Sanford Vincent Larkey

Sanford Vincent Larkey (1898-1969) was an American medical librarian and medical historian.

Life

Sanford Vincent Larkey was born on May 11, 1898 in Oakland, California, in 1898. Graduated AB (1921) and MD (1924) from the University of California, Berkeley. After a year's hospital internship in San Francisco, he studeid Engkish literature ta Pembroke College, Oxford University (BA 1928; MA 1931). In 1930 he was appointed assistant professor of the history of medicine and librarian at the University of California Medical School. From 1935 to 1963 Larkey was the librarian and director of the Johns Hopkins University Welch Medical Library. From 1935 to 1969 he was lecturer in medical history in the Johns Hopkins Institute of the History of Medicine.

Larkey as an officer in the US Army Medical Corps during the First and Second World Wars. He died on April 16, 1969.

Contributions

Larkey was concerned with approaches to problems of indexing, machine methods for information searching, indexing tools, problems of medical subject headings, and trends in medical abstracting. He received a grant from NIH to write a definitive book on Tudor medicine, 1963. He devoted much of his time to the history of medicine, especially of the Tudor and Stuart period. He was the leading authority on medical librarianship.

He suggested using punched cards to solve problems of indexing medical literature, leading to the Medical Library Indexing Project (AML sponsored). Larkey directed the project. Later, he used the system of categorization of subject headings in Index Medicus. The Welch Medical Library became one of the first medical libraries to have its serials listed on punch cards so that it could run lists by country, subject, field, language, etc; Larkey was also concerned with maintaining quality of the collection during the 1930's and postwar years.

Publications

• "The Vesalian compendium of Geminus and Nicholas Udall's translation : their relation to Vesalius, Caius, Vicary, and de Mondeville." Transactions of the Bibliographical Society (1933).
• Banckes's Herbal: An herbal [1525]. Ed. by S. V. Larkey and Thomas Pyles. New York: New York Botanical Garden. 1941.
• Survey of world medical serials and coverage by indexing and abstracting services. With Williamina A. Himwich. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University, 1954. [1]
• Final report on subject headings and on subject indexing. With Helen G. Field. Baltimore: Welch Medical Library, 1955.

Offices

• Medical Library Association. President, 1949-50.
• Maryland Citizen's Committee on Public Welfare | Chairman, 1950-51.
• Chemical-Biological Coordination Center of the National Research Council. Member of the Executive Committee.
• Council of National Medical Associations. Chairman, 1950-1952.
• Maryland State Board of Public Welfare. Member, 1951-63.

Honors

US Army. Bronze Star medal.

Further reading

• Temkin, O. "Sanford Vincent Larkey (1898-1969)." Bulletin History of Medicine 44, no 1 (Jan-Feb 1970): 81-85.
• Wheeler, Dorothea M. "Sanford Vincent Larkey." Bulletin of the Medical Library Association 57, no. 3 (1969): 321.
• Who’s who in library service. 3rd ed. Ed. D. E. Cole. New York: Grolier Society, 1955, p 279.
• Pelling, Margaret. "Sanford Vincent Larkey (1898-1969)." [Short biography]. In: Health, medicine, and mortality in the sixteenth century. Ed by Charles Webster. Cambridge [England]: Cambridge University Press, 1979. Book in honor of the memory of Larkey.

Papers

• Johns Hopkins Chesney Medical Archives, Baltimore, MD. Sanford V. Larkey Collection. [2]