With the Pathology Institute closing in the spring, there's no official requirement to do an annual report this year, but I feel that people should be able to find out what we did. Annual Reports for the time I have run the Archives, 1989-2009 are available on the Museum's website.
OTIS HISTORICAL ARCHIVES 2010 Annual Report
STAFF:
Michael Rhode, Chief Archivist
(A) Laura Cutter, Assistant Archivist
(D) Kathleen Stocker, Assistant Archivist
(D) Jasmine High, Archives Technician
(D) Donna Rose, IMC Supervisor Archivist
(D) Amanda Montgomery, IMC Contract Archivist
(D) Johanna Medlin, IMC Contract Archivist
(D) Emilia Garvey, IMC Contract Archivist
(D) LaFonda Burwell, IMC Contract Archives Technician
(D) Karen West, IMC Contract Archives Technician
(D) Anna Korosec, IMC Contract Archives Technician
(D) Erissa Mann, student volunteer
2010 was the last year of almost-normal life in the Archives, although BRAC planning began to take a large amount of time. The year saw a large staff turn-over which affected the amount of work the Archives could accomplish. Jasmine High left early in the year for the Smithsonian’s Natural History museum and the Archives technician position has not been filled due to BRAC restrictions on hiring. Kathleen Stocker left in early summer and was replaced in October by Laura Cutter. All of the IMC staff were transferred off the Museum’s project in September 2010 when the scanning contract was stopped for Museum records. A significant amount of time was also spent in planning for the BRAC move of the Museum, and the new storage systems that will be needed.
Substantial requests for information were handled, frequently regarding sensitive topics. Of the requests that we tracked, we had at over 100 substantial reference requests this year. Rhode presented “Cancer in the Comics: No Laughing Matter,” “The National Museum of Health and Medicine’s History As Seen Through Its Archives,” and moderated “Panel discussion on Use of Social Media to Promote Digital Collections,” while continuing working on the AFIP historical volume. In addition to providing scans of photographs of the Institute and personnel, they also wrote captions while contributing to the layout and editing of the publication. The book featured many photographs from the Archives.
The Medical Illustration Service Library, through the IBM (formerly NISC, formerly IMC) scanning project, ended with approximately 1,250,000 images digitized. Rhode was the Task Order Manager for the MIS part of the project; he and the assistant archivists and technicians selected material for scanning, reviewed the material, and recommended accepting the work on behalf of the government. The assistant archivist provided quality control. The members of the NISC team processed and cataloged the images prior to scanning so the records of the images are complete upon their return. Slightly over 400,000 images were scanned last year. Collections cumulatively scanned are the Reeve collection, HDAC’s Carnegie collection photographs, Arey-Dapena lantern slides, parts of the Blackburn-Neumann, Welker and Yakovlev files, part of the A-Bomb collection, Anatomical’s Orthopathic Pathology collection records, teaching slides from AFIP’s VetPath dept. (given MIS Library numbers and returned), the Army Medical Museum photographs from the Spanish-American War, American Expeditionary Forces (WWI autopsies), Atlas of Tropical Extraordinary Diseases [ATED], Swan and Hansen collections (Vietnam War surgery), Korean War Ballistics photographs, Museum and Medical Arts Service’s WWII photographs, Signal Corps photographs, part of the Medical Illustration Service Library, New Contributed Photographs collection, the unpublished 7th Saranac Silicosis Symposium from the Vorwarld Collection, Hollister Collection dental education photographs, an AFIP Study of 58 Combat Deaths from Vietnam, various museum publications including the Medical & Surgical History of the War of the Rebellion, captured Vietcong medical manuals, the Museum’s 19th century curatorial logbooks, one half of John King’s 35mm veterinary slides, AFIP Public Affairs Office photographs (which were given MIS Library numbers), the Spanish-American War photographic collection, WRAIR 1960s-1970s photographs (under a shared contract), WRAMC DPW department photographs (given MIS numbers and returned), the Navy’s Bureau of Medicine and Surgery (BUMED) photographs (given MIS numbers and returned), Surgical Photographs, Contributed Photographs, and Specimen CDVs. As a reminder, the scanning project did not get through all the accession files. AFIP 657,675-2,372,287 (end of the AFIP-assigned numbers) are not done. Some departmental catalogue records are really displaced accession files. Catalogue records in Anatomical were partly done and integrated into the Accession files. Historical collection catalogue records were not done at all. A few straggling projects continue – the Records Repository is digitizing the microfilm of atomic bomb casualties, and the Radiology Pathathology department is scanning x-rays from the MIS Library. WDMET Vietnam War-era wounding data is also being worked on, and remains in West Virginia.
Computerized cataloguing on the collection has continued on both the collection and item level. Cataloguing of new material coming into the museum was done for the General Medical Products Information Collection, Medical Ephemera, New Contributed photographs, Audiovisual Collection, AFIP Historical Files, WRAMC Historical Collection and other artificial collections. Implementation of a comprehensive computer catalogue for the entire Museum continued with data from the archives added to KE Software’s EMU database. New cataloguing is now done directly into EMU, unless a traditional archival-style finding aid is done. Tens of thousands of records were created or modified for the Archives after the initial data load, and in 2011, all of the IMC records and images will be added into the database.
