Another museum selling collections to pay bills

Widow of Crawford Auto-Aviation Museum founder works to save husband's legacy

By Joan Mazzolini, The Plain Dealer

October 05, 2009, 6:29PM

http://blog.cleveland.com/metro/2009/10/post_52.html

NARA on MSHWR

This was a bit of a surprise* when it was pointed out to me, but I'll be there.

National Archives
9th and Penn Ave, NW
Tuesday, October 27, at 11 A.M.
Room G-24, Research Center (Enter on Pennsylvania Avenue)
Civil War Medicine
Archives specialist Rebecca Sharp and reference librarian Nancy Wing discuss The Medical and Surgical History of the War of the Rebellion, 1861–1865. This published source contains details of Civil War medical and surgical procedures, and information about individual patients. (This lecture will be repeated at the National Archives at College Park, MD, in Lecture Room B, on Thursday, October 29, at 11 a.m.)

This one looks relevant too:

Tuesday, October 6, at 11 A.M.
Room G-24, Research Center (Enter on Pennsylvania Avenue)
Documenting Death in the Civil War
John Deeben, genealogy archives specialist at the National Archives, explores death records created during and after the Civil War by the War Department, examining how they documented personal circumstances of soldiers’ deaths in various situations, including the battlefield and military hospitals and prisons. (This lecture will be repeated at the National Archives at College Park, MD, in Lecture Room B, on Thursday, October 8, at 11 a.m.)

*The Army Medical Museum (ie us) wrote the book and we retain original records and specimens that were used to compile it.**

**We also scanned it for you all.

More good stuff from the Registry

I finally got back to work on the Registry of Noteworthy Research in Pathology and today found some letters.

James Carroll was a Major in the Army who worked with Walter Reed on his yellow fever research. He volunteered to be bitten by a mosquito that had previously bitten three others who had yellow fever. He contracted the disease and several years later died of cardiac disease that was attributed to his bout of yellow fever.

Here's a letter from the President of the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching, petitioning a Congressman to grant a special pension to Carroll's widow.

Page 1














Page 2




















And here is the Congressman's reply.






















Maybe I'm missing something, but I thought being a Major in the Army meant you were in military service to your country.

Red Cross selling items from Archives to close budget gap

The NY Times has the story today -

Red Cross to Auction Off Little Pieces of Its History
By STEPHANIE STROM
Published: October 3, 2009
To help address a $50 million budget deficit, the American Red Cross will sell some of the memorabilia it has squirreled away over many years.

This is a trend we're seeing more and more of.

Garfield autopsy letter

I just scanned this letter, written by the surgeon (D.W. Bliss, but the signature doesn't look like "Bliss" to me) who performed President James Garfield's autopsy, where he certifies that the bullet shown with the letter was taken from the body of the president. Thought you might like to see it.

You never know what you'll find in the archives

Balkan Owls, ca 1913, by Merl LaVoy. (Reeve 39645)

And our Flickr stats for the moment stand at 1,618 items / 876,972 views, up only ~7000 views in the two weeks from Sept 15th when I posted 1,605 items / 870,097 views.

Two pictures from 1898

SKIN LESIONS OF HOG CHOLERA. AMM 489

SENDING CARRIER PIGEON FROM RELIEF (DURING THE SPANISH-AMERICAN WAR). AMM 64

This is a test to see what emailing photos to the blog results in...

More new pictures will go up on our Flickr site tonight as I browsed and picked some using the new software.

Museum's scanning software upgrade adds thumbnails

We've got 2 online catalogues running now - EMU for our internal databases and another for our scanning project. The scanning project one got upgraded yesterday. The latest version of NISC's AWARS / Wizard software carries thumbnails with it, making photo research much easier as you can see from the  picture. This is three shots from our Surgical Photographs collection which began with the Civil War but wandered into other types of surgical problems as the years went on. Hopefully we'll figure out how to share these photos online soon. More new pictures will go up on our Flickr site tonight as I browsed and picked some using the new software.

 

Feed the Dawgs

Mike Lemish, one of our researchers who wrote a book on military working dogs in Vietnam, (due out in February) sent me an email about a fund-raising effort to Feed the Dawgs. A small group of volunteers provides a steak dinner to returning and deploying dog handlers, and they need cash to do it. If you can help, please do. This latest fund-raising effort is for Marines at 29 Palms. OOHRAH!!

Here's Mike's email:

Just wanted to pass this along to all my "dog friends." I know things are tight all around but if your are looking to support our troops (both 2-legged and 4-legged) this may a good choice.  More info at their site http://feedthedawgs.com/FeedtheDawgs.aspx If you get a chance, check it out.

