that if people are coming to an event with their laptops or tablets then they are going to need access to power sockets, so I had made sure we had plenty available.

The first delegate arrived pretty early but luckily coffee arrived not long after that. The room still felt cool but I suspected it would heat up later so I asked them to bring up jugs of iced water too. My Library colleagues arrived and were soon helping out. We had previously selected some useful books and reference sources for people to use during the edit-a-thon, so hoiked them off the shelves. Then more delegates started arriving so we took it in turns to go down and guide them up to the Library. Then I had an email to say “Le gateau est arrivé”. We had arranged to have a rather nice cake to finish the day off (more later).

By 10.30 we had 25 people gathered – from as far afield as Cambridge and Portsmouth – all with laptops or tablets (or both!) connected to the WiFi (thanks to expert assistance from IT Matt and my colleague Patti).  Some quick introductions and then the day began.

Edward Hands, a Wikipedia volunteer editor, outlined the aims, ethos, methods and ecosystem of Wikipedia. Richard Nevell, from Wikimedia UK, went through a practical demonstration of the mechanics of registering an account in Wikipedia, your user page, using talk pages, checking the revision history of a page etc etc. He answered several questions along the way (e.g. “Who chooses what goes on the news page each day?”).  A picture emerged of a consensual way of doing things and reaching decisions. Meanwhile a few latecomers arrived and I needed to fetch an extra table as we had one or two more people than expected.

The workshop attendees ranged from professors to undergraduates.  Five came from the Institute, but the majority were visitors.  Only two were male – one aim was to help increase the number of women Wikipedia editors so we had tried to encourage women to attend.

Then Athene arrived – she had agreed to give a talk about women in science, during the lunchtime session, followed by a panel discussion. I picked her up from reception and we went to the seminar room to check everything was working fine, then back upstairs to the Library where lunch was now served.  That had to be eaten swiftly and everyone trooped downstairs to hear Athene’s talk followed by a very lively discussion.  The seminar room was packed with about 100 people – standing room only.

At 2pm the serious editing started.  Phoebe Harkins from the Wellcome Library introduced the online historical resources that they make available to registered members of the library (many are available to remote users). My colleague Patti Biggs introduced a tip sheet she has written on searching for biographical information, plus some published reference sources.

I then left them to it as I had to go and take minutes for a Heads of Divisions meeting.

Back upstairs 90 minutes later I found a hive of activity. Most people had their heads down in concentration, studying text or editing pages.  Kath Nightingale from the MRC Comms team (she runs the MRC Insight blog) was interviewing various workshop attendees. Elizabeth Gibney from Times Higher was also talking to various people to get a flavour of the event. I took her down to interview our Institute Director too.

Assisted by the three Wikipedia experts (Edward, Richard and Kate Chan) the new editors were making good progress in creating new pages and improving existing pages. Patti was dashing around finding useful information sources for people.

Meanwhile on Twitter I had had more RTs and mentions than I can ever remember before, connected with the OC post and the edit-a-thon.

The editing session was scheduled to end at 6pm, for the really dedicated editors, but we had the cutting of the cake scheduled for 5pm and that effectively marked the end for most people.

A slight technical hitch occurred when we realised we didn’t have a cake-knife available and the restaurant kitchens were closed already! I ran around and managed to track down a moderately-sized (but small) knife.  You always forget something! The cake was duly photographed and cut and, of course, eaten. It was very tasty – kudos to the cake makers Anika and Reena Mistry. People slowly drifted away after that and we started clearing up. Then I took the three Wikipedia trainers down to our bar for a quick drink and a debrief. And, relax! It was over.

It was a great day, made great by so many people helping – not just those mentioned above but also those helping with preparations in advance (thanks Amy!) and on the day (thanks Nicky!) and of course by the enthusiasm of the attendees.  There really seems to be a great deal of demand for this kind of event.

It was the first we have hosted anything quite like this, or as high-profile as this, in the Library. I think the new layout of the Library worked very well for the event.

It wasn’t exactly a normal working day, but was certainly very rewarding.

