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Abstract: The present position paper provides an account of the life of Martha Entwistle, the earliest recorded convict nurse who worked within the Castle Hill Asylum. In our review of primary historical sources, Australia's first convict mental health nurse was found to be a resilient woman who endured several traumatic life experiences. Her nursing within Australia's first mental health asylum was highly valued by the superintendent of the service. She nursed in a harsh colonial environment, short of adequate resources, during an era of fast‐paced industrial and technological a change. Martha Entwistle's experiences provide a historical account of the role of the early convict mental health nurse. Her life story enables modern‐day nurses to reflect on the advances made in mental health nursing and contexts of care for nurses today. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article provides information on the changes made to a distance learning course at the Open University in England. The course consists of specific learning outcomes related to information literacy. Under the course, students are required to demonstrate their use of the process of information retrieval and complete an information literacy diagnostic test online at the start of the knowledge management unit. Moreover, the students are given study weeks to practice information literacy skills. The majority of teaching the course is done through a printed learning guide.

Elizabeth Elstob was a scholar of Anglo-Saxon, who published two important books and was admired by the leaders of the new movement for Anglo-Saxon studies in the early eighteenth century. She was able to be part of this community because her brother William encouraged and enabled it. His death in 1715 was a catastrophe, marking the end of her productive life as an intellectual and plunging her into poverty. She disappeared for almost twenty years, but was discovered and rescued by the first generation of bluestockings. A project she had begun – a history of intellectual women – was taken up and completed by George Ballard. His Memoirs of British Ladies(1752) included Elstob's memories about Mary Astell, and is, among other things, the single most important source of information about this pioneer feminist. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Reports the launching of survey course on the social history of European medicine by the Open University in Milton Keynes, England. Delivery of instruction through CD-ROM; Use of images as resources for studying medicine history; Features of the CD-ROM.