Learn more about how the National Library of Medicine makes available a selection of NLM Traveling Exhibition titles by calling for new booking requests.
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Promising Future, Complex Past: Artificial Intelligence and the Legacy of Physiognomy presents the history of physiognomy—the practice of assessing one’s mental character based on physical attributes—and explores its influence on contemporary artificial intelligence and computer science technologies that gather and interpret bodily data. Now debunked as pseudoscience, physiognomy enjoyed periods of legitimacy and popularity over a history spanning millennia, influencing the fields of medicine, biology, philosophy, anthropology, psychiatry, and criminology. After serving as tool for scientific racism and eugenics, physiognomy was roundly discredited in the 20th century.
We’ve rejected the harmful aspects of physiognomy, but efforts to gain information from human physical characteristics continue with today’s technologies, which have the potential to make the world safer, improve health, and affect how we get information.Promising Future, Complex Past is a display of six roll-up graphic banners that travel in one container, measuring 48”(h) x 19”(w) x 19” (d) and weighing 70 lbs.
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Visit the Network of National Library of Medicine’s traveling exhibitions initiative website for additional information about how the National Library of Medicine makes available requests for booking and to view current traveling itineraries by each title.
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NLM offers high-quality, reliable biomedical and health information through electronic resources. Consider planning programming that connects audiences to NLM resources while hosting our exhibitions or at any time.
- Plan seasonal programming or National Health Observance events around NLM health information resources:
- For Talk to Your Doctor Month (August) or World AIDS Day (December), partner with a local research hospital to use ClinicalTrials.gov to share accessible information about what clinical trials are, the range of ways to participate, and what questions to ask when considering enrolling in HIV/AIDS-related clinical trials.
- For Rare Disease Day (February 28) or National Public Health Week (first week in April), explore a story of scientific discovery in NLM’s Profiles in Science. Have participants write or create art about who they look up to and why in the history of health and health care.
- Support library career development using NLM health information resources:
- Devote a series of library staff professional development sessions to how to use NLM’s medical informatics resources to support health IT and researchers.
- Host an information session, application reviews, or mock interviews for people from underrepresented groups applying for the NLM Associate Fellowship Program for Librarians or the NLM Intramural Research Training Program.
- Improve community health with easy-to-access health information resources:
- Choose a free health-related e-book or use an NNLM Reading Club guide for your next book club.
- Invite nursing students or local nurses from across your region to a training course on Using PubMed in Evidence-Based Practice and introduce pre-formulated PubMed special queries.
- Develop and market a health information portal on your website with easily accessible links to multilingual health information in the most common languages in your community.
- Plan seasonal programming or National Health Observance events around NLM health information resources:
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Practical Guides
Required Forms
PR Resources
- Exhibition Brochure (PDF)
- Exhibition Poster (PDF)
- PR Information & Images (PDF)
- Promising Future, Complex Past online
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Institutions do the following as part of hosting NLM traveling exhibitions:
- Display the exhibition in a safe, secure environment out of direct sunlight.
- Complete and return the Traveling Exhibition Condition Report within one week of receiving the exhibition.
- Make the exhibition available to the public free of charge.
- Arrange and pay for outgoing shipping to the next host venue via a trackable service ($200-$1,000 estimated cost).
- Complete and submit the Traveling Exhibition Host Venue Report within two weeks of closing.