In this blog post, Rachel Peacock (Queen’s University, Canada) and Jenny Lelkes-Rarugal (BBIH editor) discuss how the Bibliography of British and Irish History (BBIH) can be used to research and teach the histories of medicine and health.
BBIH and the Histories of Medicine and Health
BBIH is one of the most accurate and comprehensive resources available for studying, teaching, and researching the domestic and global histories of Britain and Ireland, from 55 BCE to the present day.
An academic partnership between the Institute of Historical Research (IHR) and Brepols, it provides up-to-date information on over 680,000 history books, articles, chapters, edited collections (mainly published from the early 20th century to present), and history theses (submitted since the late 1990s). BBIH is updated three times a year, with c.10,000 new records annually.
Due to its name and geographical focus, BBIH’s potential for studying, teaching, and researching interdisciplinary and emerging areas within history is not always obvious or intuitive to historians. To address this, Rachel Peacock has made a tutorial video about how BBIH can be used for studying, teaching, and researching the histories of medicine and health. Rachel’s tutorial video can be watched on the IHR’s website and YouTube channel and provides historians a powerful way of finding reliable, accurate, and trusted resources about medicine and health using BBIH.
Rachel’s Experiences of Designing and Making her Video
The penultimate assignment for my internship with BBIH involved creating a video tutorial demonstrating the ways BBIH can be used to research the histories of medicine and health. As I planned my script and video, my main priority was demonstrating BBIH’s impressive array of search functions and the ways researchers can customise their searches. With BBIH, researchers can choose to ‘search anywhere’ for a particular keyword or phrase, or they can navigate through and select terms from BBIH’s subject tree. Searches can then be made more specific by adding a location, the type of publication, or an author’s name. One of the best search functions BBIH offers is ‘period covered’, which allows researchers to set the historical dates they want covered by their search. The ability to search by ‘period covered’ is a unique and particularly helpful feature of BBIH. With such a wide variety of search functions available, BBIH goes further than most university libraries or search engines like Google Scholar. While creating my video, I planned several example searches to showcase the many ways researchers can format and personalise their own searches in BBIH.
Another priority for the video was explaining the concept of critical cataloguing and its implications for those researching the histories of medicine and health in BBIH. Critical cataloguing is the process in which archives and libraries replace outdated terminology with unbiased, inclusive, and more appropriate language.[1] As part of my internship, I reviewed BBIH’s subject terms related to medical history and health to ensure that they are consistent with the principles of critical cataloguing. Although critical cataloguing is a valuable process for libraries and archives, it can present unique challenges for historians of medicine and health, who sometimes have to use outdated terms when referring to medicine and health in particular historical contexts. In my video, I mentioned BBIH’s emphasis on critical cataloguing and suggested that, if a keyword is not yielding results, researchers could consult BBIH’s subject tree and see if alternative (and, likely, more modern and inclusive) terms refer to the same concept. Reviewing BBIH’s subject tree was useful for my own research and helped me learn which keywords yield the best results.
While it is important to demonstrate how to navigate BBIH’s search functions, I wanted to show new users how BBIH can be used beyond the initial search. Consequently, I included steps on locating sources through open access links, library collections, and online repositories like Google Books. I also demonstrated how to export citations from BBIH. Additionally, BBIH has many useful tools beyond the database, including its reading lists. In my video, I referenced the readings lists on disability history and infectious diseases, as these are excellent resources for scholars looking to delve into a new field and also tend to highlight more recent scholarship.
Creating the video tutorial was the most engaging part of my internship and allowed me to develop valuable and marketable skills as a historian in an increasingly digital world. I also learned ways to make the tutorial video more accessible. While this included things one might expect, like speaking slowly and clearly and using plain language, I also learned which colours are best to use for visual aids like arrows and boxes. Although I encountered some challenges along the way, such as trying to record the audio while combatting the noise of apartment living, it was so rewarding to see the video come together. I sincerely hope that this video tutorial will be useful for BBIH users, particularly those researching the histories of medicine and health.
[1] ‘Inclusive Language’, Pratt Institute Libraries, accessed 12 September 2025, https://libguides.pratt.edu/c.php?g=1278195&p=9456636; ‘CritCat.org,’ CritCat.org, accessed 12 September 2025, https://critcat.org/.
Rachel Peacock is a PhD candidate at Queen’s University (Canada), where she studies the histories of mental illness, gender, privacy, popular constitutionalism, and monarchy. Her dissertation focusses on the nearly 100 individuals who stalked Queen Victoria and the British royal family throughout the nineteenth century.
Jenny Lelkes-Rarugal joined the IHR in 2021 and is responsible for the BBIH.
Cover image: United States. Children’s Bureau, Wikicommons, accessed March 6, 2026.
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