OnLine Images from the History of Medicine:
History and Credits

The OnLine Images project was born in a brief meeting between R. P. C. Rodgers, M.D. and and Daniel Masys, M.D., in which Rodgers was demonstrating the newly released NCSA Mosaic for X to Masys. Rodgers was aware of a solar magnetogram database set up by his collaborator Jim Fullton, of the Clearinghouse for Networked Information Discovery & Retrieval (CNIDR), and had been thinking about attempting a similar project based on the using the NLM laser videodisc collection of History of Medicine images (see below). This same idea was among the first thoughts that occurred to Masys upon seeing Mosaic.

The two principal developers of the OnLine Images system are:

R. P. C. Rodgers (initial conception, functional specification, image algorithm design, image capture and editing, composition of text)

Suresh Srinivasan (detailed technical design, programming of both OnLine Images and image capture system)

The developers thank: Dan Masys, for creating an ASCII version of the catalog information from the Picquick CD-ROM (see below); Jim Fullton of CNIDR for providing the idea which got them started; Philip Teigen, Lucinda Keister, and Lillian Kozuma of the History of Medicine Division for helpful technical information; Joe Fitzgerald of the Lister Hill Center Audiovisual Program Development Branch for providing the HyperDOC cartoons used in various places; members of the Lister Hill Center Computer Science Branch for providing useful remarks and encouragement throughout the development process; and, all the other members of the original laser videodisc-based Images from the History of Medicine project (listed below).

This work was greatly aided by various software tools which arose from the unique collaborative creative ferment which the Internet has fostered; we thank Tim Berners-Lee for inventing World-Wide Web, NCSA for creating Mosaic, Jef Poskanzer for the pbmplus image file toolkit, John Bradley for his superb visualization tool for X Windows, xv, Michael Stonebraker and the Berkeley POSTGRES development team, and Larry Wall for his software equivalent of the Swiss Army Knife, perl.

OnLine Images benefits from the impressive labor put into an earlier project which produced a PC-driven laser videodisc-based collection of images for the History of Medicine Division at the US National Library of Medicine. This project was conceived and funded by the Lister Hill National Center for Biomedical Communications. It is envisaged that upon completion, the electronic collection (pictures plus textual catalog entries) will be available via laser videodisc, CD-ROM, and the Internet.

The project was known by different names during various stages of its development, including HARPP (History of Medicine Archival/Retrieval Picture Project), Picquick, and, finally, Images from the History of Medicine (other names having been considered and rejected). The photography and videodisc transfer were done under contract by Stokes Imaging Services (Austin, Texas). This work drew upon the combined talents of the following individuals:

Marjorie Kuenz (Project Officer)

James Main (Alternate Project Officer)

Daniel Masys, M.D. (Computer Program Designer)

Bill Leonard (Project Supervisor, LHNCBC)

John Parascandola, Ph.D. (Chief, HMD/NLM)

Lucy Keister (Project Supervisor, HMD/NLM)

Lillian Kozuma (Software Development, HMD/NLM)

Madeline Crisci (Project Manager, HMD/NLM)

Robert Woodis (Cataloger, HMD/NLM)

Ernie Smith (Camera Operator, Stokes Imaging Services)

Margaret Dougherty (Camera Operator, Stokes Imaging Services)

Since completion of the original project, further development of the Images from the History of Medicine system has been continued by the following individuals:

Philip M. Teigen, Ph.D. (Acting Chief, HMD/NLM)

Anne Whitaker (Acting Curator, prints and photographs collection)

Sarah Richards (Curator, motion picture collection, HMD/NLM)

You may wish to read more about the creation of the Images from the History of Medicine laser videodisc.
NLM HyperDOC / OnLine Images from the HMD / April 1994