Was your childhood filled with the tales of Alice in Virusland?  Ann the Anopheles Mosquito?  Huber the Tuber?  No?

In the early 20th century, long before WebMD and daytime television, it was a struggle to get the word out about public health risks in a way that was both attention-getting and informative.  Using illustrations provided a double advantage- it was an easy way to depict what could not easily be photographed, and it also played off the huge popularity of daily newspaper comic strips at the time.

The American Society for Microbiology Book Collection, part of Special Collections at the Albin O. Kuhn Library, provides several great examples of the innovative use of illustrations and humor to get across some very serious messages.  ASM Archivist Jeff Karr shared three such publications for us to highlight.

Alice in Virusland is a slim volume containing the transcript of an address given in 1938 by Paul F. Clark, a professor of bacteriology at the University of Wisconsin and president of the Society of American Bacteriologists (the predecessor of the American Society for Microbiology).  Clark borrows heavily from Lewis Carroll’s original work, mimicking many of Carroll’s songs as well as his prose style, in order to lament the dangers of anti-vaccine sentiment.  The book is filled with fantastical illustrations of microbes and viruses in traditional Alice in Wonderland situations, dating from a time when no one was really sure what many of these things looked like.

Printed in 1943, This is Ann is about Ann the Anopheles Mosquito, and the ways in which she and her type spread the dread disease of Malaria.  Produced by the War Department, this helpful little booklet lets soldiers know how Ann operates, and how to avoid her, by sleeping under mosquito nets and making sure their bodies are covered at all times.  The booklet is filled with the uncredited, but distinctive, drawings of one Captain Ted Geisel, AKA Dr. Seuss!  Additionally, it was written by Munro Leaf, author of Ferdinand the Bull.

While recovering from the effects of tuberculosis, Harry A. Wilmer, M.D. had quite a bit of time on his hands.  He filled his days by creating the character of Huber the Tuber, a tubercle bacilli who along with his friends, invade and infect Lungland.  Written in 1942 as World War II raged, Huber the Tuber: A Story of Tuberculosis features Wilmer’s Tubers as thinly disguised Nazis, including their leader, Nasty von Sputum.  For a medical doctor, Wilmer shows himself to be quite the talented illustrator, deftly combining medical drawings with cartoonish characters.

Although these three books are not exactly great works of literature,  they do provide a fantastic record of the early 20th century public education efforts of the medical establishment.  You can see them and more in person.  The American Society for Microbiology Book Collection is in the catalog.  You can also stop by the Special Collections Department to access them.  Special Collection is located inside of the Library Gallery, Monday-Friday from 1-4pm, and Thursdays from 1-8pm.  Other hours are available by appointment:  email speccoll@umbc.edu.  

This post was written by former Special Collections student assistant Steve Ammidown.

Related Resources 

American Society for Microbiology

This is Ann from the Navy Department Library

USDA digitized version of This is Ann

Alice in Virusland digitized

9 Things You May Not Know about Dr. Seuss

Celebrate World Car Free Day with OCSS!

For one day, leave your car at home and try riding your bike, walking, or taking public transportation.

AUTHOR: Karly Trinite, Sustainability Outreach Intern @ OCSS

For more info about D.C. events:http://www.carfreemetrodc.com/car-free-day-events.php

For more info about the OCSS shuttle tour on Sept.
20^th: http://my.umbc.edu/groups/casualcarpooling/events/19877

For more info about Transit Services: www.umbc.edu/transit

UMBC offers several transportation options such as Transit Services, Casual Carpooling, and Zipcar for those without private transportation or for those who just want to reduce their carbon footprint.

Transit services provides seven shuttles that connect you to downtown Arbutus and Catonsville, Arundel Mills Mall, shopping centers and grocery stores, apartment complexes, BWI airport, and Marc and Light Rail stations. Because the transportation fee is included in mandatory tuition and fees, boarding is free-of-cost—just swipe your red UMBC ID to ride. Transit shuttle schedules can be located online at www.umbc.edu/transit, and printed copies are available at the office of Off-Campus Student Services. All shuttles are equipped with bike racks (except the Wave ‘n Ride which loops the campus) and free WIFI. The Transit Tracker mobile application can be downloaded to smartphones or accessed on the Transit website to track the real-time location of all shuttles.

In order to get to downtown Baltimore, you can hop on the MTA #35 public bus which stops directly at UMBC. MTA public buses #77 and #99 also service the UMBC campus directly. A one-way ticket costs $1.60 and a day pass costs $3.50. Frequent MTA riders can opt to purchase a discounted student pass called the “All Access College Transit Pass” at the office of Off-Campus Student Services for $39. This pass provides unlimited access for one month on local buses, metro subway, and light rail in Maryland—Marc train and Commuter buses are not included with this pass. To purchase regular or students passes for Marc train or Commuter buses, visit the MTA website at http://mta.maryland.gov/.

