Sarah Weinblatt Blog 7: Contagion: Historical Views and of Diseases and Epidemics

I wanted to examine this digitization project, Contagion: Historical Views and of Diseases and Epidemics, because it uses OpenCollection. We are using this OpenSource software at the HRC to catalog our movies posters. This project is based at Harvard University, and the Harvard University Library is involved in this project along with a team of others. The items found in this digital library are a part of the collections of the Harvard Library system.

Collection Principles

The website states,"Harvard’s new “open collection” contributes to the understanding of the global, social–history, and public–policy implications of diseases and offers important historical perspectives on the science and the public policy of epidemiology today."

You can search a broad overview of the site by using the links on the left side. These links provide information on 9 different epidemics. One can also search and browse through the collections in the catalog records or through full text. The browse options provides a list of genres and topics from which you can search. There is also the option of searching using a Google toolbar.

Once you click on a disease link you are brought to a page with text about this epidemic. There is also a list of selected additional resources.

There is also a timeline that provides links to the materials found on this site.

Metadata

According to the site, in most instances, you can access the digitized materials through a hyperlink in the items's catalog record.

When you click on the browse by genre link, you are given the metadata about the various objects found on the site such as title, creator, date and a link to the object. You are also given the option to display a full record. This provides information regarding the location of the object, the subjects, categories, forms/genres, publishers, language in which it is published, and a description of the item.

Object Characteristics

The items that can be found in this digital library include: books, manuscripts, maps, broadsides, and images. The images in this collection can be enlarged by clicking on them. This takes you to a separate record where the images can be enlarged or decreased. For example, when I clicked on an image in teh cholera epidemic, I was taken to a digitized book from which this image was pulled. The text in these digitized resources is able to be searched.

Intended Audience

I really like this digital library because not only do they tell you about the contributors to the project, but there is also a help page that tells you how to search the collection. The intended audience of this digital library includes people interested in the history of diseases such as my fiancee who is in medical school. When I told him about this site, he said that sounded right up his alley.