Historic Collections Library
Institute of Naval Medicine
The main subject area is naval medicine and its history. The Historic Collections Library holds the amalgamated collections of the former Royal Naval Hospitals at Haslar and Plymouth, whose libraries were set up in 1827 and 1832 respectively. There is a run of the Navy List from 1814, with some omissions, and a complete run of Health of the Navy (1830s-1970s). Please note that service records, Medical Officers’ Journals, etc. are held at The National Archives, Kew. SERVICES: Fragile and historic material may not be copied; photocopying of other material may be carried out by arrangement, at the discretion of the librarian, who is the sole member of staff. There is no lending, but reference work is undertaken and bibliographies are compiled.
Please contact Historic Collections Librarian, Jane Wickenden via email at INM-CS-InfoHistLib@mod.uk to obtain a visitors' guide.
It is not possible to provide an absolute breakdown of volumes by century, as cataloguing is not yet complete and the exact size of the collection has not been established. There are known to be no incunabula. Going by present trends, totals by century may be: 16th cent., 10+vols; 17th cent., 100+vols; 18th cent., 1600+ vols; 19th cent., 4140+vols., 20th cent., 1500+vols. There are no current journals, but several closed sequences of 18th and 19th century medical journals.
There are 32 boxes of archive and photographic material, a few dozen pieces of artwork, less than a dozen manuscripts and a collection of surgical instruments, not all on display.