 ARF!

Mike

Vaughn,

Will you forward my email to the other VDHA Unit Directors and have them pass it on to the members of their units.  The Feed the Dawgs guys are doing a great thing for today's dogmen and women.  They can use our support if any of the guys can afford to make a donation.

Thanks,

Jim Stewart    377 SPS Unit Director VDHA

                    377 SPS K9 9/67-9/68  Dobe 7X49

 

Guys,

I just received an email from our brother 377 SPS dogman, Jon Hemp.  He is involved with Feed the Dawgs, to which I have just made a donation, and they could use some additional donations to keep going.  Jon explained their upcoming project like this.

 Just about every time it looks like we're running out of fuel and headin' for the ditch, someone steps up.  No money from donations has ever been spent on anything BUT the new troops.  A big piece of your donation will go towards feeding 82 3rd Marine Division Dawgs at 29 Palms on 7 November.  Best guess is that the event will cost us approximately $700 to $800 once we have a final headcount including family members, vet detachment, PAO personnel and the Base Commander - estimated now at 130 people.

 The Feed the Dawgs web site is at:  http://feedthedawgs.com/FeedtheDawgs.aspx

 If you can help this group of guys feed some of today's MWD handlers send your donation in the name Jon Hemp to:

 Jon Hemp

1437 Revelation Way

Redlands, CA  92374

"New" Civil War picture found

The other day someone asked about Civil War surgeon Eugene Shaw. I would have walked right to the Shaw collection, but Jasmine handled the request and ran his name through our Emu database. In doing so, she found the CDV below that was filed in our biographical files (we've since moved it to the collection).





The text says, Eugene Shaw M.D. Written up in New York Herald for bravery and skill on the battle fields of the Civil War - 21 years old when he was made Ass't Surgeon, 116th NY Regiment.

Rec. Feb. 1939.
Ac. 52965.

Digital archives

A friend sent me a link to an article in Library Journal, The E-Memory Revolution, which discusses a topic that is so important to archives and archivists - digital archiving. I can't imagine an archives that isn't affected by this revolution, unless it's run by Luddites.

One thing that gives me the heebie-jeebies, though, is where the author says, "We horrify archivists when we talk about digitizing things and then throwing them away. Of course, one need not destroy the physical object after making a digital copy, but one of the most enjoyable aspects of Total Recall is the reduction of clutter; it is especially satisfying to shred one's papers and eliminate rows of filing cabinets and shelves. When curators come to deal with our archives, they will surely find hundreds fewer physical objects because of Total Recall. But they will have hundreds of thousands of additional digital artifacts. Whether you agree that is a highly positive trade-off, it is surely coming."

Archivists are fascinated by having/handling the real thing. I'm a big fan of not keeping multiple copies of some journal article but no way is some one-of-a-kind document going through the shredder because we've scanned it. Will I pitch my uncle's handwritten pages of his poetry because I have 600 ppi scans of them? I'll keep that clutter, thank you.

Darwin Symposium: Finished Proofs? A symposium to celebrate the 150th anniversary of the publication of On the Origin of Species (1859)

The History of Medicine Division of the National Library of Medicine and the Office of History at the National Institutes of Health are pleased to announce a symposium:

 

Finished Proofs? A symposium to celebrate the 150th anniversary of the publication of On the Origin of Species (1859)

 

Location:        Lister Hill Auditorium, National Library of Medicine (NIH)

                8600 Rockville Pike, Bldg. 38A

                Bethesda, MD

Date:            1 October 2009

Time:            9:00 AM – 6:15 PM

 

 

SPEAKERS:

 

Janet Browne, Harvard University

Eric Green, National Human Genome Research Institute

Michael Ruse, Florida State University

Barry Werth, Independent Author

Edward O. Wilson, Harvard University           

 

COMMENTATORS:

 

Nathaniel Comfort, Johns Hopkins University

Alan E. Guttmacher, National Human Genome Research Institute

Joe Palca, National Public Radio

Maxine Singer, Carnegie Institution for Science

 

Program: http://history.nih.gov/about/conferences.html

 

All are welcome.

 

 

 

Michael J. North, northm@mail.nih.gov
Head of Rare Books & Early Manuscripts
History of Medicine Division
National Library of Medicine
8600 Rockville Pike
Bethesda, MD  20894

(301) 496-9204 * fax (301) 402-0872
http://www.nlm.nih.gov/hmd

National Institutes of Health
Department of Health and Human Services

 

Inventor of medical ultrasound has died

Interesting obituary for him in JOHN J. WILD, 95; Doctor Advanced Medical Uses of Ultrasound, By Patricia Sullivan, Washington Post Staff Writer, Thursday, September 24, 2009.

