Mass Eye and Ear is celebrating its 200th anniversary, and throughout this past year, Focus has featured stories on the hospital’s past, present and future. This month, Focus is spotlighting the rich history of Mass Eye and Ear’s Howe Library, and it’s evolution from a small collection of books in an office cabinet to one of the largest archives of its kind containing thousands of medical instruments and volumes that chronicle Mass Eye and Ear’s role advancing the fields of ophthalmology and otolaryngology.
In 1876, 52 years after Mass Eye and Ear’s founding superintendent, Dr. George Stedman, stated, “It has often been observed with surprise, that such an institution as the Massachusetts Charitable Eye and Ear Infirmary should have attained its present age without possessing a single book of reference.” He purchased a small number of books with his own money and kept them in a cabinet in his office. But beyond that, nothing was done to start an actual library.
Then in 1888 Dr. Clarence Blake, chief of Otology, came up with a strategic plan for his service, of which one requirement was to establish a reference library. He asked the Board of Managers for $100 to purchase books and received it. Not to be outdone, the ophthalmology service asked for $500 and a bookcase.
The surgeons appointed Dr. Frederick Cheney, assistant ophthalmic surgeon, to be the first librarian. When the year was over, the otology group came in under budget at $80, while the ophthalmology department was very much over budget at $620. Dr. Hasket Derby, one of the venerable ophthalmic surgeons, was outraged, and wrote a scathing letter to Dr. Cheney, who promptly resigned his duties as librarian. From then on, the most junior doctor would be assigned to be the librarian, which meant that at least once a year, the responsibility changed hands and no one took control of the small collection.
Mass Eye and Ear finally established an official library in 1926, when Dr. Lucien Howe, after a long career as an ophthalmologist, gave a large part of his fortune to Harvard University to be used to endow a laboratory of ophthalmic research. Realizing that research could not be done without the latest literature, he required that a library be established as part of the lab. An agreement was reached with Harvard that both the lab and library would be housed at Mass Eye and Ear. The library was made up of the small collection of books and journals belonging to the hospital and from the large personal library of Dr. Howe.
The library had the good fortune of enjoying the active interest of Dr. Howe’s wife, Elizabeth. She was a fierce champion of her husband’s library and purchased many rare ophthalmology texts. Thanks to the foresight and generosity of Dr. and Mrs. Howe, the library became the center of learning in the hospital and continues to thrive into the 21st century.
While historical collections had existed at Mass Eye and Ear for many years, it was in the 1980s that physicians and staff came together to officially establish the Abraham Pollen Archives and Rare Book Room.
Joan Haas was hired as the first archivist and was tasked with arranging and describing thousands of records so they could be preserved and made accessible to future generations. These records included foundational documents, departmental meeting minutes, patient logbooks, photographs, manuscripts, personal papers and more than 2,000 medical instruments and artifacts which are still available to researchers today. The Rare Book Room contains over 3,000 volumes dating back to 1490. Much of the material in the archives cannot be found anywhere else in the world, offering a unique window into Mass Eye and Ear’s past and its place in medical history. As Dr. Abraham Pollen, the archives’ namesake and one of its most dedicated champions, put it, “The archives are the living documentary of what an institution, was, is, and can be.”
Doctors from Mass Eye and Ear’s first century would be amazed at the range of services offered by today’s 21st century Howe Library. Gone are the days of consulting print books and journals for the latest research trends. Today information professionals search specialized databases using specific criteria to answer investigators’ questions. In the biomedical and life sciences fields, it is estimated that over 1 million scholarly journal articles are published each year. Librarians play a vital role in accessing the most relevant and authoritative information through targeted searches and topic surveillance. They also assist users in navigating databases to get the most out of their searches and negotiate access to electronic materials that would otherwise be prohibitively expensive for the individual user. Information professionals also serve on systematic review teams, creating complex structured searches to retrieve all the literature on a topic. Their involvement ensures the search is high-quality and reproducible; in turn the review provides a solid foundation for clinical decision-making or guideline development.
Founded on the belief that libraries are crucial to clinical care, research, and education, the Howe Library today serves as the intellectual hub of Mass Eye and Ear, proudly supporting the hospital’s staff in their mission to provide the highest quality of care in ophthalmology and otolaryngology-head and neck surgery.
Please visit our Library Services page to learn more about the Howe Library and Abraham Pollen Archives.
