Volume 50, Number 2, Spring 2001

"PROFILES IN SCIENCE" PROVIDES AN ARCHIVE ON YOUR DESKTOP

by Paul Theerman, Ph.D.

Studying mid- and late-twentieth-century science poses problems not faced by scholars of earlier periods. Among the most serious is that of filtering. The sheer volume of data that are sometimes available-correspondence, laboratory notebooks, interviews, school transcripts, ephemera-can muddle even the most taxonomic minds. Brick-and-mortar, hard-copy archives will always be essential repositories, but they rarely provide much guidance to the collections beyond the traditional form of the finding aid, a list of boxes and folders but not their contents. Once the researcher identifies a valuable collection, there has been no substitute for sitting in a hard chair for days or weeks, sifting through box after box, panning for gold.

The sheer volume of data . . . can muddle even the most taxonomic minds.

The Internet is beginning to address the problem. Increasingly, archives are placing finding aids online, so that scholars may do preliminary surveys before traveling to the archives. Still, these help merely to identify collections that may be important to one's research.

The National Library of Medicine has taken a step further and begun to put actual archival collections on the user's desktop. Profiles in Science is an ongoing digitization project in the history of postwar biomedical science, designed both for research and education. The project is being conducted at the National Library of Medicine (NLM), part of the National Institutes of Health, and is mounted on the Library's Web site at www.profiles.nlm.gov. Profiles is a research project of NLM's digital library research program at its Lister Hill National Center for Biomedical Communications, and is a collaborative project with the Digital Manuscripts Program of the library's History of Medicine Division.

Available on Profiles in Science

Profiles in Science was launched in September 1998 with a selection of papers devoted to the life and work of Oswald T. Avery (1877-1955), a bacteriologist at the Rockefeller Institute. Avery was a founder of modern molecular biology and established that hereditary information is encoded in DNA. In March 1999, the site was expanded with the release of a portion of the extensive Joshua Lederberg collection. Lederberg did pioneering research as a graduate student at Yale University and had a distinguished career at the University of Wisconsin and Stanford University before becoming president of Rockefeller University. He is now a research scholar there. This digital archive reflects Lederberg's work in bacterial genetics, artificial intelligence, exobiology, biological warfare, and public health, as well as his role as a public figure in issues of science and society. Lederberg received the Nobel Prize in 1958, at the age of 33, for his discoveries concerning genetic recombination and the organization of the genetic material of bacteria.

In November 1999, a selection from the papers of Martin Rodbell was posted. From 1956 until his death, Rodbell was an NIH biochemist and molecular endocrinologist, first at the National Heart Institute and the National Institute of Arthritis and Metabolic Diseases, and, from 1985, as scientific director of the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences, in Chapel Hill, North Carolina. He shared the Nobel Prize in 1994 for studies of inter- and intra-cellular communications systems, notably the discovery of G-proteins and signal transduction in cells. In May 2000, the Julius Axelrod collection was put online. Axelrod is an NIH pharmacologist and neuroscientist who shared the 1970 Nobel Prize for discoveries of neurotransmitters and the mechanisms for their storage and release. After starting out as a research chemist at the New York City Department of Health's Laboratory of Industrial Hygiene, he came to NIH in 1949, first at the National Heart Institute and then at the National Institute of Mental Health, where he did his most important research on the activity of neurotransmitter hormones.

The Christian B. Anfinsen collection was mounted on the Web in November 2000. Anfinsen was the American biochemist who shared the 1972 Nobel prize for work that helped to explain the structure and composition of proteins in living cells. The Marshall Nirenberg collection, scheduled for the Web in 2001, will focus on Nirenberg's seminal work in deciphering the genetic code, for which he shared the Nobel Prize in 1968.

Profiles in Science was designed to collect and process the papers of prominent 20th-century biomedical researchers, to select materials from these papers for digitization, and then to mount these selections with historical commentary that puts the life and work in the context of contemporary biomedicine. The materials that underlie these digital collections are part of the History of Medicine Division's Modern Manuscripts Collection, and as they are processed are available for research at the division. Historians of science, medicine, and technology select materials for digitization, and digital archivists code these materials according to current Web standards and then arrange for scanning on site at the Library. The digitized collections contain both published and unpublished items, including books, journal articles, pamphlets, diaries, letters, manuscripts, photographs, audiotapes, video clips, and other materials. In some cases, "digitally born" items, that is, those composed originally directly on computer, form part of the collections as well.

The Profiles collections are designed for users from students to professional scholars. An online exhibit presents introductory narratives on the scientists' life and work along with noteworthy correspondence, excerpts from laboratory notebooks, audio and video clips, and photographs. Scholars who wish to dig deeper can use the system's powerful search engine to access the entire digital collection, which is often much larger than that presented in the exhibit.

An online exhibit presents introductory narratives on the scientists' life and work along with noteworthy correspondence, excerpts from laboratory notebooks, audio and video clips, and photographs.

Profiles in Science expects to finish its initial work in 2001. After that, we hope to collaborate with other institutions and continue to digitize the papers of Nobel laureates in biomedicine. Also, we will turn out attention to significant figures in biomedical research administration or public health, such as NIH directors, thus expanding the context for biomedical research by looking at how research is supported and directed, and at its implications for public health.
Inquiries about research in the historical collections may be directed to the History of Medicine Division reference desk at hmdref@nlm.nih.gov or 301-402-8878. The Library is located at 8600 Rockville Pike, Bethesda, MD and is open from 8:30 a.m. to 5 p.m., Monday through Friday except federal holidays.

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Paul Theerman is head, Non-Book Collections and Interim Program Manager, Digital Manuscripts Program in the History of Medicine Division of the National Library of Medicine. An Archive on Your Desktop, Recent Science Newsletter, vol. 2, no. 2 (Fall 2000).

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