When COVID-19 moved most of UMB to mandatory telework, the HSHSL began to collect the history of our campus’ response to the pandemic. These items are now available in the UMB Digital Archive for future researchers to understand the effect of the pandemic on our campus and Baltimore city.
As we enter a new phase of the Pandemic and return back to campus from mandatory telework. The HSHSL encourages the campus community to once again reflect on COVID-19. Some points to reflect on are:
What did it feel like to return to the office?
What was your experience with getting the vaccine?
What did it mean to you to get the vaccine?
What did the last year teach you about yourself and UMB?
All members of the campus are welcome to participate in this project. Stories, photographs, and reflections on the pandemic can be submitted through the project’s website: UnMasking a Pandemic: Stories from UMB during COVID-19.
To date the project has collected personal reflections, artwork, and literary works from across the UMB Community. The HSHSL is interested in receiving items of personal reflection, creative work(s), or anything that documents your thoughts, emotions, and experiences during this incredible time.
To participate please see the Project’s Website and fill out the Survey to submit materials. If you have any questions or would like to submit physical items to our collections please contact, Tara Wink, Historical Collections Librarian and Archivist.
The HSHSL is proudly sporting our new Black Lives Matter cicada sculpture from the Cicada Parade-a art project. The artwork was created by Támi Jacobs. There are more cicadas around campus, can you find them?
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Fully vaccinated people do not need to wear face coverings or practice physical distancing in the HSHSL. Those who are not fully vaccinated must continue to wear a mask and practice physical distancing whenever they remove their face mask to eat and drink. See UMB Policy Required Use of Face Coverings
Building Access
Access to the library is restricted to students, faculty, and staff with UMB One Cards, and hospital staff with UMMC IDs. Badges must be displayed at all times while in the library. Floors 1 – 5 are open for use.
For more information please contact the Information Services desk at hshsl@umaryland.edu, or call 410-706-7995.
The Health Sciences and Human Services Library Historical Collections’ strives to provide broad access to our diverse collections both in person and digitally. Materials in our collections appear as they originally were published or created and may contain offensive or inappropriate language or images and may be offensive to users. The University of Maryland, Baltimore does not endorse the views expressed in these materials. Materials should be viewed in the context in which they were created.
“Locust Year. – The seventeen year Locusts will appear this year in all those parts of Maryland, Pennsylvania, Virginia and Delaware, embraced in the following boundaries: commencing at the Delaware river, near Germantown, Pa.; thence southwesterly to the Blue Ridge of the Allegany mountains along the east side of the Ridge to Loudoun and Fauquier counties, Va; thence easterly through a portion of Fairfax, across the Potomac, above Georgetown, through Montgomery and upper portion of Anne Arundel counties, Md., the Patapsco; along the north side of the Patapsco to the Chesapeake Bay; thence to Havre-de-Grace, through to Cecil County, and Delaware, to the Delaware river; up the west side of that river to the beginning…
They will begin to leave the ground about the 20th of May, a few days earlier or later, according to the weather.”
~Dr. Gideon B. Smith, The Sun, February 1, 1851
Many of us, read articles similar to the one quoted above in early 2021 preparing us to see and hear Brood X Cicadas. Scientists, relying on research begun 187 years ago, predicted with surprising accuracy where and when the 17-year cicadas would appear in Pennsylvania, Maryland, Delaware, and Virginia.
Most of us living near wooded areas have become accustomed to the hum and fluttering of the 17-year cicadas over the past few weeks. The 2021 cicadas have inspired everything from cuisine to artwork to tattoos. Whether you love the loud buzz or cannot wait for them to just go away, the cicadas have created a lot of buzz this summer. Much of what is known about the thirteen- and seventeen-year locusts is credited to the work of University of Maryland, School of Medicine graduate Dr. Gideon B. Smith, class of 1840.
Gideon B. Smith was born in 1793. He married Elizabeth Bennett in 1826; this marriage produced a daughter Elizabeth Smith in 1829. The elder Elizabeth died in 1832; Gideon remarried Susan Stewart in 1833. Smith’s daughter, Elizabeth married Captain James Gavet.
Smith had an active career in newspapers, entomology, and as an inventor and entrepreneur prior to attending and graduating from medical school. He was editor of the American Farmer, a newspaper headquartered in Baltimore that shared agricultural news, market prices for livestock and crops, and reports from agricultural societies. He had a special interest in silkworms, which included importing and selling the caterpillars and their cocoons in the United States; he even invented a silk reel in 1829, which improved upon the Piedmontese Reel. In 1830, Smith released A Treatise on the Culture of Silk, Detailing the Method of Raising the Mulberry, Managing the Silkworms and Reeling the Silk. In 1838, he became the editor of the Journal of the American Silk Society.
