Every librarian has come across a particular collection and has wondered what librarians in the past were thinking. The most recent such example at the Historical Medical Library of The College of Physicians of Philadelphia contains 700 boxes filled with uncatalogued reprints, medical trade ephemera and pamphlets. How and why did we end up with nearly 70,000 uncatalogued items?
Book Exchanges
Book and reprint exchanges were a very popular method for medical libraries to accumulate texts for their physicians without making purchases. At the head of the exchange was the Medical Library Association’s (MLA) founder and College of Physicians of Philadelphia Fellow, George M. Gould. Dr. Gould preached that resource sharing among libraries was the best way to advance knowledge for doctors. MLA’s original intent was for libraries to share their duplicate medical literature. This caused libraries to be proactive in asking for prints from publishers and for reprints from journals so they could trade them later for material they did not have. In 1890, libraries started to see increased cooperation with publishers and among each other – this is where our collection of reprints and pamphlets begins. In 1930, there is a shift from exchanging modern periodicals and pamphlets to exchanging medical treatises. This marks the end of the formation of this pamphlet and reprint collection. It can be concluded from looking at the Library’s history, and trends in medical publishing, that many of these pamphlets and reprints derive from these book exchanges.
Pamphlets and Reprints here at the Library
Pamphlets and reprints have had a rather tortured past here at the Library. A professional librarian was not always present to help organize the vast amount of literature coming into the institution before, during, and after the book exchange.
In 1794, early pamphlets collected by the College were ordered to be bound by Dr. John Redman, the College’s President since there was no acting librarian at the time. At this time, pamphlets were bound by author’s last name, regardless of subject. This was not a favored practice because it limited access. Charles Perry Fischer joined the College as librarian in 1882. His favored practice was to bind pamphlets and reprints and to classify them according to subject headings for easier reference.
As the book exchange increased, so did the College’s pamphlet and reprint collection. The college began to acquire large amount of reprints and pamphlets and staff could not meet the demands of binding them all. In 1901, the Transactions of The College of Physicians of Philadelphia reported that the 58,395 unbound and uncatalogued pamphlets in the collection and all rare and valuable pamphlets were to be separated and cataloged. In 1908, the number of uncatalogued pamphlets and reprints jumps to 70,000. Numerous staff changes during this time also made the classifying and sorting harder.
1904 proved to be the most crucial year for the fate of the pamphlets and reprints. Fischer officially recommended at the Association of Medical Librarians meeting that all unbound pamphlets and reprints be arranged by subject heading and that when 50 pamphlets were gathered in a subject, they would be bound together.The motion was passed and grouping pamphlets and reprints by subject became not only the standard for the College, but all libraries under MLA. A single catalog card would then be written for the volume of bound items as a whole instead of cataloging each item individually, which was seen as a waste of time. Some previously bound pamphlets were unbound in order to fit in with the new method.
By 1916, all the pamphlets were given subject headings and were ready to be rebound. The United States’ entrance into World War 1 in 1917 hindered this project, as did unrest in the labor market through 1923. The start of 1924 saw working conditions return to normal – but no rebinding took place.
And so the years went by, and no binding ever took place. Instead, more pamphlets and reprints were accumulated through donations from Fellows, and other institutions that were part of the book and journal exchange. Pamphlets and reprints would be given subjects headings and placed into a cardboard box that was labeled with the subject heading on the flap.
Accessibility
How does the Library make a collection this vast accessible? It is a very good question to consider given that best practice has been to catalog the pamphlets individually. It would be quite an undertaking to catalog 70,000 pamphlets and reprints individually.
Pamphlets and reprints are now being separated since they no longer hold the same value within the collection. The pamphlets will be cataloged individually – an easy task since they are in the minority and have been weeded in past attempts to get the collection under control.
The reprints are a harder task. Our first instinct is to weed them out. If we have the original journal, why would we need a reprint of an article from that journal? The answer lies in the unique covers and publishing information that are available in some of the reprints. For researchers and historians studying the print trade, such information can be crucial to connecting the dots for publisher information and mobility. Some reprints also have unique signatures and annotations provided by the authors like this rare DaCosta signature.
Finally, the subject headings developed around 1916 also prove to be of interest for the medical humanities – the words used for headings, such as “cripples,” gives a snapshot into social and cultural perceptions at that time.
Reprints with no unique information or that duplicate ones already in our collection are being weeded out. Reprints that are retained are also being rehoused in acid free boxes as a discrete collection and a finding aid is being created for easy access to the material. Original subject headings are being kept in addition to the addition of Medical Subject Headings. Finally a collection that has been accumulating for over 100 years will be made available.