New material acquired included the Kindred Collection (housed in HDAC), the Miller (Cecil) Collection] of Dr. Cecil R. Miller, who was the NCOIC of the 430th AAFRTU ("Army Air Force Replacement Training Unit," a convalescent center for battle fatigue), Richard Satava’s DARPA Videotape Collection and the Leach Scrapbook, a World War I album of photographs of World War I facial case reconstructions and other surgical injuries. Newly-catalogued as a separate collection was Curatorial Records: Army Medical School Sanitary Chemistry Instruction Cards, 1905. As 2011 began, and AFIP started shutting down the Museum has received a pallet of videotapes from the Radiology dept. and 5 pallets of books and journals from Ash Library which will close at the end of February.
The Archives has a significant presence on the Internet including the Guide to the Collections of the Museum on the museum website which remains the main way researchers begin to use the archives. Cutter did finding aids for St. Elizabeths Hospital collection and American Board of Forensic Odontology (ABFO) records and inventoried videotapes from Richard Satava. No more archival collections were listed in the Library of Congress' National Union Catalogue of Manuscript Collections (NUCMC); however, finding aids should still be sent to NUCMC in the future for the different audiences it reaches.
In fall 2006, archives staff began adding interesting photographs to Flickr’s website. By December 31, 2009, we wrapped up the year with slightly under a million views - 906,255 for approximately 1800 images. As of the first week in January 2011, 1,515 people had chosen to be contacts of the Museum’s Flickr site. This number had increased drastically in December when the web post “Candid photographs of Civil War battlefield injuries” by Maggie Koerth-Baker (Boing Boing Dec 27, 2010; http://www.boingboing.net/2010/12/27/candid-photographs-of-civ.html) picked up the Archives posting of Civil War images from the Contributed Photographs collection. The Flickr daily view statistics for roughly ~250 images were December 27, 2010: 327,779; December 28: 245,041; December 29: 83,579; December 30: 30,834; December 31: 14,260; January 1: 8,268 and January 2: 10,569 for a 7-day total of 720,330 views. The entire Flickr group of photographs had 3,281,103 views of about 2,600 images by December 28th. A Repository for Bottled Monsters, an unofficial blog for the museum, continues to attract a worldwide audience. The notice about sharing the Civil War images was first posted to the blog and picked up from there. Since January 19, 2010, transcriptions of a ‘Letter of the Day’ from the Archives files have been posted to the blog with only July 4th not having a letter found for it.
Books and documents scanned by IMC were uploaded to the free Internet Archive, where they are available for downloading. Titles uploaded included a score of scans of the Museum’s nineteenth century logbooks, the three 1866 printed Catalogues of the Museum, captured handwritten medical manuals from the Vietnam War, the Medical Report of the Joint Commission for the Investigation of the Effects of the Atomic Bomb in Japan vol 6 (manuscript), Carry On: a Magazine on the Reconstruction of Disabled Soldiers and Sailors (08/1918) and audio recordings from the AFIP Oral History Project.
Rhode served on the AFIP's Institutional Review Board and HIPPA committees as well as Museum committees including the Admin group, the collections committee (as did Stocker and Cutter), and the database committee (as did Stocker).
Research and historical material, mostly on military medicine, was provided to AFIP, especially the Public Affairs Office for which High in particular has pulled scores of photographs for a new history of the AFIP. External users included the following institutions: NYU Langone Medical Center Office of Communications & Public Affairs, National Library of Medicine Dept of History of Medicine, University of Virginia Center for Bioethics, Alaskan Heritage Bookshop, University of Queensland Centre for the History of European Discourses, Dept. of Justice ATF Historian, National Park Service’s Fort Scott National Historic Site, Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of Natural History’s Repatriation Office, The New York Times Magazine, Pictures on the Waves, McGraw-Hill, William P. Didusch Center for Urologic History, History Works, Inc., Society for the History of Navy Medicine, LaGuardia Community College’s LaGuardia and Wagner Archives, Oakland University, Walter Reed Army Medical Center Directorate of Public Works, Ritsumeikan University’s College of Policy Science, National Institutes Of Health’s NAIAD, New York State Museum, University of Pennsylvania’s Dept. of History and Sociology of Science, WRAMC Historian’s Office, Weider History Group, Inc., Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum, University of Western Ontario, Fort Buford State Historic Site and Missouri-Yellowstone Confluence Interpretive Center, Washington Post, Burns Archive, USAF School of Aerospace Medicine, Ft. Baird Historic Preservation Society, Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of Natural History’s Dept. of Anthropology, Gina McNeely Picture Research, Smithsonian Institution National Museum of American History, Oxford University Press Medical Books, University of Illinois, Case Western University’s Dittrick Medical History Center, Walter Reed Army Institute Of Research, US Navy Group 2, Explosive Ordnance Disposal (EOD), United States Army Medical Research Institute for infectious diseases’s Visual Information Office, Kaplan Fuller Group, National Library of Medicine Prints and Photographs division, Thompson Rivers University Dept. of Philosophy, Food and Drug Administration, Loopline Film, Rutgers University Dept of American Art and Visual Culture, Brera Fine Art Academy, Quercus Books, Elsevier Publishing Services, Anker Productions, Inc., Clement Railroad Hotel Museum, Texas Military Forces Museum, PRI Healthcare Solutions, Papers of Abraham Lincoln, North State Forensic Psychiatry PLLC, Memorial Hospital of Rhode Island’s The Stroke Center, The Valley Hospital’s Diagnostic Imaging, Longwoods Publishing, University of Maryland Baltimore County UMBC Honors College, Sam Weller Books, Armed Forces Health Surveillance Center (AFHSC), U.S. Capitol Visitors Center, University of Delaware Dept. of History of American Civilization, Virginia Historical Society, Universidad Nacional’s Dept. of Anthropology, John Wiley & Sons, Inc., Field Museum’s Dept. of Anthropology, Auckland Hospital, Université de Picardie’s Faculté d'Histoire, University of Michigan’s Sindecuse Museum of Dentistry, O&P Business News, Open University of Israel, Writing and Editorial Services, and American Journal of Health-System Pharmacy.
