The National Library of Medicine is the world's largest biomedical library, and hosts a massive collection of health science-based literature, both print and electronic. Readers of this guide will likely know NLM as the purveyors of PubMed/MEDLINE, the free database used to find medical journal articles from a variety of sources.
The NLM Traveling Exhibit is a free service offered by the National Library of Medicine to any library in the United States that wishes to participate. Libraries request an exhibit and are sent one that they can display for three weeks before sending it on to the next participant. In the past, the OUWB Medical Library has set up this display in the main lobby of Kresge library so that it is visible when first walking into the main entrance of the building. We have been participating in the NLM Traveling Exhibit since 2011, though due to the COVID-19 pandemic we were unable to have the exhibit for almost two years.
In the late 19th century, at a time when women were challenging traditional ideas about gender that excluded them from political and intellectual life, medical and scientific experts drew on notions of female weakness to justify inequality between the sexes. Artist and writer Charlotte Perkins Gilman, who was discouraged from pursuing a career to preserve her health, rejected these ideas in a terrifying short story titled “The Yellow Wall-Paper.” The famous tale served as an indictment of the medical profession and the social conventions restricting women’s professional and creative opportunities.
