The Medical Library Is History

Abstract

Medical libraries are dying. Or at least some specific sorts of medical libraries—independent institutional libraries, owned by historic organizations, in historic buildings, with large historic collections—are under serious threat of themselves becoming part of the past. To mitigate this threat, there is a need to rethink the nature of the “historic” medical library. This involves reconsidering the library’s relationship to medicine and the history of medicine as disciplines, defining what is important about the nature of the library as a physical space and of its collections as material things, and reevaluating its audiences. Digitization has a role to . . .