See you tomorrow for my last “Library Day in the Life” post.

Rosalind Franklin’s birthday cake (created by Anika and Reena Mistry). Thanks to Kirstie Whitaker for the photo.

 

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Library Day in the Life 2013 – Wednesday

Posted on July 24, 2013 by Frank Norman

Here is my third Day in the Life post this week (see Tuesday’s post, and Monday’s post for some background).

I came in first thing to find a few emails from my boss in my inbox.  One was a reply to my request for a quote about our retiring Assistant Director, so I was able to add it in and publish that news item. Another was about the MRC’s new records management policy. This looks, er, interesting but not primarily my responsibility (or such is my hope).

In other emails I received the final draft of the OC blogpost I mentioned on Monday. It is looking good – just a minor amendment needed. Also I had a reminder about an unpaid invoice, so pushed that over to our finance people. I also had a reminder to approve an order for an open access payment.

Then I did my scan for research policy/news. Highlights today were a report of an Academy of Medical Sciences lecture about the pharmaceutical industry, something in The Scientist about evaluating peer reviewers, and something claiming that much pre-clinical animal research is flawed. I wasn’t sure about that last one – it is really about drug development rather than about fundamental research, but I figured people should know about it.

The main business of the morning though was to attend a meeting – something to do with our women in science team. My daily research policy scans often bring up news about women in science initiatives or opinions. The team want to spread such information in a more coordinated fashion,  so I was invited along to their meeting to advise. They agreed to contact our web manager to discuss setting something up on the intranet. I got out of the meeting relatively unscathed, though I am going to have to do some work later on. I made it clear that the team will have to do some of the work too.  Sometimes people think that you can magic up some coherent web pages out of thin air. The truth is that it is easy to conjure up awful web pages, but takes time and discussion (and skill) to create pages that fit in with everything else on the intranet and have just the right amount of information on. That’s why we have a web manager.

I had some feedback about the polyQ news item that I worked on yesterday.  I made a few changes, and it is now ready to be published as soon as the paper appears online.

I sent out a quick email reminder to one of our IT guys to find out what is happening about our plans to start using an ebook service. We want to use Shibboleth with this service (since no other authentication method seems to work for us – long story) but we need IT to do some initial setting up. Trouble is we/they have only recently got into Shibboleth so none of us are really sure how to go about things. I got a quick reply to my email, but it doesn’t sound as though things are moving along as quickly as I had hoped.

A request from another MRC library for some journal usage stats necessitated delving into Excel and extracting them. This publisher (one of my least favourite!) will not provide site-by-site stats, only for all MRC sites together. This causes difficulties when we’re trying to justify subscriptions, but it is one of those ‘must-have’ journals so I cannot imagine cancelling it anyway, and they know this.

I realised that this week is a “KfR” week.  We have a Library blog (internal only) but fear it does not get looked at all that much, so every couple of weeks we highlight posts from the blog in the Institute’s internal weekly newsletter, in a feature called “Knowledge for Research”. Hence we tend to focus our contributions to the Library blog when a KfR is due. I highlighted something about F1000Research wanting papers about software, a list of books people pretend to have read, a report about Wikipedia edit-a-thons at NLM and NIH and a couple of other things.

It’s interesting to see F1000Research progressing. I have arranged for them to come and give a short talk here in the autumn, along with Biorxiv, PeerJ, Frontiers and Open Biology. I hope it will be a useful round-up of some of the newer publishing ventures.

The MRC’s Head of Diversity and Equality then dropped off some materials for the Wikipedia workshop tomorrow and we had a quick chat about last-minute arrangements.   I also looked over a tip sheet that my colleague had prepared for tomorrow, about searching for biographical information (I try not to be an OCD micro-manager … but I fail).

In the afternoon I started writing up notes of a meeting held last week all to do with Library services in the future Institute.  Nothing is clear as yet but we had some interesting discussions on key issues. I broke the back of the notes, but still have one last section to write. I don’t mind this sort of thing, but it is difficult to make notes when you are also chairing, and you know that any actions noted down are going to have to be done by you.

