Resources (Sri Lanka)

The National Library of Sri Lanka, Colombo (NLSL), founded in 1990, is a research and a reference library and the main library and information centre in Sri Lanka. It holds over one million volumes, with an important collection of olas in Sinhala, Pali and Sanskrit languages. The NLSL will be involved in this case study by advising on the conservation and scanning of the McGill olas and raising awareness of them among Sri Lankan scholars and practitioners of medicine.

The Osler Library of the History of Medicine opened in 1929 to house the collection of rare medical and other books donated by Sir William Osler, the renowned physician and McGill graduate and professor. The collection – the finest of its kind in Canada – has grown to around 100,000 works including older, rare materials as well as current books and periodicals about the history of the health sciences and related areas. The Osler contains 21 olas on medical topics. During the project, these manuscripts will be digitized and catalogued. A brief description may be found in the Bibliotheca Osleriana.

The Rare and Special Collections division of the McGill library has its origin in the 1850s and the holdings now constitute a rich and highly diverse research collection. Rare Books and Special Collections houses 100 olas, among its Indic manuscript collection. These olas will be digitized and catalogued as part of the project. A summary description of these manuscript may be found in H. I. Poleman, A Census of Indic Manuscripts in the United States and Canada. American Oriental Series, Vol. 12. New Haven, Conn: American oriental Society, 1938.

The Redpath Museum was opened in 1882 and now houses close to three million objects, including both natural history and ethnological collections. The Redpath Museum holds a collection of objects from Sri Lanka relating to medicine and healing and collecting in the mid-twentieth century by Casey Wood, as well as several minerals from Sri Lanka. Knowledge gained during the project will inform new displays and cataloguing of these materials.

McGill University is on land which has long served as a site of meeting and exchange amongst Indigenous peoples, including the Haudenosaunee and Anishinabeg nations. We acknowledge and thank the diverse Indigenous peoples whose presence marks this territory on which peoples of the world now gather.