Tag: about

The MHL Welcomes a New Partner: The Osler Library

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The Medical Heritage Library is pleased to announce our first new partner of 2016: the Osler Library of the History of Medicine at McGill University.

The Osler Library of the History of Medicine at McGill University, Montreal, Canada, opened in 1929 to house the collection of rare medical and other books donated by Sir William Osler (1849-1929), the renowned physician and McGill graduate and professor. Initially comprising 8000 titles listed in the Bibliotheca Osleriana, the collection – one of the world’s outstanding ones – has grown to around 100,000 works including rare monographs, journals, archives and prints, as well as scholarly publications about the history of the health sciences and related areas. To date, the Library has scanned 152 items, all of which are available on the Library’s own Internet Archive site as well as in the MHL collection.

Making the Osler Library’s items available through the MHL not only enriches the MHL collection, but makes the Osler’s items searchable through the MHL’s Bookworm and full-text search tools.

We’re delighted to be able to include the Osler’s material in our collection and will be tagging more as the Library continues to scan items.

The MHL Welcomes a New Member: Health Sciences Library of the University of North Carolina

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The Health Bulletin, Volume 36, Issue 8, page 16 (August 1921).

The Health Bulletin, Volume 36, Issue 8, page 16 (August 1921).

The Health Sciences Library (HSL) at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill has recently added the North Carolina History of Health Digital Collection to the Medical Heritage Library. The North Carolina History of Health Digital Collection contains more than 1000 books, journals, reports, bulletins, minutes, proceedings, and histories covering topics in medicine, public health, dentistry, pharmacy, and nursing, dating from 1849 to the present. These materials thoroughly document the development of health care and the health professions within North Carolina and is thus a significant part of the state’s cultural heritage and history, helping to reveal manifold health problems and how these problems were perceived, understood, and treated over time. The digital collection provides consolidated online access to resources that have been difficult to find and utilize in print.

HSL Special Collections Librarian Dawne Lucas particularly likes the public service announcements from The Health Bulletin, which was “sent free to any citizen of the State upon request.” “The public service announcements were an eye-catching way to draw attention to prominent health problems in early 20th century North Carolina,” says Lucas.  “Some of them, such as the ones promoting the importance of vaccines, are still relevant today.”

This project was made possible by a multi-year NC ECHO (Exploring Cultural Heritage Online) digitization grant for the creation of the North Carolina History of Health Digital Collection. NC ECHO is funded by the State Library of North Carolina through the Library Services and Technology Act (LSTA).

To see the new items from UNC as well as the full Medical Heritage Library collection, follow this link!

Bookworm!

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Bookworm screenshot

Our Bookworm tool is live on its very own website — have you used it yet? In case you’re not in the ‘press buttons and see what happens’ school of learners, here are a few tips.

Bookworm is a search and visualization tool that allows users to graph and compare word occurrences in the full text and catalog records of all items in the MHL holdings with a user‐defined period of time. Bookworm delivers item level results and a link to each item via the graph; simply click on any point in the graph to see the results from that year.

  1. Bookworm will search 1, 2, or 3 word phrases in multiple search fields: just click the + to add a new field.
  2. Click all texts to restrict by library, language, or subject.
  3. Click the gear icon for these options:
    1. Change how you view your results.
    2. Changing the date range of the search.
    3. Change the case sensitivity of a search (it defaults to “sensitive”.)
    4. Change the metric you’re searching by (% of words, % of texts, word count, or text count).
  4. Once you’ve made any changes to your search parameters, you need to click search again to run the new query.
  5. To share a link of your results graph, click the chain link icon at top right.
  6. To export your results graph as an image or a document, click the download button at top right.
  7. Click on a point of the graph to see the results of the search from that particular point in time and get links to individual items.

If you have thoughts, comments, or questions please drop us a line.

As always, for more from the Medical Heritage Library, please visit our full collection!

From the UKMHL: Digitisation at the Royal College of Physicians, London

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We are grateful for the opportunity to cross-post content from the Wellcome Library’s blog about the UK MHL project! This post originally featured there on 5/13/2015.