Gideon B. Smith had a friendship with John James Audubon, the American ornithologist. Smith was a subscriber of Audubon’s Birds of America and for his financial support received the honor of having a bird named after him: the Smith’s Lark-Bunting or Plectrophanes Smithii. Today the bird is known as Calcarius pictus or Smith’s Longspur.
Smith also had a friendship and professional relationship with Dr. Nathaniel Potter, founder of the College of Medicine predecessor of the University of Maryland School of Medicine. Dr. Potter first noticed the cicadas (Brood X) in 1783 and began studying the bugs in 1817.
According to Smith’s article, “The American Locust, ‘Cicada Septemdecim’,” he began studying periodical locusts in 1834 with Potter. In 1839 Smith assisted Dr. Potter with his book Notes on the Locusta. Perhaps it was Dr. Potter who encouraged Smith to attend the University of Maryland School of Medicine. Dr. Smith graduated in 1840 at the age of 47, with a thesis titled, Cholera Infantum. Dr. Smith was admitted to the Maryland State Medical Society (MedChi) in 1843. Unfortunately, he was dismissed from the organization in 1848 by the Maryland Board of Examiners for unprofessional conduct. It is unclear what caused this dismissal from the medical profession.
After the death of Dr. Potter in 1843, Dr. Smith continued his research of periodical cicadas. Using his connections in the newspaper world, he collected data on cicadas by writing letters to newspapers asking people to send him with observations of cicada emergence in their region. Through this data collection method, he was able to predict when and where the 17-year cicadas would appear in sixteen U.S. regions. Through a similar data collection method, Dr. Smith tracked other broods of 13-year and 17-year cicadas from 1845 to 1858. Unfortunately, Dr. Smith never formally published his research on periodical cicadas in manuscript format, relying instead on newspaper articles; therefore, until recently Dr. Smith’s impact on entomology was lesser known.
Dr. Gideon B. Smith died on March 24, 1867. He is buried in Baltimore’s Mount Olivet Cemetery.
Cordell, Eugene F. (1903). Smith, Gideon B. The medical annals of Maryland, 1799-1899; prepared for the centennial of the Medical and Chirurgical Faculty. Williams & Wilkins. p570 http://hdl.handle.net/10713/12582.
Gifford, George E. Jr. and Laura T. Gifford. (1961) John James Audubon and Gideon B. Smith, M.D. Bulletin of the History of Medicine. 35I5): 475-477. https://www.jstor.org/stable/44446821.
The HSHSL will continue as a Regional Medical library from 2021-2026 in the Network of the National Library of Medicine (NNLM). The HSHSL will also headquarter the Network Web Services Office (NWSO) for the NNLM, serving all seven of the NNLM regions. This prestigious cooperative agreement is overseen by the National Library of Medicine at NIH and will be worth almost $10M over the five years. The NNLM mission is to improve health by providing access to biomedical and health information, through awards and training, to everyone from researchers and public health workers to members of the public. Members include not only libraries and information professionals but also public health departments and community groups with interests in health and health care.
As one of UMB’s longest running awards, for over 35 years, the HSHSL served as the regional headquarters for the Southeastern Atlantic (SEA) Region of the NNLM, encompassing ten states, Puerto Rico, the U.S. Virgin Islands, and DC. This year, the NNLM realigned and reduced the number of regions. The new Region 1 includes DC, Maryland, North Carolina, Virginia, and West Virginia from the former SEA region. Delaware, Kentucky, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania are the new regional colleagues. The HSHSL looks forward to developing collegial and effective relationships within the region and across the other six regions within the NNLM.
Explore citizen science through the lens of community and environmental health with a new HSHSL-created edX course, Citizen Science: Gearing Up for Discovery. This asynchronous, free course builds skills in non-scientists who may want to implement or participate in a citizen science project. It’s uniquely focused on health-related projects in environmental health and public health. Enroll Now: http://bit.ly/HSHSLCitizenScience You can start at any time and work at your own pace!
When COVID-19 moved most of UMB to mandatory telework, the HSHSL began to collect the history of our campus’ response to the pandemic. These items are now available in the UMB Digital Archive for future researchers to understand the effect of the pandemic on our campus and Baltimore city.
