The Center is grateful for the support of its generous donors. Donors help make the Center's ongoing efforts to acquire, make accessible, and preserve unique resources in the history of medicine, dentistry, and public health possible. The Center applies all unrestricted financial gifts to its most urgent priority: making collections that researchers are currently waiting to use or that are completely hidden, open to the public. On average, an $800 donation supports making one box of unique 20th century paper records with no order available to researchers. Any donation supports our mission to preserve, share, and celebrate the history of the Harvard Longwood Campus.
Donations Support Discovery
Help expand access to the Center for the History of Medicine’s renowned collections. Opening research resources that cannot be discovered—or used—by students, scholars, or the general public is one of the center's most urgent needs. These research records, teaching records, speeches, writings, rare books, and museum collection objects are not accessible because they are:
- Unprocessed. Collections must be analyzed, organized, and described for online discovery and use.
- Under-processed. Older collection descriptions and indexes are not up to standard. We need to update and put online better collection descriptions so that people know what is in a collection before coming to the center. Online tools speed research and access.
- Unavailable for remote use. Digitization makes remote use of collections possible. Digitization empowers researchers to examine our remarkable resources all over the world.
- Uncataloged. Cataloging makes rare books, objects, artifacts, and specimens discoverable online.
Donations Support Community Engagement
The Center for the History of Medicine is committed to pluralistic and inclusive collecting. Our formal Archives for Women in Medicine and Archives for Diversity collecting initiatives, which concluded in 2019, filled important gaps in the Longwood Campus's historical record. Our goal is to ensure the Center's collections reflect the rich and full history of the Longwood Campus, through collecting the institutional records of the Harvard schools of medicine, dentistry, and public health, and the professional papers of their faculties and research scientists.
For a list of collections acquired through the Archives for Women in Medicine initiative, please see our guide to Archives for Women in Medicine collections.
For any inquiries, contact:
Emily R. Novak Gustainis, Deputy Director
Phone: 617-432-7702
Email the center
How to Give
- Visit our secure online gift form »
- Under the "Select a Fund" menu, donors should pick either "Countway Discovery Project" or "Archives for Women in Medicine."
Make a check payable to Harvard Medical School and mail it to:
Harvard Medical School
Alumni Affairs and Development
P.O. Box 419720
Boston, MA 02241-9720
Please include your full name, address, and phone number and a note indicating your gift is for the Center for the History of Medicine's "Discovery Project" or "Archives for Women in Medicine."
The Center for the History of Medicine also accepts planned gifts, gifts of stock, and other gift vehicles in support of the Center. Please contact Kate Murphy, managing director of gift planning, for information.