Civil War Reenactment at NMHM next Saturday, 10/3, 10am-5pm

“Civil War Reenactment at the Medical Museum”

 

When: Saturday, October 3, 2009, 10:00 a.m. - 5:00 p.m.

 

Where: The National Museum of Health and Medicine

Building 54

 

What: The grounds of the nation’s medical museum will be transformed into a living history experience of Regular Army life during the Civil War. Displays on Civil War medicine and the role of the Sanitary Commission will be available along with exhibits on camp life, infantry drilling exercises and 19th century weapons displays. Children will enjoy hands-on activities such as building a replica of the hospital ship USS Red Rover, making a medical unit flag and creating a pin-hole camera.

 

Performances by the Federal City Brass Band at 10:00, 11:00, 1:30 & 2:30.

 

The reenactment is made possible by members of the 3rd U.S. Regular Infantry Reenactors. AFIP’s very own YN2(AW) Kelly Cochran is a member of the 3rd U.S. and will participate in the program!

 

While visiting the reenactment, visitors are encouraged to tour the Museum's permanent exhibition "To Bind Up the Nation's Wounds: Medicine During the Civil War." NMHM was founded in 1862 to study battlefield medicine in order to improve the care of the soldier.

 

The event will take place on the west grounds of the museum and in the museum galleries. This family event is open to the Walter Reed community and the general public.

 

Cost: FREE

 

Free parking available. Photo ID required.

 

For more information: nmhminfo@afip.osd.mil or (202) 782-2673

 

http://www.nmhm.washingtondc.museum

NY Times on insurance falling behind medical technology

Insurers Fight Speech-Impairment Remedy
By ASHLEE VANCE
Published: September 15, 2009
Devices like iPhones and netbook PCs that can help the speech-impaired are not covered by Medicare or insurers.

Flickr picture statistics

Since the Flickr site is blocked at work, we've been spending less time updating it - it's no longer a useful tool for showing researchers a picture we're trying to describe over the telephone for example. But our current statistics are 1,605 items / 870,097 views. I put up a new Korean War-era prosthetic photo tonight.

Ruminations on the latest issue of museum & society

This rolled in recently:

 

 

Hello, Subscribers to museum & society ,

 

The latest issue of museum & society is now available online at: www.le.ac.uk/ms/museumsociety.html.

 

contents

 

‘Journey without maps’: unsettling curatorship in cross-cultural contexts

Lisa Chandler

 

Translations: experiments in dialogic representation of cultural diversity in three museum sound installations

Mary Hutchison and Lea Collins

 

Objects, subjects, bits and bytes: learning from the digital collections of the National Museums

Siân Bayne, Jen Ross and Zoe Williamson

 

Review Article

 

Simon J. Knell, Suzanne MacLeod and Sheila Watson (eds),

Museum Revolutions: How Museums Change and are Changed

Kylie Message

 

 

Best wishes,

 

Jim Roberts

Production Editor

museum & society

 

******************************
Jim Roberts Hon FMA
Webmaster
University of Leicester
School of Museum Studies

 

http://www.le.ac.uk/museumstudies

 

The third article is of interest to me. One point that I think wasn’t emphasized enough is that non-art museums can only put about 1%, in a best case scenario, of their collections on display. Therefore the online museum gives people an opportunity to access objects that no one else, including the curators, are using or paying attention to. In our scanning project, we have over 700,000 images created. Some of them are books, but the great majority are photographs that nobody had looked at since they were taken and the only record of them had been an index card in a nondescript building in Washington, DC. Someday soon, these will be available to anyone in the world who has Internet access. To me, that’s a big change in the status quo.

 

Interesting public health article on social media and hapiness

This has some very interesting ideas in it - I think I believe they're correct. Any opinions?

Is Happiness Catching?
By CLIVE THOMPSON
Published: September 13, 2009
Nicholas Christakis and James Fowler say your friends — and even your friends’ friends — can make you quit smoking, eat too much or get happy. A look inside the emerging science of social contagion.

Excellent water public health article in NY Times

The Times has an excellent investigative report on the public health issue of clean water in today's paper -

Toxic Waters
Clean Water Laws Are Neglected, at a Cost in Human Suffering
By CHARLES DUHIGG
Published: September 13, 2009
In the past five years, companies and workplaces have violated pollution laws more than 500,000 times. But most polluters have escaped punishment.

Today's Post has an editorial on Walter Reed

The New Walter Reed: Less Than 'World Class'?
By Stephen Schimpff
Sunday, September 13, 2009