Search Results for: Medical Heritage Library

Year One of “Expanding the Medical Heritage Library” Is Complete!

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We have just submitted our first year report on our second National Endowment for the Humanities-funded grant, “Expanding the Medical Heritage Library: Preserving and Providing Online Access to Historical Medical Periodicals.” Under this grant, we have been digitizing numerous 19th century American medical journals (approximately 1,863 volumes so far!) and we’ve excerpted some of the highlights below.

The College of Physicians of Philadelphia
The College staff were particularly excited about a number of our selections. Among the most significant contributions were 147 volumes comprising the four leading 19th‐century homeopathy journals (American homoeopathist/American homoeopath/American physician, Hahnemannian monthly, Homoeopathic physician, and Homeopathic recorder). Additionally, we included the entire run of the Transactions of The College of Physicians of Philadelphia, which includes a complete run of all volumes published throughout more than 200 years (volumes were published in 1793 and 1841‐2002). As the holder of the journals’ copyright, the College of Physicians agreed to release these volumes freely into the public domain for this project. The Transactions include proceedings from meetings, lists of Fellows, and detailed appendices that collectively describe how the College of Physicians shaped and engaged with emerging American medical trends.

Columbia University Libraries/Information Services
Columbia digitized 71 titles, the bulk of which came from the last quarter of the 19th century and the first decades of the 20th. These were years when U.S. medicine came of age – from its disorganized, underfunded, and generally unscientific state in the immediate aftermath of the Civil War to a powerful, scientifically cutting‐edge, and lavishly financed medical establishment by the end of the First World War. Many of the journals Columbia chose to digitize were created by emerging specialties such as dermatology and venereology; pediatrics; and neurology/psychiatry. They also concentrated on public health and climatology journals knowing that these cover an unusually broad range of topics that appeal to researchers in a wide range of disciplines. Additionally, they included many New York City journals since their holdings of these were usually complete. These included the Brooklyn Medical Journal and its successor, the Long Island Medical Journal (1888‐1922); the long‐running and influential New York Medical Journal (1865‐1922); and two New York German‐language journals: the New Yorker Medicinische Monatsschrift (1852‐53) and the New Yorker Medizinische Presse (1885‐1888).

Yale University’s Cushing/Whitney Medical Library
The titles Yale chose represent a variety of themes, from deafness to dentistry. Yale choose the journals, in collaboration with partners, based on perceived need, as many of the titles were not fully available digitally, allowing Yale to fill in gaps. A significant title selected by Yale was the American Annals of the Deaf and Dumb, a Connecticut journal that holds importance as one of the oldest journals in English that focuses on the education of the deaf.

BUMED’s historians upload 2000th item to Medical Heritage Library

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After slightly more than a year of uploading material to the Medical Heritage Library, the US Navy’s Bureau of Medicine and Surgery’s 2000th item appeared online today (May 19). A Series of Reports to the Nursing Division of the activities of the Nurse Corps Officers serving aboard the U.S. Naval Hospital in the Repose is now easily available for research. The reports from CDRs Angelica Vitillo and M.T. Kovacevich back to Captain Ruth Erickson, Director of the Navy Nurse Corps, and her successor CAPT Veronica Bulshefski date from 8 November 1965 to 2 December 1966. They are in turns informative, chatty and sad.

” Our first direct casualty which arrived Saturday, the nineteenth, was a nineteen year old bilateral mid-thigh amputee who to date has received over 45 pints of blood.” (28 February 1966)

” The improvements we have initiated in our individual staterooms have contributed to maintaining a high state of moral among the nurses, One of the base shops at Hunters Point allowed us to misappropriate an assortment of very colorful and feminine looking bedspreads for our rooms.” (13 December 1965)

“Death claimed the life of a very young man who had extensive chest wounds on Monday, the seventh and a thirty three year old arm amputee with other extensive wounds on Tuesday the eighth. Some of our young nurses are feeling these losses acutely.” (9 March 1966)

These letters join a soon-to-be complete set of over 1000 issues of 70 years of Navy Medicine magazine; oral histories with veterans of World War 2, Korea and Vietnam; a growing collection of audiovisuals including one on the Navy’s humanitarian efforts after the Vietnam War; and many other items.

A small selection of our photographs may  be found on Flickr at https://www.flickr.com/photos/navymedicine/.