PRESENTATIONS
1. Rhode, M. moderator, “Panel discussion on Use of Social Media to Promote Digital Collections,” Archivists and Librarians in the History of the Health Sciences & Medical Museums Association joint meeting, (April 29)
2. Rhode, M. “Cancer in the Comics: No Laughing Matter,” American Association for the History of Medicine, Mayo Clinic, (May 1, 2010),
3. Rhode, M. “The National Museum of Health and Medicine’s History as Seen through Its Archives,” Society of American Archivists’ Government Records Section, (August 13, 2010)
Showing posts with label annual reports. Show all posts
Showing posts with label annual reports. Show all posts
Tuesday, January 11, 2011
Tuesday, March 30, 2010
Letter of the day, March 30
I was just talking with our Registrar this morning about how people hate to do paperwork.
Surgeon General’s Office
Washington D.C.
March 30” 1865.
Sir:
The Reports of Wounded, Surgical Operations &c from the Hospital under your charge for the quarter ending September 30” 1864 have not as yet been received and the several circulars sent you from this office have been disregarded.
The Surgeon General directs that the reports be prepared and forwarded immediately.
Very respectfully,
Your obdt. Servt.
C.H.C. [Deputy Surgeon General Charles H Crane, but probably Otis]
Surgeon U.S.A.
Asst. Surg. H. Allen U.S.A.
In charge “Mt. Pleasant” U.S. General Hospital
Washington D.C.
Surgeon General’s Office
Washington D.C.
March 30” 1865.
Sir:
The Reports of Wounded, Surgical Operations &c from the Hospital under your charge for the quarter ending September 30” 1864 have not as yet been received and the several circulars sent you from this office have been disregarded.
The Surgeon General directs that the reports be prepared and forwarded immediately.
Very respectfully,
Your obdt. Servt.
C.H.C. [Deputy Surgeon General Charles H Crane, but probably Otis]
Surgeon U.S.A.
Asst. Surg. H. Allen U.S.A.
In charge “Mt. Pleasant” U.S. General Hospital
Washington D.C.
Monday, January 19, 2009
Otis Historical Archives Annual Report part 4 and final
Rhode served on the AFIP's Institutional Review Board and HIPPA committees as well as Museum committees including the Admin group, the collections committee (as did Stocker), and the database committee (as did Stocker). Volunteering to do so, Stocker photographed parts of collections for use in the museum’s newsletter, for exhibit production, and for uploading to the Internet Archive, and has photographed both in-progress and completed exhibits. Montgomery and Strigel worked on a brochure on the museum’s photographs and IMC’s role in scanning them, which is still in draft form.
Gaskins retired in September. He had been part of the Museum staff since 2004, but he was a mainstay of AFIP for years longer than that. He had been with the Institute for seventeen years, joining it from the Federal Records Center in Suitland. Gaskins singlehandedly ran the fifty-year old Medical Illustration Service Library of 3,000 boxes of hundreds of thousands of photographs. The library was the Department of Defense's official medical photograph repository from 1949 on into the 1990s and he inherited all of the responsibility for the Library as staff left and were not replaced. Gaskin's sense of duty and responsibility preserved the Library, through at least two moves, and in spite of disinterest or worse on the part of some. Gaskins joined the Archives due to the Information Manufacturing Corporation scanning project. The initial plan was to do a low-resolution scan of the Library’s photographs and then discard the originals. Fortunately we were able to modify that plan and add the collection to the Museum. Gaskins was an integral part of making possible hundreds of thousands of scans. His knowledge of the collection and willingness to share it has been the only thing that enabled us to make sense of the staggering amount of pictures. Without Tom, the project would not have gotten off the ground. He also worked in the Archives and scanned all of our Civil War photographs. Lauren Clark volunteered in the archives over the summer to see if she was interested in a museum career. She rehoused parts of the Vorwald Collection and added folder headings to the finding aid, as well doing cataloguing and filing trade literature in the GMPI Collection.