The library of Royal College of Physicians (RCP) is delighted to be one of the ten UK partner organisations taking part in the UK-Medical Heritage Library (UK-MHL) project. Over next year, working with the Wellcome Library and the Internet Archive, the RCP will be sending books to be digitised and made available online for free.

The Royal College of Physicians was founded in 1518, which makes it the oldest royal medical college in England. The library was founded in the same year and grew mainly through donations and bequests. The Great Fire of London in 1666 destroyed much of the original collection, but the library survived and continued to grow through bequests and donations, as well as new purchases. Initially the collection was not limited to medical subjects, but from the 19th century it became focused on items relating to the work of physicians. The library is thriving today, offering access to contemporary resources for doctors and medical researchers and also historical items for those interested in the history of science and medicine. The RCP has many interesting and unique items which fall into the time period that the UK-MHL covers, 1780 to 1914.

Measuring a chart foldout

I am project coordinator for the RCP and my role is very much a hands-on one. I am charged with hunting down all the books and pamphlets which are to be sent to the Internet Archive’s scan centre. Once I have located these items and gathered them altogether, I assess their suitability for digitisation. First, I check to see how tightly an item is bound. If it is too tight and the text is curling into the gutter, then unfortunately the platform on which the digitation process takes place will not be able to capture this text. This also applies to items which are larger than the platforms, so I make sure to have a ruler with me at all times checking the width of books and their gutters.

Next, I check to make sure there are no duplicate copies. If there are some duplicates, I must make a choice as to which copy will be sent for digitation. The decision can come down to condition or how tightly the item is bound. When all these things are equal I search for other distinguishing marks such as interesting annotations or a provenance which may interest readers. For example this copy of On a haematazoon inhabiting human blood : its relation to chyluria and other diseases is signed “with the author’s compliments”.

 

Once all the items have been checked and assessed as being suitable for digitisation, I set about packing the volumes. We use big, sturdy crates which hold about 50 items at a time. As these items are rare books I have to ensure that they are packed very carefully and securely. Layers of plastic sheeting, foam, and bubble-wrap are used to line the crate, with extra bubble-wrap used around the volumes, filling any gaps which may result to books sliding and being damaged. I must say this was the task that I was most nervous about carrying out but now, three batches later, I feel like I have mastered the UK-MHL packing technique.

One of the perks of being so hands on with the materials is that I get to take a look at all the wonderful information contained in the books and pamphlets. The RCP has a diverse collection; subject areas cover the breadth of medical and scientific enquiry, as well as topics such as heraldry, library science, linguistics, and religious texts. I am always on the look-out for interesting pictures, trivia, dedications and commentaries, and there is no shortage of these!

I particularly enjoyed looking at the books on therapeutic baths and spa trips. We have a number of these which covered healing spring resorts all over the world, and many even had helpful maps tucked away in pockets stuck to front covers. One book which stood out for me was Dress : its sanitary aspect. A paper read before the Brighton Social Union , January 30th, 1880. The book contains pictures of healthy bodies and what can happen to bodies after some styles of fashionable clothing are worn for long periods of time.

 

The aim of the project is to make historical resources available for researchers so that the understanding of the intersections of medicine, science and health can be enhanced. I must say that I am expanding my own knowledge on a daily basis through working with books such as The hygiene of the mouth: a guide to the prevention and control of dental diseases which detailed the types of dental treatment which were common for children in the 19th century and why.

 

As the project progresses we will be sharing some of the interesting items that we uncover through Twitter and the Library and Museum Blog. The books themselves will be available in their digitised formats through the Wellcome Library catalogue, the Internet Archive and, soon, JISC Historical Books. Make sure to check back regularly as books are continuously being updated. The original books will also be available for viewing in the RCP Library reading room.

Author: Alana Farrell is Project Coordinator UK-MHL, Royal College of Physicians London.

The Migel Library Joins the MHL

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M.C. Migel keeps watch over the collection from above the original card catalog.

