J Med Libr Assoc. 2023 Jul 10;111(3):740-745. doi: 10.5195/jmla.2023.1728.
For over a millennium, libraries and library workers have advanced the knowledge of human science by building, preserving, and sharing collections and research. Historically, libraries have also aligned their institutional responsibilities to adhere to and support the values and virtues of oppressive and colonial practices. Library history has shown the mistreatments and denials of information access of marginalized groups. The history of libraries in the health and medical sciences reveals how these institutions and their workers have preserved and circulated research studies perpetuating racial science. This commentary highlights how such institutions shape and contribute to racial science in the field of medicine. By exploring the history of medicine through this lens, we examine how such institutions have been complicit in upholding racial science. We explore historical documents and archival collections that have been collected and preserved, particularly records and data of vulnerable groups, to advance the knowledge and understanding of the human body through the ideology of racial science. We argue that health and medical sciences librarians need to critically interrogate the racism in medical libraries and its history and address how health misinformation is common even in scholarly publications.
一千多年来，图书馆及其工作人员通过建立、保存和分享馆藏和研究成果，推动了人类科学知识的发展。从历史上看，图书馆也将其机构责任与压迫和殖民实践的价值观和美德保持一致。图书馆史表明，边缘化群体的信息获取受到了虐待和拒绝。健康和医学科学领域的图书馆史揭示了这些机构及其工作人员如何保存和传播研究，使种族科学得以延续。本评论强调了这些机构如何在医学领域塑造和促成种族科学。通过从这个角度探讨医学史，我们研究了这些机构如何参与维护种族科学。我们探讨了收集和保存的历史文献和档案收藏，特别是弱势群体的记录和数据，以通过种族科学的意识形态来增进对人体的认识和理解。我们认为，健康和医学科学图书馆员需要批判性地审视医学图书馆中的种族主义及其历史，并解决健康错误信息在学术出版物中也很常见的问题。