Research and historical material, mostly on military medicine, was provided to AFIP, especially the Public Affairs Office and the Departments of Dermatologic Pathology, Telemedicine, Radiologic Pathology, and Soft Tissue Pathology among others. External users included US Army Office of the Surgeon General; US Navy Bureau of Medicine and Surgery; OTSG’s Borden Institute; Bay Pines Veterans Administration Healthcare System; Home Front Communications; Samuel Merritt College (California); Columbia University; US Patent and Trademark Office; The Scientist Magazine; TRICARE Management Activity; Fort Lee (Virginia); Kunhardt Productions; USUHS; Ambo|Anthos Publishers (The Netherlands); Baker-Cederberg Museum and Archives (New York); Medical Museion, University of Copenhagen; George Washington University Law School; National Inventors Hall of Fame (Ohio); Command Surgeon, USSOCOM; NCI Communications; The Burns Archive; Canadian Broadcasting Corp.; Boston University; Wood Library-Museum of Anesthesiology (Illinois); Henry Holt Publishers; Actuality Productions, Inc.; Fuji Television Network, Inc. (Japan); Fairfax County Public Library; Taniwaki & Associates, Inc. (Washington, DC); Oxford Film & Television (England); National Museum of American History; US Army Historian’s Office; Los Angeles Daily News; Historian’s Office, Walter Reed Army Medical Center; The Many-Headed Monster, Live Art Development Agency (England); American Red Cross; National Library and Archives Canada; St Paul's Cemetery; Esras Managing; Steptoe and Johnson LLP (Washington, DC); Institute for the Study of Occupation and Health; National Geographic; ColourFIELD (Germany); Wisconsin Historical Society; Aslan Productions; Tucson Medical Center; NARA; Kingsmen Exhibits Pte Ltd (Singapore); North Carolina Museum of History; James F. Humphries & Assoc. (West Virginia); Rice University; National Building Museum; University of Michigan; Gettysburg National Military Park; Sovereign Pharmaceuticals; Communications Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry (New Zealand); Health Protection Agency, United Kingdom; Compass Point Books; Public Affairs and Content Development, Armed Services Blood Program; CBS Eye Too Productions / Discovery Channel; Mind & Media; Phoenix Controls (Massachusetts); Foundation El Portavoz (Costa Rica); Indiana University; Hiroshima Peace Institute (Japan); Victorian Society at Falls Church; AOTF American Occupational Therapy Foundation; Weider History Group, Inc.; Synvasive Technology, Inc.; Journal AnBlokk (Hungary); International Group for Historic Aircraft Recovery (TIGHAR); Visual Eyes, Inc.; South Windsor Historical Society and Wood Memorial Library; PMA Sciences (Canada); Turn of the Century Electrotherapy Museum (Florida); St. John's Riverside Hospital,/Cochran School of Nursing (New York); University of California – Irvine; Shawnee town, City of Shawnee, Kansas; University of Missouri – Columbia; Veterans Administration Medical Center (Wisconsin); Twofour Digital Ltd. (England); Design Minds, Inc; University of Alberta; University of Manchester; University of Toyama (Japan); Army Historical Foundation; Oxford University; NBM; AUDLM; and the University of Newcastle.
Gaskins retired in September. He had been part of the Museum staff since 2004, but he was a mainstay of AFIP for years longer than that. He had been with the Institute for seventeen years, joining it from the Federal Records Center in Suitland. Gaskins singlehandedly ran the fifty-year old Medical Illustration Service Library of 3,000 boxes of hundreds of thousands of photographs. The library was the Department of Defense's official medical photograph repository from 1949 on into the 1990s and he inherited all of the responsibility for the Library as staff left and were not replaced. Gaskin's sense of duty and responsibility preserved the Library, through at least two moves, and in spite of disinterest or worse on the part of some. Gaskins joined the Archives due to the Information Manufacturing Corporation scanning project. The initial plan was to do a low-resolution scan of the Library’s photographs and then discard the originals. Fortunately we were able to modify that plan and add the collection to the Museum. Gaskins was an integral part of making possible hundreds of thousands of scans. His knowledge of the collection and willingness to share it has been the only thing that enabled us to make sense of the staggering amount of pictures. Without Tom, the project would not have gotten off the ground. He also worked in the Archives and scanned all of our Civil War photographs. Lauren Clark volunteered in the archives over the summer to see if she was interested in a museum career. She rehoused parts of the Vorwald Collection and added folder headings to the finding aid, as well doing cataloguing and filing trade literature in the GMPI Collection.
Research and historical material, mostly on military medicine, was provided to AFIP, especially the Public Affairs Office and the Departments of Dermatologic Pathology, Telemedicine, Radiologic Pathology, and Soft Tissue Pathology among others. External users included US Army Office of the Surgeon General; US Navy Bureau of Medicine and Surgery; OTSG’s Borden Institute; Bay Pines Veterans Administration Healthcare System; Home Front Communications; Samuel Merritt College (California); Columbia University; US Patent and Trademark Office; The Scientist Magazine; TRICARE Management Activity; Fort Lee (Virginia); Kunhardt Productions; USUHS; Ambo|Anthos Publishers (The Netherlands); Baker-Cederberg Museum and Archives (New York); Medical Museion, University of Copenhagen; George Washington University Law School; National Inventors Hall of Fame (Ohio); Command Surgeon, USSOCOM; NCI Communications; The Burns Archive; Canadian Broadcasting Corp.; Boston University; Wood Library-Museum of Anesthesiology (Illinois); Henry Holt Publishers; Actuality Productions, Inc.; Fuji Television Network, Inc. (Japan); Fairfax County Public Library; Taniwaki & Associates, Inc. (Washington, DC); Oxford Film & Television (England); National Museum of American History; US Army Historian’s Office; Los Angeles Daily News; Historian’s Office, Walter Reed Army Medical Center; The Many-Headed Monster, Live Art Development Agency (England); American Red Cross; National Library and Archives Canada; St Paul's Cemetery; Esras Managing; Steptoe and Johnson LLP (Washington, DC); Institute for the Study of Occupation and Health; National Geographic; ColourFIELD (Germany); Wisconsin Historical Society; Aslan Productions; Tucson Medical Center; NARA; Kingsmen Exhibits Pte Ltd (Singapore); North Carolina Museum of History; James F. Humphries & Assoc. (West Virginia); Rice University; National Building Museum; University of Michigan; Gettysburg National Military Park; Sovereign Pharmaceuticals; Communications Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry (New Zealand); Health Protection Agency, United Kingdom; Compass Point Books; Public Affairs and Content Development, Armed Services Blood Program; CBS Eye Too Productions / Discovery Channel; Mind & Media; Phoenix Controls (Massachusetts); Foundation El Portavoz (Costa Rica); Indiana University; Hiroshima Peace Institute (Japan); Victorian Society at Falls Church; AOTF American Occupational Therapy Foundation; Weider History Group, Inc.; Synvasive Technology, Inc.; Journal AnBlokk (Hungary); International Group for Historic Aircraft Recovery (TIGHAR); Visual Eyes, Inc.; South Windsor Historical Society and Wood Memorial Library; PMA Sciences (Canada); Turn of the Century Electrotherapy Museum (Florida); St. John's Riverside Hospital,/Cochran School of Nursing (New York); University of California – Irvine; Shawnee town, City of Shawnee, Kansas; University of Missouri – Columbia; Veterans Administration Medical Center (Wisconsin); Twofour Digital Ltd. (England); Design Minds, Inc; University of Alberta; University of Manchester; University of Toyama (Japan); Army Historical Foundation; Oxford University; NBM; AUDLM; and the University of Newcastle.
