A plan for a comprehensive medico-historical library: scope and coverage.

Abstract

D _OCUMENTARY photography, especially in the form of microfilm, microprint, and the microcard, has worked its way gradually, almost insidiously, into the techniques of the modern library and has confronted librarians with possibilities and problems not dreamed of in their earlier philosophies. Nowhere, perhaps, have the effects been more revolutionary than in the rare-book field. Here photography was at first mainly an aid to the reference service. Presently, it was employed also to fill out defective copies of old and rare volumes, many of which had been partly worn out with use. In this sort of work the Army Medical Library was something of a leader. During World War II, when it set up its History of Medicine Divrision in Cleveland as the depository for its rare books, a systematic "missing pages program" was established, in order to fill out mutilated or defective books by means of photostats or photoprints from copies in other libraries. But if there could be a "missing pages program," why not also a "missing books program"? Why might we not by microphotography obtain from other libraries copies of whole works, or of whole sets or senes of works, which they possessed and we did not? In the year I948 the History of Medicine Division undertook a program of this sort, with a view to rounding out the Library's collection of early medical works. Since the subject area was fairly restricted, it seemed reasonable to hope that we thus might acquire all the available early literature in the field-or, if not all, at least most of it. In our more sanguine moments we talked openly of our plan for a complete medico-historical library, but usually we spoke of it discreetly as "comprehensive" rather than "complete." Or, in a still more noncommittal mood, we called it simply our "microfilm acquisition program.." As a practical measure, to divide the project up into manageable sections, it was decided to take up one century at a time, beginning with the sixteenth.