The MHL Welcomes a New Content Contributor: Emory Contributes to the Medical Heritage Library

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The Robert W. Woodruff Health Sciences Center Library at Emory University is pleased to contribute digitized versions of over 180 titles selected from our Historical Collection to the Medical Heritage Library. Many scholars find these additions valuable for learning and research. Individual volumes in DiscoverE will include a link to these volumes. Continue reading

Medical Heritage Library Increases Warren Museum Accessibility

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Gallery of the Warren Anatomical Museum (1906-1999), The Warren Anatomical Museum of Harvard Medical School and the Arrangement of its Collection, 1911, Warren Anatomical Museum in the Francis A. Countway Library of Medicine

Gallery of the Warren Anatomical Museum (1906-1999), The Warren Anatomical Museum of Harvard Medical School and the Arrangement of its Collection, 1911, Warren Anatomical Museum in the Francis A. Countway Library of Medicine

Recently digitized works in the Medical Heritage Library have created a window into the historical and modern collections of Harvard Medical School’s Warren Anatomical Museum. Digital surrogates of six books and pamphlets, published between 1835 and 1911, have been made available through the efforts of the Center for the History of Medicine and the National Library of Medicine. Continue reading

Medical Heritage Library Awarded NEH Grant for Digitization of Historical Medical Journals

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American Journal of Insanity, v. 1, n. 1, 1844

The Medical Heritage Library (MHL), through the Open Knowledge Commons (OKC), has received funding from the National Endowment for the Humanities for a two-year project to digitize and preserve historical American medical journals. The digitized journals will be made freely available to researchers through the Medical Heritage Library collection in the Internet Archive. Continue reading

Lamar Soutter Library Contributes Rare Books to Online Medical Heritage Library

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We are pleased to announce the addition of 286 classic medical rare books from the Lamar Soutter Library, University of Massachusetts Medical School, to the Medical Heritage Library (MHL)’s holdings in the Internet Archive. The Lamar Soutter Library is the first contributor of existing digital materials to the MHL; by adding the tag “medicalheritage” to the cataloging information for each book in the Internet Archive, the Lamar Soutter Library has radically expanded the volumes’ potential audience. These digital texts join materials from Columbia, Harvard, and Yale, the National Library of Medicine, and the New York Public Library that will comprise the MHL. Continue reading

Early American Veterinary Texts in the National Library of Medicine’s Medical Heritage Library Collection

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A handwritten recipe for the botts, a parasite that affects horses, in Gervase Markham’s "The Citizen and Countryman’s Experienced Farrier" (Wilmington, Delaware: James Adams, 1764). Ingredients include vinegar, molasses, and gin.

Over the past twelve months the National Library of Medicine, a principal partner in the Medical Heritage Library, has been digitizing books from its early American medical book collection, and included have been a number of important and interesting items relating to veterinary medicine. Continue reading

CLIR 2011 Sponsors’ Symposium Features the Medical Heritage Library

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The world of higher education at large continues to grapple with the changing needs of researchers brought about by emerging technologies. Although many of the technological solutions for building a more robust research infrastructure are within our grasp, the human side of this equation is unresolved. That is, we are still learning the productive ways in which to work together across professional and institutional boundaries. This was a focus of discussion at the 2011 Council on Libraries and Information Resources Sponsors’ Symposium in Arlington, VA—Collaborative Opportunities Amidst Economic Pressures. Lively discussion of the economic, institutional, and social factors that can facilitate or impede collaborative solutions filled much of the day.

My presentation, Whose Goals are They? Navigating Diverse Institutional Cultures and Shared Responsibility for Creating Digital Resources in the History of Medicine, focused on the history of the MHL project and how a diverse group of partners can support digital scholarship in the medical humanities. This presentation was part of a panel that included two other examples of successful collaborations:

  • “The Making of Hydra: Common Solutions for Common Problems” by Martha Sites, Associate University Librarian for Production and Technology Services, University of Virginia
  • “TextGrid: A Virtual Research Environment for the Humanities” by Heike Neuroth, Scientific Coodinator of TextGrid and Director of Research and Development, University Library of Goettingen.

Together these projects highlight three approaches to finding shared solutions for disciplinary or local issues. In the final session of the day Chuck Henry, CLIR President, divided us into groups and asked the provocative question: What is it about our policies, organizations, traditions, or practices that impedes collaboration? The list of responses ranged from resource and staffing constraints to the perhaps more challenging habits of culture and communication.

PowerPoint slides from each of the presentations are available here. CLIR will also post a summary of the afternoon session on their website with a blog or wiki to encourage wider discussion. Visit often and join in the conversation.

Lori M. Jahnke
S. Gordon Castigliano CLIR Fellow
The College of Physicians of Philadelphia