In May 2017, the Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Library and Archives hosted "Conversations on the History of Eugenics."
About the Collections
See detailed information about member institutions and their collections. Select a member institution below to visit its main collections or library page.
We have compiled a list of digital collections and resources from our member institutions. We will continue to update this list as we receive more information.
California Institute of Technology
Major research collections available remotely:
- George Ellery Hale Papers: https://digital.archives.caltech.edu/hale
- Donald A. Glaser Papers: http://glaser.library.caltech.
edu - Paul B. MacCready Papers: http://maccready.library.caltech.edu
- Caltech Archives Oral History Project: http://oralhistories.library.caltech.edu
Reference inquiries: archives@caltech.edu
College of Physicians of Philadelphia
Digital image library: https://www.cppdigitallibrary.org/
S. Weir Mitchell papers: https://mitchell.cppdigitallibrary.org/s/mitchell/page/intro
The College of Physicians is a partner with the Medical Heritage Library, which has a significant collection of digitzed material: http://www.medicalheritage.org/search-2/
Drexel University
Finding Aids for Drexel University Collections: https://archivalcollections.drexel.edu/
Drexel University Archives online collections and exhibits: https://www.library.drexel.edu/archives/drexel-history-resources/explore-our-collections-online/
Library & Archives of the Academy of Natural Sciences of Drexel University webpages (including links to varied resources and contact information for research inquiries): https://ansp.org/research/library/
Drexel University College of Medicine Legacy Center – digital collections and online exhibitions: https://drexel.edu/legacy-center/
Duke University
Duke Digital Collections: https://
Online Exhibits: https://library.
Instruction/Digital Activities & Assignments: https://library.
Contact for research assistance: AskRL@duke.edu
Hagley Museum and Library
Finding aids: https://findingaids.hagley.org/xtf/
Digital archives: https://digital.hagley.org/
Digital exhibits: https://www.hagley.org/research/digital-exhibits
Oral history collections: https://digital.hagley.org/oralhistory?solr_nav%5Bid%5D=1e4410717a82cc925873&solr_nav%5Bpage%5D=0&solr_nav%5Boffset%5D=0
Newsletter: https://www.hagley.org/research/research-news-events/news/all-news
Scholars' projects: https://www.hagley.org/research/news/scholar-projects
Stories from the Stacks podcast: https://www.hagley.org/research/programs/stories-stacks
Millrace podcast: https://www.hagley.org/millrace
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCpQPQhnwuLEyoJ1LanZi2cA
Harvard University
Harvard Digital Collections: Linking to over 6 million items from Harvard’s collections.
Curiosity: curated guides to selected digitized collections at Harvard.
Colonial North America project: link to approximately 650,000 digitized pages related to 17th and 18th century North American holdings at Harvard.
Biodiversity Heritage Library, with a direct link to the Botany Libraries’ contributions and the Ernst Mayr (Museum of Comparative Zoology) Library’s contributions to the BHL.
Huntington Library
Research questions may be submitted to reference@huntington.org
National Library of Medicine
- Michael E. DeBakey Papers, documenting his significant contributions to cardiovascular medicine.
- Wilbur Sawyer Papers, documenting his role in developing a vaccine for yellow fever and work to eradicate the disease.
- John Fulton Papers, documenting his World War II-era military and aviation physiological work.
- Mason V. Hargett, documenting his research on yellow fever vaccines at the Rockefeller Institute and Rocky Mountain Laboratory.
- Louis Laval Williams, documenting his global malaria eradication efforts while working for the U.S. public health service.
- Julius S. Schreiber, documenting his psychological work with U.S. soldiers and the founding of the Institute for Social Relations.
- Robert King Stone, including undated personal materials and professional records from 1856-1857.
- Nearly 500 images added to NLM Digital Collections consisting of patent medicine trade cards dating from the 1890s-1930s, the majority of which were published in France, and posters representing anti-smoking, drug prevention, and HIV/AIDS/sexual health public health advertising from the Netherlands, dating mainly from the 1990s through the mid-2000s.
Linda Hall Library
The Linda Hall Library's digital collections provide access to hundreds of rare books and periodicals exploring the history of science and technology from the 15th century to the present. Astronomy, mathematics, earth sciences, and natural history are all well-represented in the Library's online holdings. Historians of engineering will also find much to explore in the Library's collection of 19th century railroad journals and the A.B. Nichols Panama Canal Collection. The Library adds new items to its digital collections on a regular basis. Noteworthy recent additions include Samuel Morse’s journal, Thomas Edison’s instructions to operate an electric power plant, and an article on radioactivity by Marie Curie annotated in her own hand.
