The National Library of Medicine (NLM), a component of the US’ National Institutes of Health, reached a benchmark at the conclusion of its 175th anniversary year, 2011, when it scanned its one millionth page for the Medical Heritage Library Project.
NLM is contributing Medicine in the Americas to the Medical Heritage Library Project, a cooperative venture to digitise historical materials from the collections of the NLM, the Countway Library at Harvard, the Harvey Cushing/John Hay Whitney Library at Yale, the Augustus C. Long Health Sciences Library at Columbia University and the New York Public Library (http://www.medicalheritage.org). The goal of the project, launched in January 2010, is to digitise books and journals that document the evolution of American medicine from 17th century colonial medicine to 20th century research hospitals. The whole of NLM's contribution of over 6,000 books will be available through NLM's Digital Collections repository, and the entire content of the Medical Heritage Library will be available through the Internet Archive.
Medicine in the Americas titles are selected from the NLM's History of Medicine Division (HMD), including books and pamphlets from the US, Latin America, the Caribbean and Canada. The collection currently features items from 1610 to 1865. Topics covered include anatomy, military medicine, medical education, medical jurisprudence, public health, psychiatry and nursing. Future work will encompass titles published through 1920.
The Medical Heritage Library, a digital curation collaborative, is supported by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation and administered by the Open Knowledge Commons. The Medicine in the Americas files will reside in NLM's Digital Collections repository.
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