If Transit Services or MTA can’t get you to your desired destination conveniently, Casual Carpooling is another option. A UMBC student carpooling community is growing online at http://my.umbc.edu/groups/casualcarpooling. Join, connect, and create a carpool using the suggestions and carpooling etiquette tips provided. A carpool social will be hosted by Off-Campus Student Services on September 11, 2013 from 12-1pm in the UC Ballroom Lounge to alleviate some of the awkwardness of carpooling with strangers for the first time. Free lunch is provided.

Students are encouraged to use a Zipcar as their carpooling vehicle. Zipcar is a car-rental service available at UMBC for students, faculty, and staff. The traditional age requirement has been waived, so Zipcar membership is open to anyone 18 years old or older. UMBC campus community members can join for $25 and immediately receive $35 in driving credit as an incentive. Driving credit must be prepaid, and it includes gas and insurance costs. Two Zipcars are parked near UMBC’s Counseling Services on Center Road. More information about Zipcar can be found at http://www.zipcar.com/umbc.

If you live in the DMV and are interested in learning more about graduate school, plan to take a “road trip” to the GEM GRAD Lab on Saturday, September 28!

From the GEM Website: “GRAD Lab encourages young people of color to consider graduate engineering or science education and applying for the GEM fellowship.” 

Segments of the program:

• “Why Graduate School”
• “How to Prepare for Graduate School”
• “Understanding the GEM Fellowship”, and
• “Voices From the Field: Real Life Research and Internship Experiences”

Program Agenda: http://www.gemfellowship.org/events/grad-lab/391-gl-virginia-agenda-2013

The event is free! Register here:

http://egem.gemfellowship.org/events/ViewEvent.aspx?contextID=10097

Students from any school in the region may register for this free event! Just set up a free eGEM account and register online using the link above.  

UMBC’s Sr. Assistant Dean for Graduate Enrollment, K. Jill Barr, J.D., will be one of the panelists!

UVA GEM GRAD Lab Co-sponsors: UMBC, The University of Virginia, Virginia Tech.

• FREE bus transportation will be provided for students from UMBC.  Reserve bus seats by sending email to promisestaff@gmail.com, with the subject “BUS for GEM GRAD Lab.”  NSBE, SACNAS, AISES, and SHPE Presidents from schools other than UMBC should send a list on behalf of their students. Each email must have the name of the student, school, major, and email address.  
• Students from schools other than UMBC, and students who are not affiliated with a NSBE, SACNAS, AISES, SHPE chapter,  are encouraged to carpool.
• If you’re planning to go, please let us know. Place a comment here on this page, AND send the email to promisestaff@gmail.com (for the bus trip.)
• The bus will leave at 6:00 AM from the front of UMBC’s Administration Building – landmarks: “Administration Drive,” Flag pole, The Retriever Athletic Center (RAC).  The bus will leave UVA around 4:30 PM, with expected arrival back at UMBC at 6: 30 PM.

Driving directions to UVA: http://www.seas.virginia.edu/about/visit.php

The trip from Baltimore to Charlottesville, VA is approximately 3 hours.

If you live in the DMV and are interested in learning more about graduate school, plan to take a “road trip” to the GEM GRAD Lab on Saturday, September 28!

From the GEM Website: “GRAD Lab encourages young people of color to consider graduate engineering or science education and applying for the GEM fellowship.” 

Segments of the program:

• “Why Graduate School”
• “How to Prepare for Graduate School”
• “Understanding the GEM Fellowship”, and
• “Voices From the Field: Real Life Research and Internship Experiences”

Program Agenda: http://www.gemfellowship.org/events/grad-lab/391-gl-virginia-agenda-2013

The event is free! Register here:

http://egem.gemfellowship.org/events/ViewEvent.aspx?contextID=10097

Students from any school in the region may register for this free event! Just set up a free eGEM account and register online using the link above.  

UMBC’s Sr. Assistant Dean for Graduate Enrollment, K. Jill Barr, J.D., will be one of the panelists!

UVA GEM GRAD Lab Co-sponsors: UMBC, The University of Virginia, Virginia Tech.

• FREE bus transportation will be provided for students from UMBC.  Reserve bus seats by sending email to promisestaff@gmail.com, with the subject “BUS for GEM GRAD Lab.”  NSBE, SACNAS, AISES, and SHPE Presidents from schools other than UMBC should send a list on behalf of their students. Each email must have the name of the student, school, major, and email address.  
• Students from schools other than UMBC, and students who are not affiliated with a NSBE, SACNAS, AISES, SHPE chapter,  are encouraged to carpool.
• If you’re planning to go, please let us know. Place a comment here on this page, AND send the email to promisestaff@gmail.com (for the bus trip.)
• The bus will leave at 6:00 AM from the front of UMBC’s Administration Building – landmarks: “Administration Drive,” Flag pole, The Retriever Athletic Center (RAC).  The bus will leave UVA around 4:30 PM, with expected arrival back at UMBC at 6: 30 PM.