Sunday, January 18, 2009
Otis Historical Archives Annual Report part 3
The Archives has a significant presence on the Internet including the Guide to the Collections of the Museum on the museum website which remains the main way researchers begin to use the archives. Stocker has revamped the Guide for the first time since 1998 and has it almost ready to go on the web. Several finding aids were added to the website. Finding aids for the Townsend Collection of aviation pathology records, the Donald Collection of World War 2 hospital ship material, the NMHM Audiovisual Collection, and the General Medical Products Information Collection (GMPI) were loaded onto the Museum’s website. Stocker has reformatted, added material, and edited the Ball Collection of ophthalmologic materials, and it is almost ready to be added to the website. No more archival collections were listed in the Library of Congress' National Union Catalogue of Manuscript Collections (NUCMC); however, finding aids should still be sent to NUCMC in the future for the different audiences it reaches.
In fall 2006, archives staff began adding interesting photographs to Flickr’s website. By late January 2008, approximately 400 photographs had gotten 48,000 views; in January 2009, 683 images had received 107,526 views, an increase of about 155%. This clearly demonstrates the appeal of the photographs held in the Archives; however, WRAMC now blocks access to Flickr so any additional photographs are added by staff from home. The Archives also received an invitation to join the Flickr Commons, a site for displaying the public photo collections of cultural institutions, which would increase viewership into the millions, but this has been waiting Legal Counsel’s review for several months. In the spring, Rhode began A Repository for Bottled Monsters, an unofficial blog for the museum, which has also attracted a worldwide audience. Because WRAMC blocks access to the blog, all posts to it are added by staff from home in their own time.
Books and documents scanned by IMC were uploaded to the free Internet Archive, where they are available for downloading. Titles uploaded included The Armed Forces Institute of Pathology - Its First Century 1862-1962 (1962); A History of the United States Army Medical Museum 1862 to 1917 compiled from the Official Records (1917) by Daniel S. Lamb; the Medical and Surgical History of the War of the Rebellion (six volumes, 1870-1888); the Medical Department of the US Army in the World War (15 volumes, 1923-1929); "The Annual" (Nursing Yearbook) from Walter Reed General Hospital in Washington, DC, and Letterman General Hospital in San Francisco, California (1921-1927); “Taps" Annual (Nursing Yearbook) from Walter Reed General Hospital (1929-1931); An Illustrated Description of First-Class Achromatic Microscopes, Apparatus, Specimens, etc., Miller Brothers (1879); A Catalogue of Surgeons' Instruments, Air and Water Beds, Pillows, and Cushions, Bandages, Trusses, Elastic Stockings, Inhalers, Galvanic Apparatus, and Other Appliances Used by the Medical Profession, Maw and Sons (1866); A Medical Survey of the Bituminous-Coal Industry (1947); The Kennedy Autopsy Report by Pierre Finck of the AFIP; Cantor Lectures: The Microscope (1888) - lectures on the history of the microscope by British collector John Mayall, Jr. excerpted from the Journal of the Society of the Arts, 1885-1888; Decorations and Medals of the United States of America (1943), John Wyeth and Brother broadsheet; Frances Pleasants' photograph album from the Civil War; When You Go Home - take this book with you - a WWI pamphlet directed at US troops about the dangers of venereal disease; Nouveau Appareils a L'usage des Medecins et des Chirurgiens - M.G. Trouvé Medical and surgical instruments from the M.G. Trouvé company, 1872, excerpted from Les Mondes, May 9 and 16, 1872; Nouveau Appareils a L'usage des Medecins et des Chirurgiens - M.G. Trouvé Medical/surgical instruments from the M.G. Trouvé company, Paris, excerpted from Les Mondes, July 15, 1869; Phase Contrast Equipment with the Heine Condenser microscope instruction manual; Instructor's Guide for Casualty Simulation Kit Device, a handbook for casualty simulation in disasters; The Graf-Apsco Company, 1943 catalog: a catalog of microscopes, dissecting instruments, and related medical and laboratory equipment; The Graf-Apsco Company 1946 catalog: a catalog of microscopes, dissecting instruments, and related medical and laboratory equipment; Kolff-Brigham Artificial Kidney (ca. 1950s) manual; Variable Axis Total Knee Surgical Techniques (ca. 1977) advertising booklets; Gillette Receipts (187?): a handwritten "receipt" (recipe) book from the late 19th century, of mostly pharmaceutical remedies, including those for asthma, cough, gangrene, "the itch," cholera, and bilious colic, but also for lucifer matches and liquid blacking.