To begin reviewing the Linda Hall Library’s digital collections, visit http://lhldigital.lindahall.org/. Please note that the Library is currently investing in a new content management system and would welcome visitor feedback on the organization of its online resources. For further information, email the Library’s Vice President for Research and Scholarship, Benjamin Gross (grossb@lindahall.org).
New York Academy of Medicine
Stay connected and access resources: https://www.nyam.org/library/stay-connected-update-resources-nyam-library/
Newberry Library
Digital resources: http://www.newberry.org/digital-newberry
Online collection: http://digcoll.newberry.org/#/
Contact a librarian: https://www.newberry.org/contact-librarian
Rockefeller Archive Center
Archival material is available to all researchers through DIMES (dimes.rockarch.org), RAC's online finding aid system. When browsing finding aids, digitized materials will appear with a camera icon. To a general search for digitized materials in DIMES, go to: https://dimes.rockarch.org/xtf/search
Significant online collections include:
- A large portion of the Rockefeller Foundation officer diaries have been digitized (in DIMES, these finding aids appear, arranged alphabetically by officer's last name as FA391, FA392, FA393, FA394.)
- The vast majority of records of the Foundation for Child Development (1898-1998) have been digitized. Identified in DIMES as FA019.
- The RAC created a digital history website for the centennial of the Rockefeller Foundation. It includes essays, photographs and extensive digitized documents from RAC. Available online at https://rockfound.rockarch.org/.
- The RAC recently launched RE:source, RAC's storytelling platform, highlighting the history of philanthropy through RAC's collection. Available online at: https://resource.rockarch.org/.
RAC has a very extensive set of research reports submitted by RAC research stipend awardees, providing broad insight into RAC collections and their historic themes. Available online at: http://rockarch.issuelab.org/?coverage=&author=&funder=&publisher=&wikitopic_categories=&keywords=&pubdate_start_year=1&pubdate_end_year=1&sort=&categories=
With specific questions, researchers should feel free to contact Lee R. Hiltzik, Ph.D., Senior Research Associate, who serves as RAC's coordinator with the Consortium. Lee can be reached at: lhiltzik@rockarch.org
For general questions about archival access and use, researchers should consult https://rockarch.org/collections/access-and-request-materials/
University of California, San Francisco (UCSF)
Digital Collections: https://www.library.ucsf.edu/archives/digital-collections/
In addition to our mandate to preserve and document the history of UCSF as an institution, we also focus on documenting events, organizations, individuals, and movements that have played important roles in the health sciences. The areas listed here are some of our collecting strengths, and they all contain digitized and born-digital materials:
HIV/AIDS epidemic: https://www.library.ucsf.edu/archives/aids/
Since 1987, when it launched the AIDS History Project, the UCSF Archives and Special Collections department has continued to play a key role in documenting the AIDS epidemic. This collection continues to grow with new materials being donated regularly, hundreds of thousands of pages have been digitized, are accessible online, and are made computationally actionable.
History of Anesthesia Collection: https://www.library.ucsf.edu/archives/anesthesia/
An extensive collection of artifacts and archival materials dating back to the late 19th century documenting the history and development of anesthesia, in particular on the West Coast.
Biotechnology Archives: https://www.library.ucsf.edu/archives/major-collecting-areas/
The Biotechnology Archives document the leadership of scientists and corporations in the Bay Area in the development and growth of biotechnology.
Dr. J. Michael Bishop papers: https://calisphere.org/collections/26395/
The COVID Tracking Project Archive: https://www.library.ucsf.edu/archives/covid-19-pandemic/the-covid-tracking-project-archive/
The COVID Tracking Project (CTP) was a volunteer organization launched from The Atlantic and dedicated to collecting and publishing the data required to understand the COVID-19 outbreak in the United States. The UCSF Archives and Special Collections department worked with former CTP volunteers and staff to document the public work and internal community of the project. The collection includes public websites, white papers, and datasets that were critical to a national understanding of the pandemic in a critical time.
