The UK Medical Heritage Library contains 10 highly searchable collections from various institutions focused on medical history. The collections contain rare works on topics like anatomy, obstetrics, tropical medicine, early women physicians, and the beginnings of fields like anesthesia and epidemiology. Visualization tools are being developed to help users explore the collections and uncover connections between historical works, institutions, people, and topics across the diverse content spanning languages, time periods, and perspectives.

1. UKMHL: visualising medical history
Peter Findlay, UK medical heritage library event
27/10/2016
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2. UK Medical Heritage Library collections
23/11/2016

3. What’s on offer
»10 highly searchable collections
› Bristol: Bristol and Bath, two important centres of healing in the nineteenth century
and earlier reflected in the inclusion of the spas collection
› Glasgow: Hunterian Collection strong in anatomy, obstetrics and gynaecology
› King’s College London: StThomas’ Hospital (founded 1551), Guy’s Hospital (founded
1726) and King’sCollege Hospital (founded 1840)
› LSHTM: outlining the history of tropical medicine and public health
23/11/2016 UK Medical Heritage Library collection overview – UKMHL Live Lab 3

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»10 highly searchable collections
› Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh: Scientific medicine Chadwick, Christison,
Hahneman, Hughes-Bennett, Koch, Lister, Pasteur, Simpson, Syme,Tuke andVirchow
› Royal College of Physicians of London: some of the earliest works by women studying
to become physicians but also diverse languages: French, German, Latin, Spanish,
Italian, Arabic, Swedish, Norwegian, Dutch andTamil
› Royal College of Surgeons of England: 21,800 pamphlets and tracts; material to
support research into the beginnings of anaesthesia, antisepsis, microbiology, forensic
medicine, demography and epidemiology
What’s on offer

5. What’s on offer
»10 highly searchable collections
› University of Leeds: large cookery collection; works on food production, on food’s
medicinal uses, on gardening and other food-related topics
› UCL: ophthalmology, the eye and its diseases, and their treatment including surgery
› Wellcome: 25,000 texts; strong in history of genetics and mental healthcare
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6. Developing a toolset
»Visualisations – why these ones?
» Beyond the visualisations
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7. jisc.ac.uk
Except where otherwise noted, this work
is licensed under CC-BY-NC-ND
Peter Findlay
23/11/2016 Designing a collaborative service for the purchasing of digital archival collections 7
Peter.Findlay@jisc.ac.uk