Driving directions to UVA: http://www.seas.virginia.edu/about/visit.php

The trip from Baltimore to Charlottesville, VA is approximately 3 hours.

If you’ve been using the UMBC campus wireless system lately (and our administrative software says that you have), you may have noticed a big improvement in speed and coverage. That’s because this summer, DoIT’s network engineers completed, in record time, a comprehensive system upgrade that brings UMBC up to current 802.11 standards.

That’s not to say that the campus wireless network has been ignored until now. Far from it. But the piecemeal ways in which previous expansions to the network were done, with an eye toward basic functionality that provided coverage to about 90% of building interiors, left UMBC with a hodgepodge of technologies, some almost 10 years old.

Discussions about a possible upgrade began in April. Soon after, the Office of Residential Life, eager to improve the wireless network in its buildings, agreed to fund upgrades to all of the residence halls. After the university put forward the funding for the academic buildings, the project was approved.

The massive amount of new network equipment required for the upgrade was ordered in May and arrived in June, when work commenced in the residence halls.

In Chesapeake Hall, for example, owing to the building’s solid cinder block construction, wireless signals were often interrupted. To combat this, during the building’s renovation, access points were installed in every other room, giving each group of four suitemates a point of their own.

Another immediate problem was in locating all of the 900 existing access points, many of which weren’t mapped. This was done with detection software, and a fair bit of eyeballing. Within two weeks, over 500 access points in the residence halls had been upgraded. Each access point would require approximately 30-45 minutes of work from two student employees to complete, with the project ultimately requiring over 1500 total hours of work.

Six student employees, along with network engineers Carlos McKinney and Ray Soellner, did the lion’s share of the work. The project also received an assist from DoIT’s telecom group with helped with some tricky wiring issues, and some of the more problematic locations.

Once the student staff had done the hands-on work, they assisted the network engineers to complete the configuration tasks, including making sure to accurately map the locations for each of the now 1200 access points.

In mid-July, work on the main campus began, which presented some unique challenges, such as the access point located in the rafters above center court in the RAC, and the one 20’ from the floor in Public Policy’s Lecture Hall 9.

Network Engineer Carlos McKinney remembers Lecture Hall 9 well.

"What we ended up having to do,” McKinney said, “is calling somebody from the electric shop to get an extension ladder to get to this one access point at the top of the lecture hall.”

McKinney said, “It did more swaying from side to side than I would expect an extension ladder to do, especially when you're trying to climb it. Ultimately we were able to get the access point replaced, but that was a bit of a trial, especially for me. I generally don't like heights anyway, and now I'm climbing up this extension ladder that's swaying, and it's not like I can grab onto something - it's a sheer wall.

“So, that was fun. But ultimately we got the access point replaced, it came up and everyone was happy."

In the Commons, where up to 1100 wireless devices might be in use at any given time, the number of access points was increased from 22 to 46, and these were placed closer to the places where traffic was heaviest.

Damian Doyle, DoIT’s Assistant Director of Networks and Security, commented on the changes there.

“Last semester in Commons, if you sat in Main Street in the middle of the day and tried to use wireless, you could barely check your email. You could maybe get a third of a megabit through, it was just so saturated with people,” Doyle said.

“I went over yesterday and did some informal measurements and I was getting fifteen or twenty megabits down to my phone,” said Doyle.

Work on the project was completed on August 21, with only days to spare before the fall semester was to begin. Similar projects at College Park and Towson took 6-12 months, while employing outside contractors, which greatly adds to the costs.

Now that the upgrade is completed, wireless users should notice a number of immediate benefits.

Doyle said, “[Before the upgrade] I could stream YouTube or run basic services; if I tried to do a bandwidth calculation I could maybe get 10 megabits. Now, I get sixty or seventy.

“Users will now see a lot less buffering. They’ll be able to multitask. If they are going to do higher end computing, if they’re really pulling a lot of data down, it’s probably an order of magnitude different, maybe five or ten times faster,” Doyle said.

With this massive improvement behind us, DoIT is already looking ahead to the next generation of wireless infrastructure, which is up to 10X faster than current standards. That means that a repeat performance of this summer’s magic will likely be required in the next three to five years.

Let’s just hope that the same great team of engineers and technicians is involved in that project.

• 45,000 signed articles on every aspect of the visual arts, with more than 23,000 subject entries and 21,000 biographies
• More than 6,000 searchable images from such outstanding organizations as the Metropolitan Museum of Art, as well as 40,000 editorially selected image links to museums and galleries, provide essential visual support for art history scholarship.
• Historical account and critical discussions of aethetics.
• 1800 dictionary entires on art terms, critical periods, and styles in the visual arts
  

• Tests that were originally developed for research and were not made commercially available.

• A growing selection of multilingual test instruments.

• Information about select tests that are available from commercial test publishers.