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Observations on Smallpox by the 9th Century Persian Physician Rhazes (865-925) : LSHTM Rare Books Blog series No. 3.

This is the latest in the LSHTM Rare Books Blog, featuring Rhazes (full-name: Muhammad ibn Zakariyā al-Rāzī). Rhazes made notable contributions to many areas of medicine. His manuscripts, carefully preserved down the centuries, were among the first medical books printed in Europe in the 15th century. After translation into Latin Rhazes’s writings became widely disseminated and were to influence the future direction of western medicine.  

Barnard 3.0 – Updating the library collection: a look at the pamphlets

With the update to the Barnard Classification Scheme completed, thousands of physical items in the library collection have had classmarks changed. Updating items on the records management system and the physical items in the main collection, the basement and the pamphlet collection in the gallery. Rather the large and daunting…

Decolonial practice for library collections, part 2

The Library uses the Barnard Classification Scheme to organise print resources into subject-related categories.  Cyril Barnard was the School’s first professional librarian, and he wrote his A classification for medical and veterinary libraries in 1936, amended in 1955.  There was an urgent need to update the…

Decolonial practice for library collections, part 1

University library collections support the teaching and research demands placed by the organisation in which they are embedded.  Not only are resources in collections dominated by thought and knowledge creation of the global north, but several library practices contribute to this colonial bias. The nature of library collections has…