Medical Heritage Library collaborators the Alan Mason Chesney Medical Archives of the Johns Hopkins Medical Institutions [
http://www.medicalarchives.jhmi.edu/] and the Center for the History of Medicine at the Francis A. Countway Library of Medicine [
http://www.countway.harvard.edu/index.html]
are pleased to announce the distribution of their jointly authored
recommended practices to enable access to manuscript and archival
collections containing health information about individuals [available
here
http://www.medicalheritage.org/announcements-and-articles/
under "Documentation."] These recommendations are intended to alleviate
many of the concerns repositories have related to collecting and
preserving health services records, especially those repositories that
are not affiliated with hospitals or medical schools.
The recommendations are presented in four categories: 1) Determining an
Institution’s Status and Policy Needs; 2) Implementing Policy and
Fostering Process Transparency; 3) Communicating the Nature of
Restrictions; and 4) Describing Records to Best Enable Discovery and
Access. Those who care for and provide access to records containing
health information about individuals are invited to test the
recommendations and provide feedback on their utility; those who use
such records in their research are equally invited to comment on their
scope.
Researchers who have used or are seeking access to primary sources
containing health information about individuals are encouraged to share
their experiences and difficulties accessing health services records.
Visit the MHL’s researcher access survey site [
https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/M38FD39] and contribute to our efforts to improve access to these important records.
For more information, please contact the Medical Heritage Library at
MedicalHeritage@gmail.com
This work was made possible through the generous funding of the Mellon
Foundation through the Council for Library and Information Resources’
Cataloging Hidden Special Collections and Archives [
http://www.clir.org/hiddencollections] program (2012: Private Practices, Public Health: Privacy-Aware Processing to Maximize Access to Health Collections [
https://wiki.med.harvard.edu/Countway/ArchivalCollaboratives/PrivatePractices]).
Thank you!
-Hanna Clutterbuck-Cook (on behalf of Emily Gustainis and Phoebe Evans Letocha)
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Processing Assistant, Center for the History of Medicine and
Project Coordinator, Medical Heritage Library (
http://www.medicalheritage.org/)
