NNLM Network of the National Library of Medicine

Library Programming

The Centers for Diseases Control and Prevention (CDC) promotes vaccines during National Immunization Awareness Month in November. But don't wait! Help remind family, friends, and coworkers to stay up to date on their shots throughout the year. Consider using resources and program suggestions from the NNLM.

Citizen Science

Science Friday has teamed up with Flu Near You to recruit a national team of everyday citizens, you, to build a real-time map of the rise and fall of influenza-like illness in the United States. It’s as simple as reporting how you feel each week.

Video Discussion

Watch and discuss the PBS NOVA series, Vaccines - Calling the Shots, which takes viewers around the world to track epidemics, explore the science behind vaccinations, hear from parents wrestling with vaccine-related questions, and shed light on the risks of opting out.

NLM Exhibition Program

The National Library of Medicine (NLM) Exhibition Program produces lively and informative exhibitions that enhance awareness of and appreciation for the health information resources of the National Library of Medicine. These exhibitions and supportive educational resources engage diverse audiences and explore a variety of topics in the history of medicine.

NLM circulates the collection of traveling banner exhibitions free of charge to the public, university, and medical libraries, as well as cultural centers across the country for a select period of time. However, the exhibitions and educational resources also are made available online as part of a permanent digital gallery collection. You can view, discuss, and learn anytime.

• Rashes to Research: Scientists and Parents Confront the 1964 Rubella Epidemic
• Politics of Yellow Fever in Alexander Hamilton's America Traveling Exhibit

Vaccine Finder

Add the Vaccine Finder widget to your website to help your community find a vaccination location. Copy the widget code, available in English and Spanish, from website.

Young Readers

Help young readers delve into the biology and mechanisms of infections, diseases, and immunity.

• Science Comics: Plagues: The Microscopic Battlefield | Falynn Koch | Macmillan | 128 pages | ISBN: 978-1626727526 | Grade Level 4-8

• Baby Medical School: Vaccines | Margot Alesund | CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform | 2017 | 30 pages | ISBN: 978-1978106819 | Grade Level 1-2​

Workshop Kit

Our Best Shot: Workshop Kit is designed for community leaders hosting workshops for seniors and their caregivers on the basics of vaccination. The “soup-to-nuts” kit covers how vaccines work, common vaccine-preventable diseases, vaccine safety and efficacy, the vaccine schedule for adults 60-64 and 65+, and where and how to get vaccinated. A quiz is designed for participants to use during the workshop as a discussion tool. Consider asking a public health nurse to administer the influenza vaccination.

Library Skills Training

The Network of the National Library of Medicine (NNLM) provides in-person and online instruction. Live webinars often are recorded for future viewing. Check the NNLM Training page for a complete list of programs and schedules.

History of Vaccinations

Book

In this book, Eula Biss addresses some people's fears of the government, the medical establishment, and what may be in their children's air, food, mattresses, medicines, and vaccines. Reflecting on her own experience as a new mother, she suggests that we cannot immunize our children, or ourselves, against the world. As she explores the metaphors surrounding immunity, Biss extends her conversations with other mothers to meditations on the myth of Achilles, Voltaire's Candide, Bram Stoker's Dracula, Rachel Carson's Silent Spring, Susan Sontag's AIDS and Its Metaphors, and beyond. On Immunity is her moving account of how we are all interconnected - our bodies and our fates.​

A National Book Critics Circle Award Finalist

On Immunity: An Innoculation | Eula Bliss | Graywolf Press | 2015 reprint | 224 pages | ISBN: 978-1555977207 | WorldCat |

Author

Eula Biss is the author of The Balloonists and Notes from No Man's Land, which won the National Book Critics Circle Award in criticism and which Salon deemed "the most accomplished book of essays anyone has written or published so far in the twenty-first century." Her work has appeared in The Believer, Harper's Magazine, and The New York Times. She has received fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation, the Howard Foundation, and the National Endowment for the Arts. She lives in the Chicago area and teaches at Northwestern University.

Official Website of Eula Bliss

Interviews

[Six Questions] Discussing On Immunity: An Inoculation with Eula Biss. By Geoffrey Gleaves. Harper's Magazine. October 1, 2014

Book

Meredith Wadman discusses the epic and controversial story of a major breakthrough in cell biology that led to the conquest of rubella and other devastating diseases. Until the late 1960s, tens of thousands of American children suffered crippling birth defects if their mothers had been exposed to rubella, popularly known as German measles, while pregnant; there was no vaccine and little understanding of how the disease devastated fetuses. In June 1962, a young biologist in Philadelphia, using tissue extracted from an aborted fetus from Sweden, produced safe, clean cells that allowed the creation of vaccines against rubella and other common childhood diseases. Two years later, in the midst of a devastating German measles epidemic, his colleague developed the vaccine that would one day wipe out homegrown rubella. The rubella vaccine and others made with those fetal cells have protected more than 150 million people in the United States, the vast majority of them preschoolers. The new cells and the method of making them also led to vaccines that have protected billions of people around the world from polio, rabies, chickenpox, measles, hepatitis A, shingles, and adenovirus.

The Vaccine Race | Meredith Wadman | Penguin Books | 2018 reprint | 464 pages | ISBN: 978-0143111313 | WorldCat |

Author

Meredith Wadman, MD, has covered biomedical research politics from Washington, DC, for twenty years and written for Nature, Fortune, The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, and, currently, Science. A graduate of Stanford University and the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism, she began medical school at the University of British Columbia and completed medical school as a Rhodes Scholar at the University of Oxford.

Official Website of Meredith Wadman

Interview

What the Race to Develop the Rubella Vaccine Teaches Us About Fighting Disease Today with Joshua Johnson. NPR: 1A. February 28, 2017

Book

In Vaccines Did Not Cause Rachel's Autism, Dr. Hotez draws on his experiences as a pediatrician, vaccine scientist, and father of an autistic child. Outlining the arguments on both sides of the debate, he examines the science that refutes the concerns of the anti-vaccine movement, debunks current conspiracy theories alleging a cover-up by the CDC, and critiques the scientific community's failure to effectively communicate the facts about vaccines and autism to the general public, all while sharing his very personal story of raising a now-adult daughter with autism.

Vaccines Did Not Cause Rachel's Autism: My Journey as a Vaccine Scientist, Pediatrician, and Autism Dad | Peter J Hotez MD Ph.D. | Johns Hopkins University Press | 2018 | 240 pages | ISBN: 978-1421426600 | WorldCat |

Author

Peter J. Hotez, MD, Ph.D., is the founding dean of The National School of Tropical Medicine at Baylor College of Medicine in Houston, Texas, as well as director of the Texas Children’s Hospital Center for Vaccine Development. He is an elected member of the Institute of Medicine of National Academies as well as the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. A pediatrician and an expert in vaccinology and tropical disease, Hotez has authored hundreds of peer-reviewed articles and editorials as well dozens of textbook chapters.

Official Website of Peter J. Hotez, MD, Ph.D.

Interviews

A Vaccine Doctor Who's an Autism Dad. By Maggie Galehouse. TMC News. November 2, 2018.

Vaccines Did Not Cause Rachel's Autism by Elsa Partan & Heather Goldstone. NPR: Living Lab Radio on WCAI. November 19, 2018.