In fall 2006, archives staff began adding interesting photographs to Flickr’s website. By late January 2008, approximately 400 photographs had gotten 48,000 views; in January 2009, 683 images had received 107,526 views, an increase of about 155%. This clearly demonstrates the appeal of the photographs held in the Archives; however, WRAMC now blocks access to Flickr so any additional photographs are added by staff from home. The Archives also received an invitation to join the Flickr Commons, a site for displaying the public photo collections of cultural institutions, which would increase viewership into the millions, but this has been waiting Legal Counsel’s review for several months. In the spring, Rhode began A Repository for Bottled Monsters, an unofficial blog for the museum, which has also attracted a worldwide audience. Because WRAMC blocks access to the blog, all posts to it are added by staff from home in their own time.
Books and documents scanned by IMC were uploaded to the free Internet Archive, where they are available for downloading. Titles uploaded included The Armed Forces Institute of Pathology - Its First Century 1862-1962 (1962); A History of the United States Army Medical Museum 1862 to 1917 compiled from the Official Records (1917) by Daniel S. Lamb; the Medical and Surgical History of the War of the Rebellion (six volumes, 1870-1888); the Medical Department of the US Army in the World War (15 volumes, 1923-1929); "The Annual" (Nursing Yearbook) from Walter Reed General Hospital in Washington, DC, and Letterman General Hospital in San Francisco, California (1921-1927); “Taps" Annual (Nursing Yearbook) from Walter Reed General Hospital (1929-1931); An Illustrated Description of First-Class Achromatic Microscopes, Apparatus, Specimens, etc., Miller Brothers (1879); A Catalogue of Surgeons' Instruments, Air and Water Beds, Pillows, and Cushions, Bandages, Trusses, Elastic Stockings, Inhalers, Galvanic Apparatus, and Other Appliances Used by the Medical Profession, Maw and Sons (1866); A Medical Survey of the Bituminous-Coal Industry (1947); The Kennedy Autopsy Report by Pierre Finck of the AFIP; Cantor Lectures: The Microscope (1888) - lectures on the history of the microscope by British collector John Mayall, Jr. excerpted from the Journal of the Society of the Arts, 1885-1888; Decorations and Medals of the United States of America (1943), John Wyeth and Brother broadsheet; Frances Pleasants' photograph album from the Civil War; When You Go Home - take this book with you - a WWI pamphlet directed at US troops about the dangers of venereal disease; Nouveau Appareils a L'usage des Medecins et des Chirurgiens - M.G. Trouvé Medical and surgical instruments from the M.G. Trouvé company, 1872, excerpted from Les Mondes, May 9 and 16, 1872; Nouveau Appareils a L'usage des Medecins et des Chirurgiens - M.G. Trouvé Medical/surgical instruments from the M.G. Trouvé company, Paris, excerpted from Les Mondes, July 15, 1869; Phase Contrast Equipment with the Heine Condenser microscope instruction manual; Instructor's Guide for Casualty Simulation Kit Device, a handbook for casualty simulation in disasters; The Graf-Apsco Company, 1943 catalog: a catalog of microscopes, dissecting instruments, and related medical and laboratory equipment; The Graf-Apsco Company 1946 catalog: a catalog of microscopes, dissecting instruments, and related medical and laboratory equipment; Kolff-Brigham Artificial Kidney (ca. 1950s) manual; Variable Axis Total Knee Surgical Techniques (ca. 1977) advertising booklets; Gillette Receipts (187?): a handwritten "receipt" (recipe) book from the late 19th century, of mostly pharmaceutical remedies, including those for asthma, cough, gangrene, "the itch," cholera, and bilious colic, but also for lucifer matches and liquid blacking.
Saturday, January 17, 2009
Otis Historical Archives Annual Report part 2
The Medical Illustration Service Library, through the IMC scanning project, continues to be digitized. Rhode is the Task Order Manager for the MIS part of the project; he and the assistant archivists and technicians selected material for scanning, reviewed the material, and recommended accepting the work on behalf of the government. Stocker provides the quality control. The members of the IMC team are processing and cataloging the images prior to scanning so the records of the images are complete upon their return. 350,000 images were scanned last year, and cataloguing and indexing are being finished. Collections scanned or added to the online system last year included the World War 1-Reeve Collection, Surgical Photographs, the Museum’s 19th century collections logbooks, captured Viet Cong medical journals, accession files for the Orthopathology collection, and HDAC’s Carnegie collection records. AFIP’s Veterinary Pathology Dept. 35mm teaching slide set was scanned, and added to the MIS Library as an electronic collection. 220,000 images are anticipated for this year including finishing 10,000 military medicine photographs newly added to the New Contributed Photographs collection and scanning the Museum’s Accession Files as well as images of WRAMC from their DPW department and historical images from the Navy’s Bureau of Medicine and Surgery. Stocker identified an additional 1300 images from the WWII-era MAMAS collection, then catalogued and sent them to IMC for scanning. All roughly 500,000 photographs are searchable on the AFIP’s AWARS system to anyone who has registered to use the system.
Computerized cataloguing on the collection level has continued in the shelf inventory. Cataloguing of new material coming into the museum was done for the General Medical Products Information Collection, Medical Ephemera, New Contributed photographs, Audiovisual Collection, AFIP Historical Files, WRAMC Historical Collection and other artificial collections. Implementation of a comprehensive computer catalogue for the entire Museum continued with data from the archives being turned over to KE Software for conversion to their EMU database, although this project was slowed due to financial issues. Uploading of Archives data was finally resumed in the fall and has been tested three times. It is expected to be usable this spring. After all five collection divisions are included this spring, data from IMC’s database will be imported in the summer and an extensive single database of the Museum’s holdings should be available in the fall for widespread use.
