There are many ways you can find Center for the History of Medicine resources.

Harvard's online library catalog: HOLLIS

You can search for rare books, manuscripts, journals, theses, and institutional records of the Harvard Medical School, Harvard School of Dental Medicine, and Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health.

While a majority of the Center's collections have catalog records, records for individual Warren Anatomical Museum objects are not in HOLLIS. Some pre-1901 collections are only in card catalogs in the Center's reading room.
➢ Quick tips for searching HOLLIS

Finding aids search system: HOLLIS for Archival Discovery

A finding aid is a descriptive guide to an archival or manuscript collection that helps users understand, contextualize, and access the contents of the collection. HOLLIS for Archival Discovery allows you to search and browse across finding aids from all Harvard repositories; though you can also limit your search results to Center holdings by picking "Countway Library of Medicine" from the list of repositories. Recent (post-2017) items from the Warren Anatomical Museum are also described here.

Complete list of finding aids for Center collections: Finding Aids LibGuide

Besides searching and browsing finding aids in HOLLIS for Archival Discovery, here you can view a quick-list of all Center finding aids.

Anatomy and artifact collections

The Harvard Medical Library Art and Artifact Collection

Warren Anatomical Museum collection

Digital collections

You can search the Center's digitized and born digital resources through several channels:

  • OnView, the Center's primary portal to digitized content and exhibits
  • Medical Heritage Library, online access to thousands of rare books, journals, pamphlets, and other items digitized as part of the Medical Heritage Library, Inc.'s consortium
  • HOLLIS Images, a selection of digitized photographs, lantern slides, satires, and other visual materials that are part of Harvard's Digital Repository Service
  • Dataverse: Research data available from Center collections
  • Archive-It, online access to websites archived by the Center
  • DASH, the depository for Harvard's electronic theses, dissertations, and academic publications

Digitized content available online represents only a fraction of our holdings. If you don't find what you are looking for, please contact us.

Research guides: Countway LibGuides

LibGuides are created by librarians and archivists to help researchers begin identifying resources on a topic of interest. Please note that this list includes guides for conducting contemporary research as well as guides to researching the history of medicine and public health.