Category: News

Big News!

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We are excited to announce the end of a big transformation for the Medical Heritage Library!  Last year, our governance board decided to incorporate the Medical Heritage Library, separating the organization from our parent non-profit educational and cultural institutions.  As our own stand-alone entity, and to continue our mission as a collaborative digitization and discovery organization committed to providing open access resources in the history of healthcare and the health sciences, we applied for 501(c)(3) non-profit status.  In early June we finally received the great news from the IRS that our non-profit status was approved.  We want to take this opportunity to thank Dustin Lauermann, formerly an associate with Blank Rome in Philadelphia, and now an associate with Seyfarth Shaw in Los Angeles, for his – and Blank Rome’s – pro bono support of this effort. We look forward to continuing our work through grants and support from our users and other organizations.

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

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We’re delighted to announce that our vice-president, Emily Gustainis, has published a new article in the Journal of the Medical Library Association about the MHL:

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.

Click through to read the full article here.

Call for Applications: Education and Outreach Fellow

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Medical Heritage Library, Inc.
Summer 2019

ABOUT US:

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. We aspire to be a visible, research-driven history of medicine and health community that serves a broad, interdisciplinary constituency. Our goal is to make high-quality content available online free of charge and to simplify and centralize the discovery of these resources.

DESCRIPTION:

The Medical Heritage Library (MHL) seeks a motivated fellow to assist in the continuing development of our education and outreach programs.  Hosted by one of our member institutions in New York, Boston, New Haven, Philadelphia, or San Francisco, the fellow will develop curated topical collections or sets for MHL website drawn from the over 280,000 items in our Internet Archive library. These curated collections provide a means for our visitors to discover the richness MHL materials on a variety of topics relevant to the history of health and the health sciences.  As part of this work, the fellow will have an opportunity to enrich metadata in MHL records in Internet Archive to support certain types of scholarship/inquiry, such as women and gender studies, disability studies, or issues of race and equity in healthcare. The fellow will also begin developing educational materials tied to K-12 and/or university level curriculum.

The fellowship is paid and may be taken for course credit.

DUTIES AND RESPONSIBILITIES:

  • Based on the input of MHL members and others, work on the creation of curated sets of materials drawn from MHL collections.
  • Develop educational materials tied to K-12 and/or university level curriculum
  • Enrich MHL metadata to highlight underrepresented topics in our Internet Archive collections.
  • Regularly create blog posts and other type of social media for posting to MHL accounts.
  • Other duties as assigned.

QUALIFICATIONS AND EXPERIENCE:

This position is open to all qualified graduate students with a strong interest in medical or health history, with additional interests in library/information science or education. Strong communication and collaboration skills a must. Fellows are expected to learn quickly and work independently. 

FELLOWSHIP DURATION:

The fellowship will take place anytime between the end of May 2019-mid-August 2019

HOURS:

20 hours per week, over 12 weeks.

SALARY:

$20/hour

To apply, please provide the following:

    Cover letter documenting interest in position

    Curriculum Vitae

    2 References

Please submit your application materials by April 1st, 2019 to:

Attn: Fellowship committee

 medicalheritage@gmail.com