2020 is The Year of the Nurse

Display of nurse figurines and recruitment posters

Nurses serve on the front lines, facing the many challenges of our communities. The World Health Assembly designated 2020 the International Year of the Nurse and Midwife to honor the 200th Anniversary of Florence Nightingale’s birth.

Recruitment posters and figurines promoting nurses and their contributions in the military

Elizabeth Stanislav, a Nebraska nurse, created the "Nursing Memorabilia Collection" over a period of many years. Now the America Holistic Nurses Association owns that collection. The library is displaying a small selection of that collection in the entry rotunda through December.

The display showcases Florence Nightingale, military nurses and the future of nursing.

Figurines and ceramics celebrating Florence Nightingals

Figurines honoring Florence Nightingale, who is regarded as the founder of nursing as a profession

Nightingale, also known as “The Lady with the Lamp,”was born May 12, 1820, in Florence, Italy. Defying her parents, Nightingale began her long journey into cultivating nursing in 1844 at the Lutheran Hospital in Germany. She applied practices that revolutionized nursing. Nightingale kept records of treatments, and realized that patients with cleaned wounds got fewer infections. She began training other nurses in her techniques.

Celebrate nurses and midwives as they continue to provide quality support to their patients through these troubling times.

Sherry Best

Collections Curator

Our library has a very cool art collection, and I get to be in charge of it. I started drawing when I was 4 years old, and never stopped making art. I want to do more than show you art, I want to help you understand it, relate to it, and 'get' it. Art lets us share what it is to be human.

Art