A HISTORICAL ANALYSIS OF THE

LIBRARY’S ROLE IN NURSING EDUCATION

The Johns Hopkins Nurses’ Journal Club and Society of Teresians, 1891 – 1925

Jodi Jameson, MLIS, AHIPAssistant Professor & Nursing LibrarianThe University of ToledoMulford Health Science Libraryjodi.jameson@utoledo.edu

OBJECTIVES

TO ANALYZE…the significance of a distinct culture of library engagement at the Johns Hopkins Hospital School of Nursing (JHH SON) during the formative years of American nursing education

TO EXAMINE…how the Nurses’ Journal Club and Society of Teresians 1) contributed to the growth of the JHH SON Library and 2) nurtured students’ professional sense of self through intellectual inquiry and shared reading

TO APPRECIATE…the vital role of libraries in the development of nursing students’ professional identities during the late 19th and early 20th centuries – and today

Analysis and synthesis of primary and secondary source historical material

METHODS

PRIMARY SOURCESAlan Mason Chesney Medical Archives at Johns Hopkins

• Institutional Records• Personal Paper Collections• Johns Hopkins Hospital Bulletin• Johns Hopkins Nurses Alumnae Magazine

Early articles in The American Journal of Nursing

Johns Hopkins Mt. Washington campus(location of Chesney Medical Archives)

Photograph by Jodi Jameson

SECONDARY SOURCESHistorical studies for background information on:

• The Johns Hopkins Hospital• Nursing education history• Nursing library history

BACKGROUNDThe Gilded Age in America

• Libraries and librarianship

• Reading culture and “bibliophilia”

• Philanthropy

• New educational opportunities for women

• Growth of hospitals

• Hospital-based nursing schools influenced by Florence Nightingale

The George Peabody Library, BaltimorePhotograph by Jodi Jameson

Images courtesy of Chesney Medical Archives, JHMI

Mary Adelaide Nutting (class of 1891)Student Portrait

Class of 1893 Group PortraitSuperintendent Isabel Hampton in middle back row

Lavinia Dock1858 – 1956

Mary Adelaide Nutting1858 – 1948

Isabel Hampton1859 – 1910

“Feminist friendship” at the Johns Hopkins

Hospital School of Nursing

Images: Hampton & Dock in public domainMary Adelaide Nutting, courtesy of Chesney Medical Archives, JHMI

Poslusny, Susan M. "Feminist Friendship: Isabel Hampton Robb, Lavinia Lloyd Dock and Mary Adelaide Nutting." Image: the Journal of Nursing Scholarship 21, no. 2 (1989): 64-68.

The Nurses’ Journal Club

(1891 – 1894)

Meetings• Every second Monday of each month in the library• Attendance was required for students

Organization• Structured, yet informal - to promote esprit de corps• President was elected each year

Content of Meetings• Reports and readings from journals and magazines• Original papers composed and read by senior pupils

Library Collection

“At the Training School for Nurses a Journal Club has been organized for the study of the current literature of nursing and the allied branches of hygiene and medicine.”

- Henry HurdSuperintendent’s Report of the Johns Hopkins

Hospital, January 31, 1891

• Developed to meet the needs of the Journal Club• Collection grew mostly through donations

Original Papers – Evidence of In-Depth Research

Nurses’ Journal Club. 1891-1894. Box 511136. Records of the Johns Hopkins Hospital School of Nursing. JHMI Archives.

Paper Author Date

“The Hospital Ward” Mary Emory March 9, 1891

“Intestinal Anastomosis” Emma Cleaver March 23, 1891

“Preparation and Use of Salt Solution”

Ada Graham January 25, 1892

“Some Possibilities for Nurses”

Alice McDonald

January 9, 1893

“Loyalty Among Nurses” Dora Hamilton

January 23, 1893

“Diseases of Children” AliceMcDonald

March 13, 1893

“One View of Nursing” Ada Carr April 10, 1893

Periodicals Available tothe Nurses’ Journal Club

• The American Journal of Medical Sciences

• The Atlantic Monthly • The Century Magazine• The Hospital• The Lancet• Medical and Surgical Record• The Nightingale• The Nurse Record• The Trained Nurse

Public domain, non-commercial use https://hdl.handle.net/2027/hvd.hc5396

The Library

– Excerpt from Chapter 1 of Isabel Hampton’s Nursing: It’s Principles and Practice (1893)

“. . . we trust that in these rooms some bright, pleasant, social hours may be passed, and among the books, magazines, and papers that are sure to find their way here, when the need for them is realized, the pupils may spend valuable hours keeping bright what is already theirs . . .”