M.C. Migel keeps watch over the collection from above the original card catalog.

The Medical Heritage Library is pleased to announce the addition of titles from the Migel Library of the American Printing House for the Blind.

The M.C. Migel Library at the American Printing House for the Blind is one of the largest known collections of materials related to visual impairment in the United States.  The library holds over 20,000 items that range in scope from original research to fiction with characters or authors who are visually impaired.  While a majority of the collection is historical, we continue to acquire large numbers of new and relevant items in various formats.  The collection includes journals, agency reports, proceedings, organizational newsletters, and a large amount of non-English language materials.  The Library is also unique in that it contains thousands of individually cataloged periodical articles that are not thought to be organized by the subject of visual impairment anywhere else.  The Migel Library’s online catalog includes items from the Barr Research Library at APH.  The Barr Library began in the 1970s as a collection of materials used or authored by the Research Department at APH.  As a result, many of its 4,500 items are unique manuscripts that were researched and created at APH.

The Migel Library was started as a circulating collection at the American Foundation for the Blind (AFB) in New York in the 1920s.  A reference library for the field was a major priority of AFB’s first director, Robert Irwin.  In 1926, the AFB board granted him $1,000 to start the collection.  Book donations flooded in from around the country at such a rate that Irwin needed to hire a full time librarian, Helga Lende, in 1929.  Lende’s knowledge of the German, French, Spanish, and Scandinavian languages was essential to developing such an inclusive collection – especially considering the amount of blindness research coming out of Europe following the First World War.  Lende’s 1940 bibliography Books About the Blind gives a sense of not only the popular literature being collected, but also many unpublished masters’ and doctoral theses in the Migel holdings.  By the time Helga Lende retired in 1964, the library had become one of the largest collections in the world in its area of specialty.  The Library was named after philanthropist Moses Charles Migel in 1963.  Having been inspired by his experiences with blinded soldiers while serving with the Red Cross in World War I, Migel helped found AFB in 1921, and headed their board until 1945. The general stacks of the Migel Library were formally transferred from AFB to the American Printing House for the Blind in Louisville, KY, in 2009.

Helga Lende, Librarian from 1929 to 1964.

Helga Lende, Librarian from 1929 to 1964.

Digitization of materials began in 2010 as a limited, grant-based project consisting of our most significant items.  Thanks to further funding through APH, we have been able to pursue a continuous digitization program for the foreseeable future.  We are reviewing the stacks item-by-item to digitize every eligible volume.  This includes the small pamphlets and articles that, while unique, were passed-over during the first phase of the project in the interest of efficiency.  Our Internet Archive page now includes 2,270 items and we are steadily adding to the number. All future items will be automatically tagged as part of the MHL and thus made available through the MHL’s Internet Archive page, as well forming part of the corpus for the MHL’s full-text search tool and Bookworm.

Annotated photo album, Industrial Home for the Blind, Light Buoy Industries, ca. 1928.

Annotated photo album, Industrial Home for the Blind, Light Buoy Industries, ca. 1928.

About the MHL: The Medical Heritage Library (MHL) is a digital curation collaborative among some of the world’s leading medical libraries, promoting free and open access to quality historical resources in medicine. Our goal is to provide the means by which readers and scholars across a multitude of disciplines can examine the interrelated nature of medicine and society, both to inform contemporary medicine and strengthen understanding of the world in which we live. The MHL’s growing collection of digitized medical rare books, pamphlets, journals, and films number in the tens of thousands, with representative works from each of the past six centuries, all of which are available here through the Internet Archive.

 

As Requested by AAHM15!

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The Medical Heritage Library (MHL) is a digital curation collaborative committed to free and open access to quality historical resources in medicine. Currently comprised of 25 libraries and special collections in North America and the United Kingdom, the MHL holds more than 75,000 digitized monographs, journals, videos, audio recordings, and other cultural heritage objects. We are always seeking new collaborators and users!