I had a couple of slightly confusing and contradictory hints about the staffing situation, from different sources. I just hope I will know one way or the other soon.

Well, the to-do list is still long, and keeps nagging at me. Tomorrow is another day.

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Library Day in the Life 2013 – Tuesday

Posted on July 23, 2013 by Frank Norman

Here goes with my second Day in the Life post this week (see Monday’s post for some background).

I had planned to get in super-early this morning, but a disturbed night thanks to the thunderstorms put paid to that. I arrived at my desk about one hour before my visitors were due to arrive.  This gave me time to make a few tweaks to the blogpost for Occam’s Corner, mentioned yesterday, and do my daily news scan. Highlights today were the announcement of the various Royal Society awards and honours, a rant about big grants and a paper about the future of the German research funding system.

My visitors then arrived, slightly early. They were two of the winners of our 2013 School Essay Competition, aged 15 and 17.  As well as a small cash prize the winners get to spend a day at the Institute and to tour some of the labs and facilities.  I started by telling them that if they had ambitions of becoming scientists they must learn how to be consistently five minutes late for every meeting, then I brought them upstairs and explained how the Institute works, its science and its history, plus a bit about the Library and science publishing (including a quick explanation of Open Access). They didn’t look too shell-shocked. Luckily their next appointment after me was a resuscitating coffee in the Restaurant.

Then I worked on another news item about a forthcoming paper, this one about polyQ repeats. It sounded interesting but I won’t say more as it’s not published yet. I worked on it during the day and sent it off to the PI early afternoon for checking.

I was interested to see an email about a new comment on a blog post I had tracked some time ago. The comment mentioned a page on the CRUK website about finding information on the internet.  Looks like a useful set of reminders about how to assess the reliability of sources. It took me back to the glory days of OMNI and its work on resource evaluation.

In the last 12 months we have had several new research groups start up. We encourage new group leaders to introduce themselves to the rest of the Institute by writing a few paragraphs about their new research programme, to go in our weekly newsletter. When I suggest it they all agree this is a good idea but it can take a good deal of urging before they get round to doing it. I was therefore pleased to receive such a piece this morning, ready to go in this week’s newsletter.

I was also pleased to see that a couple of requisitions in our ordering system have now been converted into purchase orders, which means that I can process two invoices which have been waiting on my desk. One of them is for a payment to the JISC APC pilot.  This should make it much easier to process those pesky Open Access payments to publishers.

In the mail I received our annual checklist of journal subscriptions, sent by our serials agent. I plan to cancel a few outstanding print subscriptions for 2014 but hope to retain most online subscriptions. I need to take a deep breath and go through this list soon, then return my instructions to the agent in good time.

A corridor conversation with someone in HR gave me a bit of the glums. One of the Library staff is leaving us, having found a new job.  She joined us under a trainee scheme and has now graduated as a qualified librarian, so getting her first professional job as a Librarian (capital L) is the culmination of what we have been working towards and of course great news for her. But it’s not such good news for the rest of the Library team. The training scheme no longer exists so we need to recruit someone to fill her position, but in the public sector these days recruitment is severely circumscribed. I am still waiting to hear for sure whether it is thumbs up or thumbs down, but the HR person gave me to understand that the news may not be good.  I have started thinking about what tasks we will have to ditch or downgrade. There’s no way the remaining staff can take on 33% extra work to cover the loss of a post.

Another visitor came to see me briefly after lunch to pick up a copy of our Open Day programme. The Open Day was dedicated to her late husband and the programme mentioned this so I saved a copy to give her. He did a great deal of work for the outreach programme at the Institute (including setting up the School Essay competition).

Another small task (perhaps one for chopping if necessary?) I do is to check the weekly list of new additions to our database of staff publications. This database feeds into the website and the annual report, amongst other things, so it is important. But it’s just one more thing to do.

This year’s Mill Hill Essays are way behind schedule, so I was pleased to finally hand over most of the text to our PhotoGraphics people to start assembling for publication. I still have to do a few things, but gave them the bulk of the essays.

