“During the 19th and most of the 20th century, those two libraries were building competing collections and had somewhat different areas of interest,” said Eckert. “When Countway opened, it cared for the historic materials from both libraries, and that is what we still do.”
Among Countway’s resources are medical incunabula, reports, and publications. The rich collection of texts span diverse subject areas of anatomy, gynecology and obstetrics, radiology, medical jurisprudence, surgery, psychology, phrenology, medical botany, pharmacy and pharmacology, and internal medicine.
“A lot of the book collections are interesting; there is some 19th century literature on medical treatments written at a time when medicine was becoming much more scientific,” said Eggleston. “You can see the early attempts at treatments are all there”.
OTHER RESOURCES
Digital presentations of the artifacts available at Countway and other Harvard libraries are available online. Current uploaded videos include a presentation on one of the books that survived the Harvard Fire and was digitized as part of the Medical Heritage Library project. Another showcase recently found photos of soldiers’ lungs from the Fort Devens 1918 flu outbreak.
These presentations showcase the wide variety of specimens, but also provide tutorials on the electronic resources available at Countway.
“There is so much there that nobody knows about because it is a huge amount of information available for anybody to use,” said David Osterbur, Director of Public and Access Services at the Countway Library. “We have a variety of classes available to learn how to use these resources available to anyone interested.”
Countway holds more than 3,500 current journal titles, 630,000 volumes, and provides access to electronic catalogs.
The medical library even offers some non-conventional therapeutic resources.
“While most undergraduates have probably never heard of Countway, it definitely has some unique experiences to offer,” said Sarvagna Patel ’12. “For example, you can rent Cooper, a shi-tzu puppy, to play with and de-stress from a hectic week. Good luck trying to find that in Lamont!”
—Staff writer Fatima Mirza can be reached at fmirza@college.harvard.edu.