Search the MHL

Full Text MHL Search: http://mhl.countway.harvard.edu/search/

MHLbookworm: https://593b7163.ngrok.com/

Catalog only: https://archive.org/details/medicalheritagelibrary

Browse the MHL

Via list of American Medical Journals: http://ow.ly/LiFVP

Via MHLbookworm: https://593b7163.ngrok.com/

Follow the MHL

Website (blog and news): http://www.medicalheritage.org/

Twitter: @MedicalHeritage

Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/medicalheritagelibrary

Contact the MHL

Email: MedicalHeritage@gmail.com

Project Co-ordinator: hanna_clutterbuck@hms.harvard.edu

Phone: 617-432-2666

Browse over 3,000 digitized volumes of historical medical journals!

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Over the past two years, we have posted a few updates on the MHL’s collaborative project to digitize significant American medical journals, primarily dating from 1797 to 1923. This project, “Expanding the Medical Heritage Library”, was generously funded by the National Endowment for the Humanities (grant # PW‐51014‐12) and included MHL partners The College of Physicians of Philadelphia, Columbia University Libraries, Harvard’s Countway Library, and Yale’s Cushing/Whitney Library.

We’re proud to say that the project has not only been completed, but that we’ve exceeded our goal of digitizing 1.7 million pages! While we encourage you to explore the full-text search tool available on our website, you can now also browse over 3,000 volumes that comprise our 336 journal titles. If you’d rather browse by date or search all fields, we encourage you to download the CSV file, also available on the journals browse page.

This browse function is a true product of MHL collaboration. Partners worked together to fill-in gaps in each others’ journal runs and to standardize our metadata so that the user could browse a full title run of a digitized journal without needing to worry about where the physical item was located.

Many of the journals selected reflect emerging specialties in the nineteenth century, such as dermatology and pediatrics, and many complete (or nearly complete) runs of significant local and state journals are now freely available for browsing, including the New York Medical Journal and the Maryland Medical Journal.

Stay tuned for more updates, including information about an improved full-text search tool that will allow users to extract even more from our digitized journals!

Now Available! Recommended Practices for Enabling Access to Manuscript and Archival Collections Containing Health Information about Individuals

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Medical Heritage Library collaborators  the Alan Mason Chesney Medical Archives of the Johns Hopkins Medical Institutions and the Center for the History of Medicine at the Francis A. Countway Library of Medicine are pleased to announce the distribution of their jointly authored recommended practices to enable access to manuscript and archival collections containing health information about individuals. These recommendations are intended to alleviate many of the concerns repositories have related to collecting and preserving health services records, especially those repositories that are not affiliated with hospitals or medical schools.

The recommendations are presented in four categories: 1) Determining an Institution’s Status and Policy Needs; 2) Implementing Policy and Fostering Process Transparency; 3) Communicating the Nature of Restrictions; and 4) Describing Records to Best Enable Discovery and Access. Those who care for and provide access to records containing health information about individuals are invited to test the recommendations and provide feedback on their utility; those who use such records in their research are equally invited to comment on their scope.

Researchers who have used or are seeking access to primary sources containing health information about individuals are encouraged to share their experiences and difficulties accessing health services records. Visit the MHL’s researcher access survey site and contribute to our efforts to improve access to these important records.

For more information, please contact the Medical Heritage Library at MedicalHeritage@gmail.com.

This work was made possible through the generous funding of the Mellon Foundation through the Council for Library and Information Resources’ Cataloging Hidden Special Collections and Archives program (2012: Private Practices, Public Health: Privacy-Aware Processing to Maximize Access to Health Collections).

The Final Week!

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Yesterday started the countdown of the final week of our 2014 user survey!

We’re closing it down on November 25th — that’s next Tuesday.

To date, we have over 50 responses, well over our totals in the previous two surveys. Thank you.

If you haven’t taken the survey yet or if you have students or colleagues who should know about the MHL or do use the collection, please take the survey yourself and pass the link on. 

We use this information for planning our future development so every answer is important to us: tell us what you need, what you use, and how you use it so we can get you more of it in the future.