Historically, libraries and archives have aligned their institutional responsibilities to adhere to and support the values and virtues of empire-building regimes and colonial practices. The archives and archival history have revealed such problematic and complicated past of institutional knowledge-building presented by scholarships in historical anthropology and the history of medicine. The global history of libraries and archives in the health and medical sciences can provide a complex study of how these institutions have preserved research collections, scientific records and data on colonial subjects, particularly in the United States and in Europe. This poster presentation explores the historical relationship between empire-building and medical libraries, and how the latter has been complicit in upholding imperial values and knowledge. The poster outlines the complex roles of archives in shaping and contributing to colonial studies in medical and health science fields and applies critical discourse theory to explore the power structures of medical libraries and their collections including archives in placing and reinforcing imperial values and priorities over human dignity.
