Historical Collections and Services department is open Monday through Friday, 8:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. Reference services provided; photocopying and electronic imaging services available upon request. Materials do not circulate.

The Historical Collections include approximately 19,000 books, the majority of which are 19th century titles, and one incunabulum (1493). Many of the printed materials in the Historical Collections concern yellow fever, febrile diseases, public health, epidemiology, ophthalmology, health care in wartime, and nursing. The Kerr White Health Care Collection of approximately 2,600 works on Health Services Research, the field Dr. White pioneered, is in Historical Collections. Historical Collections holdings include the Adolph Lomb Optical Library, which consists of approximately 2,000 printed works on the history of optics and physiological optics. There are approximately 1,900 19th and 20th century medical journals in Historical Collections; these journals contain landmark articles in the history of the health sciences. Approximately 19,000 photographs and 3,500 artifacts also reside in Historical Collections. Large portions of the department's cornerstone manuscripts collection, the Philip S. Hench Walter Reed Yellow Fever Collection, are now accessible via the Web. (http://yellowfever.lib.virginia.edu); this Web site received the 2003 Waldo Gifford Leland Award for writing of superior excellence and usefulness in the field of archival history, theory, or practice from the Society of American Archivists. Other manuscripts and archival holdings in Historical Collections include the University of Virginia Hospital Director's Office Collection; the American Lung Association of Virginia Collection; the Papers of Henry Rose Carter; the 8th Evacuation Hospital Collection; the Wade Hampton Frost Collection; the Blue Ridge Sanatorium Collection; the Thomas H. Hunter Collection; the University of Virginia Hospital Auxiliary Collection; the Alexandria Hospital School of Nursing; and the Philip S. Hench Walter Reed Yellow Fever Collection. Guides to the University of Virginia Health Sciences Library manuscripts and archival collections are accessible on the Web via the Virginia Heritage Guide to Manuscript & Archival Collections in Virginia ( http://vaheritage.org/). Photographs are being digitized and are accessible on the Web via the University of Virginia Visual History Collection (http://mcgregor.lib.virginia.edu/prints). Historical Collections staff has created many web exhibits featuring rare materials in the collections. These exhibits may be viewed at http://exhibits.hsl.virginia.edu/.