– Isabel Hampton, October 9, 1889, Remarks at Opening of JHH SON

Image courtesy of Chesney Medical Archives, JHMI

Johns Hopkins Hospital, Main Nurses’ Residence, interior view of parlor, living room, and library (1893)

Library Management and Organization

• Administered by school superintendent and staffed by students

• Accession books recorded all titles in the general and historical collections

• Donors included Susan B. Anthony, Mary Garrett, William Osler and Henry Hurd

• Library Committee made collection development decisions

• Student library fee of one dollar a year contributed to journal subscription budget

• “Library Rules”❖ Hours: 6:30 – 8:30 p.m. on Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday evenings

❖ Card System: Student signed card in book, and left the card with student on duty

❖ Check-Out Policy: One book out at a time for a two-week period with one renewal

❖ Overdue Fines: 2 cents per day

“The writer has watched the reference library of the Johns Hopkins Hospital Training School for Nurses grow within a very few years from about thirty volumes to nearly two hundred, and at few hours of the day can one go into the class-room without finding eager students making notes or looking up interesting points.”

- Mary Adelaide Nutting, April 1903 “A Word About Training-School Libraries, with a Short List of Text and Reference Books,”

The American Journal of Nursing 3, no. 7: 534-535.

On January 12, 1905, nursing students

hosted ‘A Book Tea’ fundraising event

“devoted to the building up of our own cherished

Library on Nursing.”- Johns Hopkins Nurses Alumnae Magazine (February 1905): 24

Library Engagement and Involvement:A Book Tea

“On Wednesday evening, December 13th, 1905, the Head Nurses and Senior Students of the Johns Hopkins Training School for Nurses were called together to consider the advisability of forming a society for the study of the ‘history of nursing’.”

Teresians Book, December 13, 1905Records of the Society of Teresians, Chesney Archives, JHMI

Society of Teresians(1905 – 1925)

Society of Teresians(1905 – 1925)

“It was suggested, therefore, that the object of the society be: first, the study of the history of nursing; second, to aid in the building up of the historical library of the Johns Hopkins Hospital Training School for Nurses; third, to publish from time to time papers of especial interest and value on this subject.”Teresians Book, December 13, 1905Records of the Society of Teresians, Chesney Archives, JHMI

• Nutting formed the Teresians while she and Dock were researching and writing their 4-volume A History of Nursing

• Name was inspired by a reference to St. Teresa of Avila in Osler’s essay “Science and Immortality”

• Original papers on nursing history and biography were read and discussed

Public domain, non-commercial use

Excerpt from Johns Hopkins Nurses Alumnae Magazine, February 1906

“The sitting room has made an exceeding comfortable

and attractive library with its pictures and easy chairs

covered with brown leather. All the available wall space

between the windows has been built in with large book cases, which are nearly filled

with our very valuable library of general literature

of 1500 volumes.”

Library Renovations and Continued Growth

“Progress in the Hospital”Johns Hopkins Nurses Alumnae Magazine (March 1908): 10

Johns Hopkins Hospital, Library of the Nurses’ Home (1911)Image courtesy of Chesney Medical Archives, JHMI

1910

Library holds over 2000 volumes. Books and artwork acquired through purchase or

donations

1920

Kelly expresses interest in donating his entire

collection of Nightingale memorabilia to the

Library*

1921

Minnie Blogg, from the Welch Library,

and her sister Harriet Blogg, catalog the

SON Library’s books

Library Timeline in the era of the Teresians

Loula Kennedy becomes Director of

Instruction and supervises the Library

1921c. 1905Nutting donates her

Nightingale collection and a mahogany

bookcase

1917Dr. Howard Atwood Kelly donates a bound volume

of 6 letters written by Nightingale

1925Last meeting of Teresians in the

Nurses’ Home parlor: “Refreshments and

dancing followed the literary program”*Note: The SON Library was initially unable to store this collection due to space

limitations. In 1930, it was housed in the Welch Library in The Nightingale Room. In 1942, it was transferred to the newly renovated SON Library. Teresians Book, JHMI Archives

Notable Members of the Journal Club and Teresians

Nurse Graduation Year

Professional Nursing Achievements

Mary Adelaide Nutting

1891 • First nurse to be appointed a university professor• Led the Nursing Education Department at Columbia

Emma Cleaver 1891 • Earned her Doctor of Medicine in 1895• Medical missionary in Japan

Ada Carr 1893 • First full-time instructor at the JHH SON• Editor of the journal The Public Health Nurse

Katherine de Long

1894 • Led the American Red Cross Nursing Service in Italy in 1917• Organized Red Cross hospitals in Rome and Milan

