The MHL’s National Endowment for the Humanities “Digital Humanities Start-Up” project is underway (see: http://www.medicalheritage.org/2011/08/mhl-project-updates/). We are meeting with faculty, graduate students, and administrators at partner organizations to learn from them how they use digital sources in teaching and research, their ideal solutions to overcoming teaching and research obstacles, and how they envision the MHL supporting their work. This data will inform the near-term development of the MHL and its goals for the future.
While a full analysis is weeks away, our first visit to Columbia earlier this month confirmed our initial thinking that scholars use a variety of materials, from texts to video, and view digital copies as useful adjuncts to, not replacements for, the original sources. Users cited archaic medical terminology as an obstacle to research, an area MHL collaborators have been discussing. Faculty felt frustrated with the difficulty of identifying the copyright status attached to a particular items and the logistics for obtaining permissions. Among the surprises was the increasing demand for relevant video sources for teaching and an interest in multimedia sources and delivery, even among senior academics.
Visits are planned to the National Library of Medicine, Yale, Johns Hopkins, Harvard, and the New York Academy of Medicine. More information about these visits and the project as a whole will be available on the website in the coming months.
If you have thoughts about the future of the MHL and how it can contribute to your work, please contact Lori Jahnke at (215) 399-2306 or ljahnke@collegeofphysicians.org.