I ticked off a few things today from my to-do list, but I hope tomorrow I can tackle some big tasks.

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Library Day in the Life 2013 – Monday

Posted on July 22, 2013 by Frank Norman

Sadly the Library Day in the Life project has ended. It provided a chance twice a year for librarians round the world to explain what they did each working day for a week.  I took part twice, in 2011 and 2012. The project ended earlier this year – it had grown quite large with many participants and its originator realised that it needed new goals and better focus. Sadly she felt she was not able to devote time to refocusing it so she decided to close it, though the archive is still on the original site.

On a whim this morning I decided I would do my own Library Day in the Life each day this week.

My first task on arriving was to put together a few words about the retirement of our Assistant Director after 45 years’ service. Yes: 45 years.  There was a party for him on Friday evening and I made some notes from the speeches. I decided on Friday that it wouldn’t be a good idea to try and write something after a few glasses of champagne and wine, so had to do it first thing today.  I sent it off to the editor of the MRC’s internal news magazine in good time before the deadline.

Then I carried out my regular scan looking for news about science policy and related things. The best piece today was from James Wilsdon about Demos, but I also liked the Labguru piece on motivating your lab team.

The next task was to assemble a short news item about a recent paper from one of our PIs. This is to go onto our external website. Mostly I just rearrange words from the abstract, introduction and discussion, trying to make a single story emerge. I don’t have the skill or time to write a lay-friendly piece, but our website is mainly aimed at scientists not the general public. It took a couple of hours, with various interruptions from visitors, phone calls and emails. Happily the PI liked what I had done so I made it live after lunch.

Many of those interruptions were open access queries. One postdoc was submitting a paper to a journal that apparently required that a licence to publish be signed at the time of submission.  That seemed unusual. Eventually she decided to submit to a PLOS journal instead. A divisional administrator (DA) asked me for help as one of her PIs wanted to make several of his articles open access, going back to 2009. The publisher of the articles in question did not have a paid OA option, so the PI would need to deposit the accepted manuscripts into PubMedCentral (PMC). The DA is going to come back to me once she has checked if a) he still has the manuscripts b) he knows his PMC username and password. Someone else also wanted to make a recent paper OA and wanted to know how to deposit into PMC.

I envisage this level of enquiries on OA will continue. The Director has just sent out a message (written by me) to all staff advising them that we need to improve our OA compliance.

Another interruption was about the renewal of a key database product. The rep who called me is trying to persuade us to add on some additional products to our basic subscription (almost no chance). The subscription is not due to expire until end of September, but may be a bit complicated so it’s good to start thinking about it now. The cheapest option is the three-year renewal, but that takes us well into 2016, by which point this Institute will have ceased to exist and will be part of the Crick. We have only just begun to discuss arrangements at the new Institute for online resources. Hence this apparently simple renewal raises all kinds of questions, not the least of which is how the new JISC banding arrangements will apply.

I delved into Twitter occasionally throughout the day, for light relief. I noted some adverse comments on David Cameron’s plans to filter the Internet, and was intrigued to see something called Radical Library Camp being planned for September. I am not really a radical, but I do find radical ideas stimulating – they shake me out of my tendency to cosy complacency. Definitely considering going along to that event.

Right after lunch I was supposed to have a meeting with someone about transition plans.  This was to discuss some documents but as we hadn’t prepared the documents yet I suspected it would not be a productive meeting. Then it turned out that he wasn’t actually in work today, so that settled that. It was a relief to have a bit more time, but I do really need to sort out our transition plans soon.

Next job was to finish off my contribution to a piece for Occam’s Corner. This is in connection with Thursday’s Wikipedia event, so I won’t say more here.  The main event is fully booked, but I am still getting some requests for extra people to come.

Finally, I just need to figure out what I am going to say to our School Essay Competition winners, who are visiting tomorrow. My task is to give them a quick overview of the Institute and its history, plus an introduction to the Library. I can do that in my sleep, but I just need to plan it out a little.

See you tomorrow!