New material acquired included a daguerreotype by William Bell depicting a man with drooping eyelid, ca. 1852, purchased through the generosity of Frederick Sharf, 5 Army School of Nursing yearbooks including Taps 1929, 1930, 1931 and The Annual 1926, 1927 from the US Army Medical Department Museum, a box of lantern slides and box of patient records associated with WWII service of neurologist Dr. Augustus McCravey, 11 boxes of research files from amputee service at Valley Forge General Hospital in Phoenixville, PA from the Vietnam War era, a framed Plexiglas print of synthetic estrogen molecule "Moxestrol" by Mara Haseltine, digital photographs from the book War Surgery in Afghanistan and Iraq from the Borden Institute, 6 linear feet of files related to AFIP radiologist Colonel William L. Thompson, circa 1907-1975 from the American College of Radiology, approximately 48 thousand 35-mm slides of gross veterinary pathology and 11 veterinary tools from Dr. John King, 1 linear feet of records of Dr. John (Henry) Budd of WWII service with 34th Evacuation Hospital, 4th Auxiliary Surgery Group on neurosurgery, items associated with the practice of Dr. Alexander N. Letko including one prescription pad for narcotics (1948) and a folder of papers and letters, dental lecture videotapes from the U.S. Army Dental & Trauma Research Detachment, one empty dressing packet for "Bontecou's Soldier's Packet for first Wound Dressing” and 21 books on medical photography authored by Dr. Stanley Burns from Dr. Burns, a copy of a dissertation on leprosy "Letters from Carville: Narrating the Unspoken Story of the Landry Family," (2007) and miscellaneous books.
Computerized cataloguing on the collection level has continued in the shelf inventory. Cataloguing of new material coming into the museum was done for the General Medical Products Information Collection, Medical Ephemera, New Contributed photographs, Audiovisual Collection, AFIP Historical Files, WRAMC Historical Collection and other artificial collections. Implementation of a comprehensive computer catalogue for the entire Museum continued with data from the archives being turned over to KE Software for conversion to their EMU database, although this project was slowed due to financial issues. Uploading of Archives data was finally resumed in the fall and has been tested three times. It is expected to be usable this spring. After all five collection divisions are included this spring, data from IMC’s database will be imported in the summer and an extensive single database of the Museum’s holdings should be available in the fall for widespread use.
New material acquired included a daguerreotype by William Bell depicting a man with drooping eyelid, ca. 1852, purchased through the generosity of Frederick Sharf, 5 Army School of Nursing yearbooks including Taps 1929, 1930, 1931 and The Annual 1926, 1927 from the US Army Medical Department Museum, a box of lantern slides and box of patient records associated with WWII service of neurologist Dr. Augustus McCravey, 11 boxes of research files from amputee service at Valley Forge General Hospital in Phoenixville, PA from the Vietnam War era, a framed Plexiglas print of synthetic estrogen molecule "Moxestrol" by Mara Haseltine, digital photographs from the book War Surgery in Afghanistan and Iraq from the Borden Institute, 6 linear feet of files related to AFIP radiologist Colonel William L. Thompson, circa 1907-1975 from the American College of Radiology, approximately 48 thousand 35-mm slides of gross veterinary pathology and 11 veterinary tools from Dr. John King, 1 linear feet of records of Dr. John (Henry) Budd of WWII service with 34th Evacuation Hospital, 4th Auxiliary Surgery Group on neurosurgery, items associated with the practice of Dr. Alexander N. Letko including one prescription pad for narcotics (1948) and a folder of papers and letters, dental lecture videotapes from the U.S. Army Dental & Trauma Research Detachment, one empty dressing packet for "Bontecou's Soldier's Packet for first Wound Dressing” and 21 books on medical photography authored by Dr. Stanley Burns from Dr. Burns, a copy of a dissertation on leprosy "Letters from Carville: Narrating the Unspoken Story of the Landry Family," (2007) and miscellaneous books.
Friday, January 16, 2009
Otis Historical Archives Annual Report part 1
OTIS HISTORICAL ARCHIVES 2008 Annual Report
STAFF (A-Arrive; D-Depart):
Michael Rhode, Chief Archivist
Kathleen Stocker, Assistant Archivist
(D) Thomas Gaskins, Archives Technician
Donna Rose, IMC Supervisor Archivist
(D) Kirsten Strigel, IMC Contract Archivist
Amanda Montgomery, IMC Contract Archivist
LaFonda Burwell, IMC Contract Archives Technician
(A) Karen West, IMC Contract Archives Technician
(A) Anna Korosec, IMC Contract Archives Technician
(D)Shanika Queen, IMC Contract Archives Technician
(D) Natasha Lyles, IMC Contract Archives Technician
(A/D) Lauren Clark, student volunteer
January 2009 marks Rhode’s twentieth year as the Museum’s archivist. In that time the Archives has grown immensely and has been far better catalogued. A 1988 guide to archives listed it as having 200 linear feet of collections, but that number is in the thousands now. Users and researchers have increased tremendously as well, as have the ways the collection is used. In 1989, there was one computer, with one database of a few photographs on its 24-megabyte hard drive; in 2009, the Archives is approaching one terabyte of digitized information. Photographs are no longer sent to a photography department for reproduction with a lag of months, but are scanned and sent to the requestor almost immediately. However, some once-common media such as ¾” videotape fill the Archives, but are now impossible for us to access. Technology has changed the way we do business and will continue to do so at an increasing pace, but we hope to continue adding to the collection and making the medical history of America available to our constituency.