Alice Fitzgerald 1906 • WWI nurse with the British Expeditionary Forces in France• Organized nursing schools across eastern Europe after WWI

Virginia Dunbar 1923 • Earned scholarship to study nursing history in London• Director, American Red Cross Nursing Service in the 40s

Brief biographies in: Personal Paper Collections. JHMI Archives. https://medicalarchives.jhmi.edu:8443/papercollections.html

Implications for Health Science Librarians Today

The Library as Place

Information Literacy Instruction on Historical Research in the Health Sciences

Journal Clubs forEvidence-Based Practice

Nursing and Medical Humanities

• Literary culture and library engagement at the JHH SON nurtured students’ sense of professional identity

• Access to professional literature, combined with the study of nursing history and shared reading practices, ignited students’ spirit of inquiry and created esprit de corps

• Libraries at early hospital-based nursing schools represented ideals beyond the books on the shelves. . .

CONCLUSIONS

“To the leading educators of early twentieth-century American nursing, the library was both the intellectual and professional nexus of the hospital-based training school. The book, long an erudite commodity, and the library, the book’s complementary and edifying milieu, were idealized by nursing leaders as proof of the ascending status of the nursing educational system.”

- Keith C. Mages“The Bellevue Classification System: Nursing’s Voice Upon the Shelves,” JMLA 99, no. 1 (2011): 40-50

SPECIAL THANKS

Andy Harrison, Marjorie Kehoe and Phoebe Evans Letocha

Reference Archivists, Alan Mason Chesney Medical Archives, Johns Hopkins Medical

Institutions

Christine RuggereCurator, Institute of the History of

Medicine, Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Johns Hopkins HospitalWood engraving in Harper’s Weekly (vol. 32, p. 667)

Public domain http://resource.nlm.nih.gov/101435498

BIBLIOGRAPHYJohns Hopkins Hospital School of Nursing

Hampton, Isabel Adams. Nursing: Its Principles and Practice for Hospital and Private Use. Philadelphia: Saunders, 1893.

Isabel Hampton Robb Collection, Personal Papers. The Alan Mason Chesney Medical Archives of The Johns Hopkins Medical Institutions (hereafter cited as JHMI Archives).

James, Janet Wilson. "Isabel Hampton and the Professionalization of Nursing in the 1890s." In The Therapeutic Revolution: Essays in the Social History of American Medicine, edited by Morris J. Vogel and Charles E. Rosenberg, 201-44. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1979.

Johns, Ethel, and Blanche Pfefferkorn. The Johns Hopkins Hospital School of Nursing, 1889-1949. Baltimore, MD: The Johns Hopkins Press, 1954.

Johns Hopkins Hospital Circular of Information, 1901-1907. Records of the Johns Hopkins Hospital Training School for Nurses. JHMI Archives.

Marshall, Helen E. Mary Adelaide Nutting: Pioneer of Modern Nursing. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1972.

Nutting, Mary Adelaide. Student Notebooks. 1889-1891. Boxes 505978 & 505985. Mary Adelaide Nutting Collection. JMHI Archives.

“Opening of the Nurses’ Home and Inauguration of the Training School for Nurses [October 9, 1889]” Bulletin of the Johns Hopkins Hospital 1, 1 (December 1889): 6-8.

Poslusny, Susan M. "Feminist Friendship: Isabel Hampton Robb, Lavinia Lloyd Dock and Mary Adelaide Nutting." Image: the Journal of Nursing Scholarship 21, no. 2 (1989): 64-68.

Schwartz, Mary Lou. "Lavinia Dock: Adams County Suffragette," Adams County History 3 (1997): 71-79.

Johns Hopkins Hospital School of Nursing Library

“A Book Tea,” The Johns Hopkins Nurses Alumnae Magazine 4 (February 1905): 24.

Johns, Ethel, and Blanche Pfefferkorn. “The Library.” In The Johns Hopkins Hospital School of Nursing, 1889-1949. Baltimore, MD: The Johns Hopkins Press, 1954: 283-300.

Library Rules. Library Committee Annual Reports. Box 504385. Records of the Johns Hopkins Hospital School of Nursing. JHMI Archives.

Nutting, Mary Adelaide. "A Word About Training-School Libraries, with a Short List of Text and Reference-Books." The American Journal of Nursing 3, no. 7 (1903): 534-36.

“Progress in the Hospital,” The Johns Hopkins Nurses Alumnae Magazine 7 (March 1908): 5-12.