 

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The building takes shape

Posted on July 9, 2013 by Frank Norman

My Institute will vanish in a couple of years’ time and will be reborn as part of a brand-new Institute: the Crick. One of the advantages of working in an Institute that is going through these difficult times is the chance to peek into the developing new Institute – the largest single-site construction project in the UK. It is quite something.

I was lucky enough to go along to the topping out ceremony last month, though I remained firmly on the ground – I was not part of the select party that went aloft to witness the actual topping-out. Down below, I got to witness the speeches by Sir Paul Nurse, the Francis Crick Institute Director,

and by Chancellor George Osborne (I even found myself clapping at the end of his speech – that’s a first!).

However, only a small group actually went upstairs after that to ladle cement into a little hole on the roof.

Image courtesy of Francis Crick Institute. http://www.crick.ac.uk

Last week though we did get to go up on top of the building.  They have regular site tours for staff and we arranged for all the Library staff to go.  I rather expected that post-topping out it would feel like an almost complete building, but I was wrong there. It is still very much a building site and much of the building is still open to the elements. We had to get kitted out in boots, hardhat, safety glasses and gloves. We walked up and down many flights of steps (the scary wobbly kind with holes in) and took a very slow hoist up  a few floors. We went down into the basements, as much as 17m deep, and went up onto the 7th floor (almost the top), with fairly impressive views of London.  Sadly photographs are not allowed so I wasn’t able to get any snaps of my own. (You can see a regularly updated album of photos on the Crick’s Facebook page, and some more in their Construction news pages).

It still needs a bit of imagination to see how the final building will look, but being inside it I got some sense of the scale of the building (i.e. big). The exterior is now starting to look more like the artists’ impressions, as they have put much of the glass on and are putting the lovely terracotta cladding on. We were told to come back again in Spring 2014 when it should look more like a completed building, though there will be another 12 months or so of fitting out work after that.

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An 80th annivirusary

Posted on July 8, 2013 by Frank Norman

For most of us, appearances on TV are still unusual enough to generate some excitement.  Even just a slight chance of a televisual encounter can get the pulse racing. Last December I became briefly excited on hearing that the BBC were to do some filming here about the Institute’s influenza research. They wanted to film the Library’s model of the structure of influenza haemagglutinin and there was a passing mention of a remote possibility of them maybe wanting someone to read out a text if a suitable person was available (pleassir, me sir, me, me!). Well, on that occasion fame didn’t beckon but they made a good video piece about the Institute’s flu research, past and present, interviewing staff from the WHO Influenza Centre here.

As part of my getting-carried-away-with-myself I fished out a few books and reprints connected with influenza to make a little display. I chose some articles from around the time that NIMR scientists first identified the flu virus, as well as some older books. I dont think the BBC film crew noticed my efforts and I confess it was a bit of a half-hearted attempt.  But at least one person did notice it – one of our esteemed virologists (now retired but still very much involved in flu work) remarked on the display, and I admitted that it was my work. He also pointed out that 2013 would be the 80th anniversary of the landmark paper identifying the flu virus, published 8 July 1933 in The Lancet. He said there was an idea to mark this with some kind of event, so I asked him to let me know when the plans were finalised.

Over the next few months I asked again from time to time but soon realised that the idea had faded away. But it seemed to good an opportunity to let pass, so last month I pressed another of our esteemed virologists (not retired) to write something about the anniversary to put up on the Institute website. He sent me something just before our Open Day at the end of last month. I was too madly busy with preparations for the Open Day to do anything with it right away.

The Open Day went off well, with a wonderful unexpected visitor. The day kicked off with three science talks, one of them on influenza.  At the end of that talk a hand went up to ask a question and a certain Dennis Busby stood up and said “I joined the influenza research group at NIMR in 1934, and then in 1936 I was the first person to be injected with the flu vaccine”. Heads turned to look at him, a piece of living virological history. The more cynical members of the audience probably thought he had been planted, but I can assure you he wasn’t – everyone was taken by surprise. Dennis became the centre of attention after that.

