Skip to content

Fugitive Leaves – from The Historical Medical Library

Fugitive Leaves – from The Historical Medical Library

Menu

  • Fugitive Leaves Blog
  • HML Collections
    • Library Catalog
    • Archival Finding Aids
    • Digital Image Library
  • Library Homepage

Freeing the LAMS from the Silos; or, How We Learned to Love MARC for the Sake of BIBFRAME

Staff Breaking news, Digital spine, Happenings April 27, 2017April 27, 2017Cataloguing, Libraries and museums, MARC, Metadata

On April 1st, the College of Physicians of Philadelphia released what we lovingly refer to as the “Digital Spine,” one of the few catalogs in the United States that merges descriptions of, and access to, library, archival and museum collections.

Approximately 145,000 bibliographic records for collections in the Historical Medical Library and approximately 28,000 records for objects in the Mütter Museum will be merged in a single, cross-searchable database.  To sample this integration, go to https://cpp.ent.sirsi.net/client/en_US/library and search for “foreign bodies.”

 

 

Museum records are slowly being released into the online public access catalog (OPAC). One of the biggest problems with integrating these two collections is the lack of standardization for describing museum objects (of any kind). In library description, we have “title.” In museum description, something akin to a title can be found in “Remarks” or “Description” or “Object Description” or “Object Name.” Building crosswalks between library and museum descriptions is an engaging activity.

 

 

Another problem is the interim use of the MARC format to catalog museum objects.  The long-term goal of the Digital Spine is to expose collections metadata to crawling by search engines.  In order to do this, we had to start with MARC, which seems antithetical, since MARC is not a structure that is understood by search engines. The College selected SirsiDynix as the vendor for this project because of SirsiDynix’ recent release of its BLUEcloud LSP.  BLUEcloud Visibility pulls a library’s records and transforms them using BIBFRAME, which exposes catalog records as linked data.  Here is an example of the “Person” record for Chevalier L. Jackson, the “father” of American laryngology, whose foreign body collection, items referenced above, is one of the first museum collections to be released into the OPAC:

 

 

In the near future, we anticipating spending a lot of time cleaning museum records and releasing them to the OPAC; retrospectively cataloging original library material that never made it into the original conversion to electronic format; and working with SirsiDynix to create an archives “module” to accommodate hierarchically described collections.  In the long term, we plan to expand the reach of our metadata as linked data – how extensible can we be?  In answering that question, we will truly free the LAMs from the silo.

  • ← Tracing 10a 159 through time*
  • Secreti medici…still a secret to me →

Fugitive Leaves is the blog of The Historical Medical Library (HML) of The College of Physicians of Philadelphia, written in the tradition and spirit of the original Library newsletter printed in the Transactions and Studies of The College of Physicians of Philadelphia 1956-1996.

Fugitive Leaves features stories and updates from Library staff, interns, visiting researchers, Mütter Museum staff, and other College affiliates.

Recent posts

  • The Library is Open!
  • George Cheyne and the Cure for Disorders of the Mind
  • Diet and Nutrition in the Early Age of Aviation
  • Philip Withers: Defender of the Mad King
  • “Magic” and Magic: How One Politician Decided to Debunk Witchcraft

Categories

Tags

19th century mental health Access Anatomy Archives Beaches Book bindings Cataloguing Codicology Constantinus Africanus Dating historical manuscripts Digital image library Digitization EAD Exhibits Fragments Health resorts Herbals History of medicine History of the book Illuminations Illustrations Institutional records Manuscript waste Medical trade ephemera Medicine and the arts Medieval manuscripts Medieval medicine Mental health Monsters Nineteenth century medicine Outreach Paleography Pamphlets Philadelphia history Primary sources Processing Provenance Radium therapy Recipe books Silas Weir Mitchell Spas Spring water Tuberculosis Vacation Women's healthcare

Hours & Info

Historical Medical Library
The College of Physicians of Philadelphia
19 S. 22nd Street
Philadelphia, PA 19107


The Norris Reading Room Gallery is Open and included with Museum Ticket Purchase
Wednesdays through Sundays, 10:00am to 5:00pm

RESEARCH APPOINTMENTS:
Wednesdays and Thursdays, 10:00am to 4:00pm

To make an appointment to use the Library, head over to our Research Page and fill out a Research Request Form.

To ask questions about the collections, please email us at library@collegeofphysicians.org

Follow us on Social Media

Tweets by CPPHistMedLib
Follow us on Instagram
Copyright © 2025 Fugitive Leaves – from The Historical Medical Library. All rights reserved.
Theme: Accelerate by ThemeGrill. Powered by WordPress.
We use cookies to ensure that we give you the best experience on our website. If you continue to use this site we will assume that you are happy with it.OkNo