Archives and Artifacts / Archives et artefacts de la pratique médicales: From Osler’s Library to the Osler Library of the History of Medicine, McGill University, Montreal: An Overview
Bibliographic record
Abstract
The Osler Library of the History of Medicine was opened in 1929 at McGill University, Montreal, Canada. Sir William Osler (1849-1919), arguably McGill’s and Canada’s most famous doctor at the time, had bequeathed his magnificent library of almost 8,000 historical works in medicine and, to a lesser extent, science and literature to the university. Under the 30-year reign of its first librarian, Dr.W.W. Francis, the Osler Library became famous for its rare books and for its connection with Sir William. Since the 1950s, however, the library has pursued an active collection development policy for both primary and secondary material that has taken it far beyond Osler’s original gift. The library has grown in both the size and scope of its holdings and the services it offers to scholars and students of the history of medicine. These have made the Osler Library a major resource centre for studies in the history of the health sciences. This article looks at the Osler Library today in the hopes of making the range of its collections and services better known to the Canadian and international communities. La bibliotheque d’histoire de la medecine Osler a ouvert ses portes en 1929 au l’universite McGill, Montreal, Canada. Sir William Osler (1849-1919), certainement le docteur le plus connu de l’epoque, a legue a l’universite sa magnifique collection de pres de huit cents ouvrages historiques principalement en medecine, et moindrement en sciences et en litterature. Durant les trente annees du regne de son premier bibliothecaire, Dr. W.W. Francis, la bibliotheque Osler a ete reconnue pour ses livres rares et sa relation avec son donateur, Sir William Osler. Depuis les annees 1950, la bibliotheque a applique une politique active de developpement de la collection tant pour les materiaux primaires que secondaires, permettant une augmentation considerable du don initial d’Osler. La bibliotheque a evolue tant du point de vue de sa taille que des thematiques de ses acquisitions et des services qu’elle offre aux etudiants et aux chercheurs universitaires en histoire de la medecine. Ces developpements ont fait de la bibliotheque Osler un centre d’etudes en histoire des sciences de la sante des plus reconnus. Le present article cherche a faire connaitre au public canadien et international l’etendue des collections et services offerts par la bibliotheque Osler.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.004 | 0.006 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.012 | 0.032 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.011 | 0.020 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.025 | 0.010 |
| Open science | 0.002 | 0.006 |
| Research integrity | 0.003 | 0.002 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.015 | 0.002 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".