Next day I got into action and discovered that Tilli Tansey had interviewed Den Busby for her 2008 article on research technicians, including a number of quotes from him. He joined NIMR in 1934 aged 15 and gradually worked his way up to head technician before retiring in late 1979. I also found a few photos of him in the archives.  I dashed off an email to my colleagues in the MRC Press Office, hoping to inspire them with some influenza history – an anniversary and a human interest story. A few days later and I was rewarded with the news that there was to be a blogpost on the MRC blog (a version of the piece that our virologist had written), plus another piece on the Guardian‘s history of science blog, the H-word, guest-written by Michael Bresalier. I remembered Michael from a few years ago when he visited to look at our archives.  His PhD thesis is about the history of influenza, and I see that he has  a book coming out soon about the subject so he is well-qualified to write about this anniversary.

So, these are the three (overlapping) pieces that came out this morning on the Guardian, MRC and NIMR blogs/websites, variously on some combination of influenza, MRC, NIMR, 1933, and Dennis Busby:

It’s also worth mentioning another account that came out as a Mill Hill Essay a few years back:

So, what of my little book display about influenza? In the face of all this historico-virological scholarship I feel shy to highlight my random assemblage of biblio objects.  But it’s now or never, so here goes. They are just a few things that were easy to find and seemed significant or interesting to me.

  1. Pride of place must go to the 1933 Lancet paper. (Elsevier have kindly agreed to grant universal access to this paper in perpetuity).
    • Wilson Smith, C.H. Andrewes, P.P. Laidlaw (1933) A virus obtained from influenza patients. Lancet 222(5732): 66–68. Article fulltext

  1. A couple of years later Christopher Andrewes gave a brief introduction to a meeting on influenza, and highlights some of the issues that were still unclear at that time about the virus.
    • C.H. Andrewes (1935) Influenza in Man and Animals Proc R Soc Med. 28(7): 941–950. Article fulltext.
  2. Patrick Laidlaw gave the 1935 Linacre Lecture on influenza, relating the background to their 1933 paper and the research leading up to it.  He also highlights the questions remaining to be decided, about the apparent variation in the virus. The lecture was published in the Lancet.
  3. Later Andrewes gave another overview of influenza, this time to a BMA meeting. He mentioned the early work in testing a vaccine, and noted the differences between strains of virus saying “the tangle is not going to be an easy one to unravel”. He concluded that “there are grounds for hope that an effective prophylactic against influenza may be found”.
    • C. H. Andrewes (1937) Influenza: Four Years’ Progress. Br Med J. 2(4001): 513–515. Article fulltext

Going back in time, I fantasised that these next three books might actually have been consulted by the team of Andrewes, Smith and Laidlaw.  Unfortunately closer inspection suggests that probably none of these items were actually in the Library in 1933.

  1. Die Grippe-Epidemie im Deutschen Heere 1889-90. Berlin, Ernst Siegfried Mittler und Sohn, 1890. [The flu epidemic in the German army. With a rather nice cover.]

  1. M.C. Winternitz, Isabel M. Wason and Frank P. McNamara. The pathology of influenza. Yale Univ Press, 1920. [Observations during the 1918 epidemic in New Haven, USA. Has very fine illustrations, including this Aubrey Beardsley-like picture.]

  1. University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine. Studies on Epidemic Influenza; Comprising Clinical and Laboratory Investigations. Univ Pittsburgh, 1919. [Investigations during the epidemic at Pittsburgh, 1918. This seems like a good summary of knowledge about the disease at that time. It also has some illustrations].

Finally, a short overview of influenza written in 1976 by two more names to conjure with from the history of flu research at NIMR:

  1. Influenza: the virus and the disease. Charles H. Stuart-Harris and Geoffrey C. Schild. London, Edward Arnold, 1976.

Handling these books and typing this post I find myself sneezing a little.  I’m not sure whether it is the high pollen count today, or the dust from the old books, or just a sympathetic immune response to the idea of the flu virus.  I hope that reading my words hasn’t induced a similar effect in you.

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