Ever-evolving: introducing the Medical Heritage Library, Inc.

The Medical Heritage Library, Inc. (MHL), is a collaborative digitization and discovery organization committed to providing open access to history of medicine and health resources. Since its founding in 2010, it has aspired to be a visible, research-driven history of medicine and health community that serves a broad, interdisciplinary constituency. The MHL’s goal is to make important historical medical content, derived from leading medical libraries, available online free of charge and to simplify and centralize the discovery of these resources. To do so, it has evolved from a digitization collaborative of like-minded history of medicine libraries, special collections, and archives to an incorporated entity seeking not just to provide online access to digital surrogates, but also to embrace the challenges of open access, the retention and use of records containing health information about individuals, and service to the digital humanities. This organizational expansion was further spurred by the MHL’s recently completed National Endowment for the Humanities grant, “Medicine at Ground Level: State Medical Societies, State Medical Journals, and the Development of American Medicine” (PW-228226-15), which received additional financial support from Harvard University Medical School and the Arcadia Fund through the Harvard University Library.

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Aims and Approaches in Special Collections Assessment: A Case Study from the Osler Library

RBM A Journal of Rare Books Manuscripts and Cultural Heritage ◽

10.5860/rbm.16.2.446 ◽

2015 ◽

Vol 16 (2) ◽

pp. 101-112

Author(s):

Anna Dysert

Keyword(s):

History Of Medicine ◽

Research Center ◽

Rare Book ◽

University Library ◽

Special Collections ◽

Institutional Review ◽

History Of ◽

Mcgill University ◽

Rare Books

The Osler Library of the History of Medicine, a branch of the McGill University Library in Montreal, Quebec, is a research center for the history of medicine and science with significant rare book and archival holdings. As part of an institutional review launched in 2013, the Osler Library decided to look into methods of collections analysis to compile data about its collections and uncover subject strengths among items, enabling the library to better promote and communicate information about holdings to users, plan for growth, and target collections development. Collections assessment initiatives in rare books and special collections represent the coalescing . . .

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Nomen Est Omen

Acta medico-historica Adriatica ◽

10.31952/amha.18.1.1 ◽

2020 ◽

Vol 18 (1) ◽

pp. 15-26

Author(s):

Mojca Ramšak

Keyword(s):

Health Status ◽

Open Access ◽

History Of Medicine ◽

Social History ◽

Folk Medicine ◽

Digital Data ◽

History Of ◽

The Republic ◽

Mental Characteristics

The heritage of Slovenian house names and surnames reflects, among others, the former medicine and pharmaceutical occupations, midwifery, and folk medicine practices, and besides that, also health status and illnesses of people. Surnames, which are especially strongly intertwined with family, local and social history, are closely related to folk medicine and magic. Unlike house names (vulgo), which are the usual nicknames for physical and mental characteristics and abilities, surnames denote medicals occupations and medicinal folk practice as such. According to the most recent data (as of January 1, 2020) of The Statistical Office of the Republic of Slovenia, at least 40 surnames reminiscent former medical or pharmaceutical professions. These newly discovered digital data in open access are precious for the history of medicine because they allow comparing surnames geographically, by frequency, and through the time.

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Processing Workflow Analysis for Special Collections: The Center for the History of Medicine, Francis A. Countway Library of Medicine as Case Study

RBM A Journal of Rare Books Manuscripts and Cultural Heritage ◽

10.5860/rbm.13.2.378 ◽

2012 ◽

Vol 13 (2) ◽

pp. 113-128 ◽

Cited By ~ 1

Author(s):

Emily R. Novak Gustainis

Keyword(s):

History Of Medicine ◽

End Users ◽

Professional Literature ◽

Workflow Analysis ◽

Special Collections ◽

History Of ◽

Archival Processing

In our efforts to make the whole more than the sum of our parts, it is easy to forget that the better the parts, the better the whole. Our special collections and archives professions have placed a premium on the utility of our descriptive products and services to our end users, and rightly so.1 Yet there remains, despite numerous calls in our professional literature,2 a scarcity of data regarding the process inputs that lead up to the delivery of our product and services outputs, especially (and perhaps most notoriously) data pertaining to archival processing. This paper focuses on the Center . . .

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