The Medical Heritage Library (MHL) was a

digital curation Digital curation is the selection, Preservation (library and archival science), preservation, maintenance, collection, and archiving of Digital data, digital assets. Digital curation establishes, maintains, and adds value to repositories of digita ...

collaborative among several medical libraries which promoted free and

open access Open access (OA) is a set of principles and a range of practices through which nominally copyrightable publications are delivered to readers free of access charges or other barriers. With open access strictly defined (according to the 2001 de ...

to quality historical resources in medicine. The MHL is digitized books and journals and worked to expand to the digitization of archival materials and still images. In 2010, the MHL began digitizing titles, mainly monographs, in a variety of medical history and related fields including

chemistry Chemistry is the scientific study of the properties and behavior of matter. It is a physical science within the natural sciences that studies the chemical elements that make up matter and chemical compound, compounds made of atoms, molecules a ...

, nursing, dentistry, audiology,

physiology Physiology (; ) is the science, scientific study of function (biology), functions and mechanism (biology), mechanisms in a life, living system. As a branches of science, subdiscipline of biology, physiology focuses on how organisms, organ syst ...

, psychology, psychiatry, biological science, hydrotherapy, weather,

veterinary medicine Veterinary medicine is the branch of medicine that deals with the prevention, management, medical diagnosis, diagnosis, and treatment of disease, disorder, and injury in non-human animals. The scope of veterinary medicine is wide, covering all a ...

, gardening, physical culture, and

alternative medicine Alternative medicine refers to practices that aim to achieve the healing effects of conventional medicine, but that typically lack biological plausibility, testability, repeatability, or supporting evidence of effectiveness. Such practices are ...

chosen for their scholarly, educational, and research value. Since the inception of the project, materials in audio and video formats have been added to the collection. The Medical Heritage Library closed in 2024.

Goals

The MHL goals were: # Develop an organizational structure that will ensure sustainability of MHL activities # Increase institutional membership to ensure rich content contributions and international coverage # Seek and exploit collaborative opportunities with users, creators, contributors, and peer digital libraries that further the MHL’s work # Develop methodologies and projects that measure the impact and evaluate the benefits of the Medical Heritage Library to the communities it serves # Develop and promote tools to enhance discovery and use of content by exposing linkages among the content across partner repositories and across formats # Develop means to match archaic medical terminology to current terminology in order to expose the relevance of medical historical content to current medical practice, teaching, and research # Develop access and content management strategies that align with one or more existing large-scale digital projects such as HathiTrust, the Digital Public Library of America and the Biodiversity Heritage Library # Incorporate preservation as a requirement for future content development # Continue to improve access to the collection # Provide leadership regarding access and privacy issues unique to medical content in order to enable access in compliance with applicable ethical, legal, and regulatory codes

Library scope and history

The MHL maintained
blog
Twitter account, and Facebook page to interact with researchers, librarians, archivists, students, and the interested general public about the MHL collections, the history of medicine, digital humanities, and related topics. The MHL began digitization of monographs in 2010 with a
initial grant
from the

Sloan Foundation The Alfred P. Sloan Foundation is an American philanthropic nonprofit organization. It was established in 1934 by Alfred P. Sloan Jr., president and chief executive officer of General Motors. The Sloan Foundation makes grants to support origin ...

. Work on the MHL project has continued with funding support from collaborating institutions, the

National Endowment for the Humanities The National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) is an independent federal agency of the U.S. government, established by thNational Foundation on the Arts and the Humanities Act of 1965(), dedicated to supporting research, education, preserv ...

announcement
, and the

Mellon Foundation The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, commonly known as the Mellon Foundation, is a New York City-based private foundation with wealth accumulated by Andrew Mellon of the Mellon family of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. It is the product of the 1969 merger ...

via a program administered by the Council on Library and Information Resources
announcement
. All digitized works are located at th
Internet Archive
The collection includes books, pamphlets, journals, and video and audio recordings in the history of medicine and related fields. A working list o
subject headings
is available here. Titles have been chosen for their scholarly, educational, and research value. The MHL consults with a volunteer group of scholars in the history of medicine and related fields and surveys its users regularly. As of August 2014, the collection consists of nearly 60,000 items including monographs, journals, audio and video on topics including

surgery Surgery is a medical specialty that uses manual and instrumental techniques to diagnose or treat pathological conditions (e.g., trauma, disease, injury, malignancy), to alter bodily functions (e.g., malabsorption created by bariatric surgery s ...

, public health,

infectious diseases infection is the invasion of tissues by pathogens, their multiplication, and the reaction of host tissues to the infectious agent and the toxins they produce. An infectious disease, also known as a transmissible disease or communicable dise ...

gynecology Gynaecology or gynecology (see American and British English spelling differences) is the area of medicine concerned with conditions affecting the Female reproductive system, female reproductive system. It is often paired with the field of obste ...

, psychology,

anatomy Anatomy () is the branch of morphology concerned with the study of the internal structure of organisms and their parts. Anatomy is a branch of natural science that deals with the structural organization of living things. It is an old scien ...

neuroscience Neuroscience is the scientific study of the nervous system (the brain, spinal cord, and peripheral nervous system), its functions, and its disorders. It is a multidisciplinary science that combines physiology, anatomy, molecular biology, ...