Substantial requests for information were handled, frequently regarding sensitive topics. Of the requests that we tracked, we had at least 183 substantial reference requests this year, including 93 from people representing institutions and 9 countries outside the US. The museum’s photography collections received notice from the fine arts world: the Smithsonian American Art Museum borrowed eight of William Bell’s Civil War photographs of soldiers for an exhibit, the Metropolitan Museum of Art called for help in cataloguing their copies, and in January 2009 the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston began reviewing photographs for a loan. The Vorwald Collection continues to be used for research for asbestosis lawsuits in spite of being open to the public for two decades. Interest in the 1918 influenza epidemic has not yet peaked, and many requests were received to use images from the Archives, all of which are viewable on the website to facilitate research. Rhode was interviewed by Bill Koslosky for “The National Museum of Health & Medicine: archival images on Flickr,” was an invited participant for the “Archival Research” panel of the Graduate Student Symposium for historians of medicine at the National Library of Medicine, and spoke on “Genealogical Possibilities in the National Museum of Health and Medicine,” for the National Capital Region of Association of Professional Genealogists at the National Archives. Rhode wrote “Book Review: Rehabilitating Bodies: Health, History and the American Civil War by Lisa A. Long,” for the Journal of Southern History; “Foundations: E.R. Squibb, 1854,” and “Foundations: Photomicroscopy, circa 1876,” for The Scientist. He submitted a paper on the Medical and Surgical History of the War of the Rebellion for publication in the Journal of the History of Medicine and Allied Sciences, and is currently implementing reviewer comments on it. Rhode has had a paper on the Museum in World War I accepted for the American Association of the History of Medicine’s annual meeting in April. Tours were given to National History Day students (June), the DC Public Health Department (June) and the Mid-Atlantic Regional Archives Conference, aka MARAC (November).
Stocker and Rhode have been assisting the Borden Institute with a photographic history of WRAMC for the 2009 anniversary. In addition to providing scans of photographs of the base and personnel, they are also writing captions while contributing to the layout and editing of the publication. The book should appear in the spring, and features many photographs from the Archives.
STAFF (A-Arrive; D-Depart):
Michael Rhode, Chief Archivist
Kathleen Stocker, Assistant Archivist
(D) Thomas Gaskins, Archives Technician
Donna Rose, IMC Supervisor Archivist
(D) Kirsten Strigel, IMC Contract Archivist
Amanda Montgomery, IMC Contract Archivist
LaFonda Burwell, IMC Contract Archives Technician
(A) Karen West, IMC Contract Archives Technician
(A) Anna Korosec, IMC Contract Archives Technician
(D)Shanika Queen, IMC Contract Archives Technician
(D) Natasha Lyles, IMC Contract Archives Technician
(A/D) Lauren Clark, student volunteer
January 2009 marks Rhode’s twentieth year as the Museum’s archivist. In that time the Archives has grown immensely and has been far better catalogued. A 1988 guide to archives listed it as having 200 linear feet of collections, but that number is in the thousands now. Users and researchers have increased tremendously as well, as have the ways the collection is used. In 1989, there was one computer, with one database of a few photographs on its 24-megabyte hard drive; in 2009, the Archives is approaching one terabyte of digitized information. Photographs are no longer sent to a photography department for reproduction with a lag of months, but are scanned and sent to the requestor almost immediately. However, some once-common media such as ¾” videotape fill the Archives, but are now impossible for us to access. Technology has changed the way we do business and will continue to do so at an increasing pace, but we hope to continue adding to the collection and making the medical history of America available to our constituency.
Substantial requests for information were handled, frequently regarding sensitive topics. Of the requests that we tracked, we had at least 183 substantial reference requests this year, including 93 from people representing institutions and 9 countries outside the US. The museum’s photography collections received notice from the fine arts world: the Smithsonian American Art Museum borrowed eight of William Bell’s Civil War photographs of soldiers for an exhibit, the Metropolitan Museum of Art called for help in cataloguing their copies, and in January 2009 the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston began reviewing photographs for a loan. The Vorwald Collection continues to be used for research for asbestosis lawsuits in spite of being open to the public for two decades. Interest in the 1918 influenza epidemic has not yet peaked, and many requests were received to use images from the Archives, all of which are viewable on the website to facilitate research. Rhode was interviewed by Bill Koslosky for “The National Museum of Health & Medicine: archival images on Flickr,” was an invited participant for the “Archival Research” panel of the Graduate Student Symposium for historians of medicine at the National Library of Medicine, and spoke on “Genealogical Possibilities in the National Museum of Health and Medicine,” for the National Capital Region of Association of Professional Genealogists at the National Archives. Rhode wrote “Book Review: Rehabilitating Bodies: Health, History and the American Civil War by Lisa A. Long,” for the Journal of Southern History; “Foundations: E.R. Squibb, 1854,” and “Foundations: Photomicroscopy, circa 1876,” for The Scientist. He submitted a paper on the Medical and Surgical History of the War of the Rebellion for publication in the Journal of the History of Medicine and Allied Sciences, and is currently implementing reviewer comments on it. Rhode has had a paper on the Museum in World War I accepted for the American Association of the History of Medicine’s annual meeting in April. Tours were given to National History Day students (June), the DC Public Health Department (June) and the Mid-Atlantic Regional Archives Conference, aka MARAC (November).
Stocker and Rhode have been assisting the Borden Institute with a photographic history of WRAMC for the 2009 anniversary. In addition to providing scans of photographs of the base and personnel, they are also writing captions while contributing to the layout and editing of the publication. The book should appear in the spring, and features many photographs from the Archives.
Friday, March 14, 2008
More medical museum excerpts from the AFIP's annual reports
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)