Library Adventures in a Digital Age: Observations and Questions

Abstract

Libraries have been essential to my role as a physician-historian working for twenty-six years in an academic health sciences center. They are the repositories of thousands of years of medical evidence, even if it comes in forms that are increasingly disparaged: paper and anecdote. While writing my dissertation in Paris, I fell in love with old books and manuscripts. Reading, holding, and touching those beautiful—if barely legible—papers instilled a joyful and durable eagerness to work with them and to expose my students to their power.

The university librarians and archivists are my closest colleagues. Always grateful for their . . .