Liaison Librarian
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Christopher Lyons
514-398-4475 ext. 09847#
Osler Library of the History of Medicine
Encyclopedias and dictionaries
- Antiquus Morbus A glossary of archaic medical terms, diseases, and causes of death.
- Archaic medical terms A historical dictionary of archaic medical terms, compiled for genealogists and historians.
- Cambridge Historical Dictionary of Disease. This reference work has detailed entries for 161 diseases, describing both their histories and characteristics.
- Credo reference. This is a multisource database that one can search in total or by specific subsets, such as medicine, history or art.
- Dorland's Illustrated Medical Dictionary. This is a good source for information about medical terminology.
- Encyclopedia of Birth Control. Edited by Vern L. Bullough
- Epidemics and Pandemics: Their Impact on Human History. An encylopedia by J.N. Hays
- A Historical Dictionary of Psychiatry. An electronic version of the 2005 work edited by Edward Shorter and published by Oxford University Press
- Medicine on Trial: A Handbook with Cases, Laws and Documents. Historical American jurisprudence by Elisabeth A. Cawthon
- Oxford Reference Online. This source searches multiple reference books, providing definitions and brief information for terms and people in medicine and history, drawing upon works such as the Oxford Companion to the Body, the Oxford Concise Medical Dictionary, and the Oxford Companion to the History of Modern Science. This resource can be searched in total or by specific subject areas or titles.
- Tobacco: A Reference Handbook. This work includes the historical dimension to tobacco in the United States, by Harold V. Cordry
- Wikipedia - Directory of entries on the history of medicine.
An interesting article on Wikipedia and historical accuracy is Roy Rosenzweig, "Can History Be Open Source? Wikipedia and the Future of the Past," The Journal of American History, June 2006 (6 July 2006).
- Women in Medicine: an Encyclopedia by Laura Lynn Windsor
Bibliographies
- Bibliography of Canadian Health Sciences Periodicals 1826-1980. This online bibliography, which is an expansion of Charles Roland and Paul Potter's 1979 Bibliography of Canadian Medical Periodicals, 1826-1975, lists historical Canadian periodicals in the health sciences, some with annotations, and offers links to freely available digitized content.
- Disability in the Middle East A Bibliography Comprising Materials with Technical, Cultural and Historical Relevance to Child and Adult Disabilities, Special Needs, Social and Educational Responses and Rehabilitation
- Pharmaziehistorische Bibliographie PHB PHB is an international bibliography for the history of pharmacy covering articles and reviews from journals, conferences and monographic works. PHB also reviews new books in the field of history of pharmacy and related fields.
- SexBiblio Bibliography of the history of western sexuality prepared by the Institute for Economic and Social History, University of Vienna.
- Some Electronic Resources in the History of Science, Medicine and Technology An annotated list of databases and other online tools created by the William H. Welch Medical Library at Johns Hopkins University in 2003. Note that the links to proprietary databases will not work so you will need to see if McGill has them by searching in our Catalogue or in Article Indexes and Databases.
- Some Useful Reference Sources in the History of Medicine, Science and Technology This is an annotated list of largely print works created by the William H. Welch Medical Library at Johns Hopkins University. This was last revised in 2003.
Rare books
- AbeBooks Glossary Terminology used in the antiquarian book trade to describe books.
- Book History Online This is a database of books and articles on the history of the printed book and libraries worldwide. It is based on the print serial publication Annual Bibliography of the History of the Printed Book and Libraries.
- Book Terminology A list of brief definitions of terminolgy used to describe books, created by the IOBA, which holds copyright of the contents.
- Bookbinding and the Conservation of Books: A Dictionary of Descriptive Terminology, by Matt T. Roberts and Don Etherington.
- Bound to Please: A History of Fine Leather Bindings An online exhibit of different bindings used in bookmaking.
- CERL Portal This database cross searches a number of European and Yalt's manuscript collection catalogues as well as the Hand Press Book database, which lists books printed between 1450 and 1830.
- CERL Thesaurus This database has information about names and places associated with books printed in the hand press era (1450-1830), including variants. This is a reference tool for bibliographers and scholars of the history of the book. It supports internal linking between imprint places and imprint names, so that the user can see which printers are recorded in the CERL Thesaurus as having worked in a specific printing place, thus giving valuable new insights into book production in Europe in the hand-press eravery useful for determining variants and modern terminology for information about books, such as Lunnyng = London.
- CoOL: Conservation Online is a very extensive site with a great deal of information related to the conservation of books, paper, photographs, archives, artefacts and other material.
- Database of Bookbindings A browsable and searchable illustrated database of different bindings held by the British Library.
- English Short Title Catalogue. Contains records for works printed in any language in England or its dependencies from the beginning of printing through the end of the eighteenth century, as well as works printed in English anywhere else in the world during that period. Includes the former Eighteenth-Century Short-Title Catalogue (ESTC) and the two print short-title catalogues covering 1475-1640 (Pollard & Redgrave) and 1641-1700 (Wing).
A free version of the ESTC has been made available by the British Library.
- Latin Place Names A listing of Latin place names found in books published before 1801 and their equivalents in the venacular, as well as links to other useful sources of translation, such as Latin terms.
- Medieval Manuscript Manual This site offers basic information about Medieval Manuscripts, including their production, structure and function. There is also a glossary. The site was created by the Department of Medieval Studies at Central European University, Budapest.
- Melbourne Museum of Printing An interesting site that explains various printing techniques, with many illustrations and an extensive glossary of type and printing terms.
- Nineteenth Century Short Title Catalogue. "Aims to provide increasingly complete listings of British books printed between 1801-1919. British books are taken to include all books published in Britain, its colonies and United States of America; all books in English wherever published; and all translations from English."
- Northeast Document Conservation Center. An authoritative online resource for information about the preservation of paper-based materials.
- ODLIS - Online Dictionary for Library and Information Science This is the online edition of the work published by Libraries Unlimited with a number of useful entries for rare books.
- Piccard Collection of Watermarks This is a database of 92 000 paper watermarks.
- Printers' Devices A database of the "trademark" symbols used by printers.
- Printmaking Techniques A brief history of historical book illustration techniques produced for the Anatomia online exhibit by the University of Toronto.
- Web Resources for the History of the Book List organised by the Consortium of European Research Libraries. Sites are organised by: Bibliographical Data; History of the Book; Museums; Research Centres; Library Organisations; CERL Members; Itinerary of the Book; Cultural Studies and Other CERL Resources.
Other reference sources