The University of Illinois Chicago recently added 16 items to the Medical Heritage Library’s collection. The titles include Plexus, the official publication of the College of Physicians and Surgeons in the Medical Department of the University of Illinois at the end of the 19th century. Other titles include The Swedish Covenant Hospital and Home of Mercy, and the Medical and dental colleges of the west : historical and biographical: Chicago as edited by H.G. Cutler in 1896, a valuable resource for those interested in 19th century medical education and services in the Chicago area.
The Special Collections and University Archives Department at the Richard J. Daley Library houses collections of rare books, manuscripts, maps and photographs, with particular strength in the social, political and cultural history of Chicago. The collections at the Library of the Health Sciences-Chicago document Chicago’s rich history as a center for the education and practice of the medical arts.
The Medical Heritage Library (MHL) is a content centered digital community supporting research, education, and dialog that enables the history of medicine to contribute to a deeper understanding of human health and society. It serves as the point of access to a valuable body of quality curated digital materials and to the broader digital and nondigital holdings of its members. It was established in 2010 with funding from the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation via the Open Knowledge Common to digitize 30,000 medical rare books. MHL principal contributors are The Augustus C. Long Health Sciences Library at Columbia University, the College of Physicians of Philadelphia, the Cushing/Whitney Medical Library at Yale University, the Francis A. Countway Library of Medicine at Harvard University, the National Library of Medicine, the New York Academy of Medicine, the Welch Medical Library, Library of the Institute of the History of Medicine, and the Alan Mason Chesney Medical Archives of the Johns Hopkins Medical Institutions, and the Wellcome Library. The MHL also includes content contributions from Duke University, University of Massachusetts Medical School’s Lamar Soutter Library, and the Gerstein Science Information Centre, University of Toronto among others.
