Ford Motor Co. in Dearborn is making a century of its archival material available to the public through a new online database called the Ford Heritage Vault. Ford created the Heritage Vault for fans, journalists, and car enthusiasts. The searchable artifacts are downloadable for personal use, free of charge, for the first time. Ford worked with graduate students from Wayne State University’s library and information science program in Detroit, as well as Ford employees and retirees, to pilot the Heritage Vault.  

Ford is officially 119 years old, and in celebration the Blue Oval is launching an online archive so car enthusiasts can sift through its long and storied past. The Ford Heritage Vault is a digital database that contains more than 5,000 curated photographs and product brochures spanning from the company's founding in 1903 to its centennial in 2003. It took two years for Ford's archives teams to collect all the material. The archive was piloted with the help of employees, retirees, and graduate students from Wayne State University before being opened to the public. 

Feelings of insecurity are coming, but there is a fine line between a sense of humility and a sense of inferiority. The original notion of an inferiority complex was born in the late 1800s, but today mental health professionals focus on how feelings of low self-esteem and inadequacy are symptoms of other, more complicated mental and emotional health concerns. According to Arash Javanbakht, a psychiatrist and director of the Stress, Trauma & Anxiety Research Clinic at Wayne State University, the term “inferiority complex” is no longer in use in clinical diagnostics. Javanbakht says that extremely low self-esteem could be correlated with clinical depression or anxiety, which can be treated with talk therapy or medication.  

Christine D'Arpa, assistant professor of library and information sciences, Wayne State University; Rachel D. Williams, assistant professor of library and information science, Simmons University; and Noah Lenstra, assistant professor of library and information science, University of North Carolina – Greensboro, wrote an article for The Conversation. America’s public library workers have adjusted and expanded their services throughout the COVID-19 pandemic. In addition to initiating curbside pickup options, they’re doing many things to support their local communities, such as extending free Wi-Fi outside library walls, becoming vaccination sites, hosting drive-through food pantries in library parking lots and establishing virtual programs for all ages, including everything from story times to Zoom sessions on grieving and funerals.

The Wayne State Library System is launching a virtual series to teach people about the value of Census data. “A lot of people know that they can take the Census,” says Meghan Courtney, outreach archivist at the Walter P. Reuther Library, Archives of Labor and Urban Affairs. “But we want to take it a step further and let people know that there are many ways that this data is actually useful for them in their lives.” The free series kicks off on Zoom on Wednesday June 3 at 4 p.m. with a talk called “Why the Census?” Librarians will explain how the Census impacts public funding and show attendees how they can access Census data. The second talk in the series, “Mapping and the Census,” is happening Friday, June 17 at 10 a.m. All sessions will be recorded for people who can’t attend and want to view at a later date. “Getting the Census done is a community effort,” says Courtney. “And it’s something that will affect not only Wayne State’s campus area but the whole region in a huge way.”

Armed with care packages, clothes and clinical supplies, medical students in Detroit are learning outside the classroom. They are putting their knowledge and boots to the pavement, providing free health care to the city's homeless. Each week, students under the supervision of a registered physician or nurse practitioner get on their bikes and look for those in need. Programs such as Michigan State University's Detroit Street Care, Wayne State University's Street Medicine Detroit and the University of Michigan's Wolverine Street Medicine work together to treat as many of the city's homeless as possible. Jedidiah Bell, a fourth-year med student at Wayne State University and president of Street Medicine Detroit, says seeing issues from lack of health care access in his home country of Zimbabwe made him want to participate. "When I moved to the states for university and medical school, I saw the similar things [lack of access] with the homeless population," said Bell. "When I saw street medicine, I appreciated the model of how can we take medical care to the street and build up trust to bridge the gap between the homeless and the medical world." While the programs provide a vital service to the community, Bell says the real-world experience teaches students things the classroom or clinic can't. "It teaches medical students to hone-in on, not just medical conditions of patients, but to be able to sit down and form relationships and discuss other things that might be contributing to [patients'] health but might not come up during a traditional medical encounter." Bell says there's a widespread belief that the "students take away more from people on the streets than they take away from us." Anneliese Petersen, a second-year medical student at Wayne State University and volunteer with Street Medicine Detroit, says the experience also shows upcoming medical professionals another side of health -- the social determinants. "Things that are not strictly medical-based but have a strong impact on health and well-being. Income, access to health care, access to medication, being able to eat well, sleep well, to be able to relax and not be under chronic stress."

Wayne State University is set to offer a new experimental school library certificate to address student demand and a general shortage of certified school librarians in the state. The university plans to offer a 15-credit program through its School of Information Sciences, said Matt Fredericks, academic services officer for the school. The course load is designed to equip students with the necessary media specialist skills without requiring the typical 36-credit master's program.