, tobacco, and homeopathy. The MHL created a full-text search tool for use by researchers. The tool allowed users to search the full-text of one or more items simultaneously. The UK Medical Heritage Library started in 2014 with nine digitisation partners in England and Scotland, including CL(University College London), the niversity of Leeds the niversity of Glasgow the ondon School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine ing's College London and the niversity of Bristol- along with the libraries of the oyal College of Physicians of London the oyal College of Physicians of Edinburgh and the oyal College of Surgeons of England The original partnership is between the ellcome Libraryand

isc ISC may refer to: Arts and entertainment * Imperial Space Command, a fictional organization in the books by Catherine Asaro * Indian Society of Cinematographers, a non-profit cultural and educational organisation * International Sculpture Center, ...

Material digitized by the UK MHL project is also available through the MHL portal at the Internet Archive and searchable through the full-text search tool described above.

Members

Original members of the collaborative formed in 2010 are: * Augustus C. Long Health Sciences Library at Columbia University
College of Physicians of Philadelphia

Cushing/Whitney Medical Library
at Yale University

at Harvard University *

National Library of Medicine The United States National Library of Medicine (NLM), operated by the United States federal government, is the world's largest medical library. Located in Bethesda, Maryland, the NLM is an institute within the National Institutes of Health. I ...

New York Academy of Medicine
*

New York Public Library The New York Public Library (NYPL) is a public library system in New York City. With nearly 53 million items and 92 locations, the New York Public Library is the second-largest public library in the United States behind the Library of Congress a ...

Open Knowledge Commons

Welch Medical Library, Library of the Institute of the History of Medicine
and th
Alan Mason Chesney Medical Archives of the Johns Hopkins Medical Institutions
*

Wellcome Library The Wellcome Library is a free library and Museum based in central London. It was developed from the collection formed by Sir Henry Wellcome (1853–1936), whose personal wealth allowed him to create one of the most ambitious collections of the ...

Conten
contributors
have joined the project regularly since 2011; the MHL continues to seek additional content contributors.
University of Toronto, Dentistry Library (Harry R. Abbott)
(2014)
University of Illinois at Chicago, Library of the Health Sciences, Special Collections
(2014)
Medical Center Archives of New York-Presbyterian/Weill-Cornell
(2013) *

History of Modern Biomedicine Research Group The History of Modern Biomedicine Research Group (HoMBRG) is an academic organisation specialising in recording and publishing the oral history of twentieth and twenty-first century biomedicine. It was established in 1990 as the Wellcome Trust's H ...

(2013)
Robert W. Woodruff Health Sciences Center Library at Emory University
(2013)

Brandeis University (2012)
National Institutes of Health Library
(2012)
University of California, San Francisco Legacy Tobacco Documents Library
(2012)
Wellcome Films
(2012)
Health Sciences and Human Services Library
University of Maryland, the Founding Campus (2012)
Otis Historical Archives
National Museum of Health and Medicine (2012)
Rudolph Matas Health Sciences Library
Tulane University (2012)

(2012)
Lamar Soutter Library
University of Massachusetts Medical School (2011)

Timeline of the project

* 2010: MHL founded with grant (Medical Heritage Library Phase I) from the Sloan Foundation; initial digitization of medical history texts begins. * 2011: MHL awarded a National Endowment for the Humanities Digital Humanities Level One Start-up Grant. * 2012: MHL awarded a National Endowment for the Humanities grant
Expanding the Medical Heritage Library
for digitizing historic American medical journals received from National Endowment for the Humanities. * 2012: MHL awarded a Mellon Foundation grant
Private Practices, Public Health
for processing archival collections via the Council on Library and Information Science.

References

Medical Heritage Library Workplan 2013-2014

Medical Heritage Library Priorities 2013-2014

Live Science Live Science is a science news website. The publication features stories on a wide range of topics, including space, animals, health, archaeology, human behavior, and planet Earth. It also includes a reference section with links to other websites ...

Window to the Past: Countway Library preserving ancient medical texts

UCL joins the Wellcome Trust's Medical Heritage Library of digitised books
*
Project Showcase: Exploring the Medical Heritage Library

National Council on Public History The National Council on Public History (NCPH) is an American professional membership association established in 1979 to support a diverse group of people, institutions, agencies, businesses, and academic programs associated with the field of publ ...

21,500 tracts and pamphlets available to view online: UK Medical Heritage Library project

Royal College of Surgeons of England The Royal College of Surgeons of England (RCS England) is an independent professional body and registered charity that promotes and advances standards of surgery, surgical care for patients, and regulates surgery and dentistry in England and Wa ...

Nearly 60,000 items from the Medical Heritage Library now available in DPLA

Digital Public Library of America The Digital Public Library of America (DPLA) is a US project aimed at providing public access to digital holdings in order to create a large-scale public digital library. It officially launched on April 18, 2013, after two-and-a-half years of dev ...

The UK Medical Heritage Library – a free on-line resource of 19C published work

British Society for the History of Medicine The British Society for the History of Medicine (BSHM) is an umbrella organisation of History of medicine societies throughout the United Kingdom, with particular representation to the International Society for the History of Medicine. It has gro ...

Automating Harvest and Ingest of the Medical Heritage Library

Ariadne In Greek mythology, Ariadne (; ; ) was a Cretan princess, the daughter of King Minos of Crete. There are variations of Ariadne's myth, but she is known for helping Theseus escape from the Minotaur and being abandoned by him on the island of N ...

External links

Official website

Medicine and the Humanities. Part III: Medical Heritage Library
*
Making a Medical Heritage Milestone
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