Nurses’ Journal Club

Hurd, Henry. “Superintendent’s Report of the Johns Hopkins Hospital, for the Year Ending January 31, 1891,” Bulletin of the Johns Hopkins Hospital 2, no. 16 (September 1891): 124-32.

Nurses’ Journal Club. 1891-1894. Box 511136. Records of the Johns Hopkins Hospital School of Nursing. JHMI Archives.

“Nurses’ Journal Club,” Bulletin of the Johns Hopkins Hospital 2, no. 12 (April 1891): 65.

“The Nurses’ Journal Club, Annual Report for the Year Ending May 23d, 1892,” Bulletin of the Johns Hopkins Hospital 3, no. 23 (June 1892): 79-80.

“The Nurses’ Journal Club, Annual Report for the Year 1892-93,” Bulletin of the Johns Hopkins Hospital 4, no. 34 (October 1893): 100.

Society of Teresians

“Being a Brief Account of the Formation of the Society of the Teresians,” The Johns Hopkins Nurses Alumnae Magazine 5 (February 1906): 28-30.

Nutting, Mary Adelaide. Writings: A History of Nursing, Reading Lists, circa 1907. Box 505978. Mary Adelaide Nutting Collection.JHMI Archives.

Teresians Book. Records of the Society of Teresians. Johns Hopkins Nursing Historical Collection. JHMI Archives.

Background

Alline, Anna L. "Training-School Libraries." The American Journal of Nursing 5, no. 12 (1905): 853-60.

Binger, Jane L. "The Nursing Journal: Learning Resource, Professional Symbol, and Commodity." Image 13, no. 3 (1981): 67-70.

Chapman, Carleton B. "John Shaw Billings, 1838-1913: Nineteenth Century Giant." Bulletin of the New York Academy of Medicine 63, no. 4 (1987): 386-409.

Dock, Lavinia L., Sarah Elizabeth Picket, Clara D. Noyes, Fannie F. Clement, Elizabeth G. Fox, and Anna R. Van Meter. A History of American Red Cross Nursing. New York; MacMillan, 1922.

Flaumenhaft, Eugene, and Carol Flaumenhaft. "American Nursing's First Textbooks." Nursing Outlook 37, no. 4 (Jul-Aug 1989): 185-88.

Holman, Emile. "Sir William Osler: Teacher and Bibliophile." JAMA 210, no. 12 (1969): 2223-25.

Koehler, Barbara M., Nancy K. Roderer, and Christine Ruggere. "A Short History of the William H. Welch Medical Library." Neurosurgery, no. 2 (2004): 465-79.

Background, continued

Linzer, Mark. "The Journal Club and Medical Education: Over One Hundred Years of Unrecorded History." Postgraduate Medical Journal 63, no. 740 (June 1987): 475-78.

Mages, Keith C. "The Bellevue Classification System: Nursing's Voice Upon the Library Shelves." Journal of the Medical Library Association 99, no. 1 (2011): 40-50.

Nweze, Ikenna, Swapna Munnangi, Sally Shukry, and L. D. George Angus. "Howard Atwood Kelly: Man of Science, Man of God." The American Surgeon 83, no. 5 (2017): e171-e75.

Schlup, Leonard, and Stephen H. Paschen, eds. Librarianship in Gilded Age America: An Anthology of Writings, 1868-1901. Jefferson, NC: McFarland.

Sicherman, Barbara. "Women and the New Cultural Landscape of the Gilded Age.” In Well-Read Lives: How Books Inspired a Generation of American Women, 37-55. Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 2010.

van Slyck, Abigail A. "The Lady and the Library Loafer: Gender and Public Space in Victorian America." Winterthur Portfolio 31, no. 4 (1996): 221-42.

Images

Slides 3 & 4 – Johns Hopkins Mt. Washington campus; and Peabody Library. Author’s photographs

Slide 5 – Mary Adelaide Nutting Student Portrait, 1891; and Class of 1893. Courtesy of Chesney Medical Archives, JHMI

Slide 6 – Isabel Hampton, 1910 (https://www.flickr.com/photos/internetarchivebookimages/14582842300/) Mary Adelaide Nutting, 1891. Courtesy of Chesney Medical Archives, JHMI Lavinia Dock, c. 1890s (http://resource.nlm.nih.gov/101441748)

Slides 9 & 16 – JHH SON Library images from 1893 and 1911. Courtesy of Chesney Medical Archives, JHMI

Slide 22 – Johns Hopkins Hospital (http://resource.nlm.nih.gov/101435498)

Jodi Jameson, MLIS, AHIPAssistant Professor & Nursing Librarian

The University of ToledoMulford Health Science Library

jodi.jameson@utoledo.edu

THANK YOUQuestions?