Industry Documents Library: https://www.industrydocuments.ucsf.edu/
The UCSF Industry Documents Library (IDL) is a digital archive containing millions of documents obtained from industries which influence public health, hosted by the University of California, San Francisco Library. Originally established in 2002 to house the millions of documents publicly disclosed in litigation against the tobacco industry in the 1990s, beginning with the State of Minnesota’s settlement, the IDL has expanded to include documents from the drug, chemical, food, fossil fuel, and opioid industries to preserve open access to this information and to support research on the commercial determinants of public health.
UCSF University Archives (including yearbooks): https://www.library.ucsf.edu/archives/ucsf/
Contact for research questions: https://www.library.ucsf.edu/archives/ask-an-archivist/
University of Oklahoma
Digital collection: https://repository.ou.edu/
History of Science Portrait Collection: https://digital.libraries.ou.edu/cdm/landingpage/collection/LPC
Twitter: Search@OU_Libraries & @PalmeriJoAnn
Contact for research questions: JoAnn Palmeri (palmerij@ou.edu) Research Coordinator & Librarian, History of Science Collections, OU Libraries
Yale University
Online resources for history of medicine research: https://guides.library.yale.edu/histmedonline
Digital collections: https://library.medicine.yale.edu/digital
Contact for research questions: Melissa Grafe, melissa.grafe@yale.edu
Columbia University's Rare Book and Manuscript Library has acquired Caroline Lucretia Herschel’s own copy of her Catalogue of Stars (1798) with notes and annotations in her hand, and Libra Astronomica, y Philosophica (1690), by Carlos de Sigüenza y Góngora.
- The Chemical Heritage Foundation has completed processing the papers of American physicist, inventor and electronics engineer, L. Arthur D’Asaro (1927-2013). The collection spans 91 linear feet and documents D’Asaro’s broad research and development activities at Bell Laboratories and Princeton Optronics, Inc.
IsisCB Explore is the new open-access search interface for the History of Science Society's ISIS Current Bibliography. It includes nearly 200,000 interlinked bibliographic citations to books, chapters, articles, dissertations, and reviews from 1974 to present.
Access to IsisCB Explore is available through the Consortium's Collections page or through http://isiscb.org/explore.
Johns Hopkins University Special Collections and Archives recently made the following acquisitions: MS.0718: David P. Stern archives, 1973-2010 Born in Czechoslovakia, David Stern grew up in Israel, studying physics at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem and at the Israel Institute of Technology (Technion) in Haifa, where he wrote his doctoral thesis on an underground experiment on cosmic rays.
The Historical Medical Library of The College of Physicians of Philadelphia recently began to sort and catalog medical trade ephemera, reprints, and government documents that were collected in the late 19th century and early 20th centuries. This collection consists of 700 boxes equating to approximately 70,000 uncatalogued items.
This spring, the New York Academy of Medicine Library acquired a German manuscript cookbook from ca. 1700, compiling several hundred recipes. The cookbook offers instructions for making dishes using game, various types of sausage, and many kinds of fish, including pike, eel, and crayfish. Sweet dishes include marzipan, ginger bread, and desserts made from almond, apple, pear, rum and dates. Also included are notes on the preparation of various waters. A charming watercolor in the Biedermeier style at the beginning of the cookbook depicts an elegantly dressed couple facing each other.
The Linda Hall Library recently acquired 26 observation logs from David H. Levy, one of the most successful comet hunters in history, with 22 comets discovered, nine of them using his own backyard telescopes. The logs given to the Linda Hall Library date from 1956 when, at age eight, Levy accidentally saw a shooting star during the summer. He has kept an observation log ever since, totaling 18,000 sessions. Levy also donated an equal number of his personal journals which help explain the information contained within the observation logs. The remainder of Dr.
The American Philosophical Society recently acquired the papers of twentieth-century physicist and policy consultant Richard L. Garwin. Garwin was instrumental in the development of the hydrogen bomb and spent nearly fifty years addressing policy questions pertaining to its use, as well as the use of other advanced technologies, in addition to a continued and wide-ranging career in both basic and applied physical research.
On July 1st, 2015 the exhibition Fantastic Worlds: Science and Fiction, 1780-1910 will debut in the newly refurbished Smithsonian Libraries Exhibition Gallery located in the west wing of the National Museum of American History. On display will be some of the very works that exposed an eager and curious public to the wealth of new ideas and inventions of the 19th century, including landmarks of scientific discovery, imaginative fiction, popular science, newspaper hoaxes, dime novels, and more.