Duke Medical Center Archive Blog
Edward C. Halperin Papers
Posted On: December 17, 2018 by Rebecca Williams
The Duke University Medical Center Archives is happy to announce that new additions to the Edward C. Halperin Papers are open for research. Halperin served on the Duke faculty for twenty-three years as a professor and chairperson of the Department of Radiation Oncology, vice dean of the School of Medicine, and associate vice chancellor. Types of materials in this collection include his correspondence, grant applications, a cassette tape, articles, and reports. The majority of these materials relate to Halperin’s extensive research and writings on ethics and the history of racial, religious, and gender discrimination in medicine and higher education. This collection includes research materials from 1961 and 1973, but… MORE
Category: News, Collection Spotlight
Department of Surgery Records Addition
Posted On: December 3, 2018 by Rebecca Williams
The Medical Center Archives is happy to announce an addition to the Department of Surgery Records. The collection documents the administrative functions of the Department of Surgery and includes records from the Department of Orthopaedic Surgery and the Division of Cardiothoracic Surgery. The new additions to the collection are group photographs of surgical staff from 1964 to 1994 and portraits of past students from 1930 to 2004. The majority of the portraits have handwritten inscriptions written by the students to department administrators and professors.
To learn more about these… MORE
Category: News
A Brave New Digital World: Archiving Digital Files, Part 2
Posted On: November 19, 2018 by Rebecca Williams
This is the second blog post in a three part series about processing digital files. See the following link for Part 1 and Part 3.
The Duke University Medical Center Archives (DUMCA) recently began processing the files in our digital files backlog, which goes back to 2009. While the backlog was created in 2009, the files date from the mid-1990s to the present. These files are a mixture of born-digital (records created in a digital format) and digitized (records originally created on paper and converted into a digital format). The… MORE
Category: Ask The Archives, News
A Brave New Digital World: Archiving Digital Files, Part 2
Posted On: November 19, 2018 by Rebecca Williams
This is the second blog post in a three part series about processing digital files. See the following link for Part 1 and Part 3.
The Duke University Medical Center Archives (DUMCA) recently began processing the files in our digital files backlog, which goes back to 2009. While the backlog was created in 2009, the files date from the mid-1990s to the present. These files are a mixture of born-digital (records created in a digital format) and digitized (records originally created on paper and converted into a digital format). The… MORE
Category: Ask The Archives, News
Charles and Peggy Hammond Papers
Posted On: November 6, 2018 by Rebecca Williams
The Medical Center Archives is happy to announce that the Charles and Peggy Hammond Papers are processed and open for research. Interested researchers should contact the Medical Center Archivist before use. The collection is organized into the following series: Conference Materials, 1976-2007; Correspondence, 1956-2006; Personal, 1985-2005; Photographic Materials, 1978-2005; Printed Materials, 1978-2008.
Charles Bessellieu Hammond was born on July 24, 1936 in Fort Leavenworth, Kansas. He graduated from Duke with a BS in 1960 and a MD in 1961. Hammond joined the Duke faculty in 1968 and… MORE
Category: News
#AskAnArchivistDay, Part 2
Posted On: November 2, 2018 by Rebecca Williams
As Archives Month comes to a close, we bring you the second part of our two part blog series answering questions asked by our two interns. Read part 1 here.
Caroline Waller: "I would like to know more about the history of the [Duke University Medical Center] archives, like when/why/where was it founded.”
The Archives was formally established in 1977 through the efforts of Elon H. Clark, Barnes Woodhall and G.S.T. Cavanagh, with support from the Mary Duke Biddle Foundation; however informal efforts to collect materials documenting the history of Duke Medicine existed well before this time. An October 1965 article… MORE
Category: Ask The Archives
It Came from the Archives! Halloween Highlights from the Duke Medical Center Archives
Posted On: October 8, 2018 by Rebecca Williams
Location: Medical Center Library & Archives, Level 2, Room 212E
Date: Wednesday, October 31, 11am – 2pm
In honor of Archives Month in October, the Duke University Medical Center Archives is hosting its fifth annual Halloween event at the Medical Center Library & Archives featuring a selection of eerie, fascinating, and rarely seen materials from their collections. Brave souls are invited to gaze upon spine-chilling artwork, stare into the faces of frightening death masks, behold macabre medical artifacts and… MORE
Category: News
#AskAnArchivistDay
Posted On: October 3, 2018 by Rebecca Williams
Today is #AskAnArchivistDay! While the Duke University Medical Center Archives (DUMCA) doesn’t have a Twitter account, we do have a blog and two very curious archivists-in-training (interns). For this two part blog series, we asked each of our interns for a question.
McKenzie Long: This is super general, but when I first started in archives I wanted to know how we decide what to keep when we're looking at a new accession. Like how do we decide what's historically relevant/in the scope of the archives enough for us to add it to the archives?
It depends.
There are a lot of factors that are part of deciding whether items should be accepted or not at an archives, and, while most of this decision making is done before the materials are… MORE
Category: Ask The Archives
The Duke Medical Center Archives Welcomes its New Intern: McKenzie Long
Posted On: September 12, 2018 by Rebecca Williams
McKenzie Long joined the Archives staff as an intern in July. She received degrees in English and History from the College of William and Mary. Currently, she is working towards a Masters of Library and Information Science from UNC-Chapel Hill and expects to be finished in 2020. After graduation, she hopes to continue working in Archives.
McKenzie developed an interest in archives as an undergraduate when she worked in Special Collections at the College of William and Mary. McKenzie is passionate about history, and working with materials from the past like photographs, maps, and letters allows her to constantly discover, explore, and learn. As the Archives Intern, working in an archives also gives her the opportunity to help preserve and make archival materials accessible to… MORE
Category: News
Online Resources Round-Up
Posted On: August 13, 2018 by Rebecca Williams
While we always welcome visitors to our physical location, the Archives has a variety of online resources to help users learn about the collections and the Medical Center’s history. The resources listed below can all be found or linked to elsewhere on our website, but they are grouped here together for your convenience.
MEDSpace – If you’re looking for historic images, our digital repository, MEDSpace, is an excellent place to start. MEDSpace contains nearly 700 photographs documenting the history of Duke Medicine. You can also find early publications, medical illustrations and artwork, and medical artifacts.
Digitized Intercom – The Intercom, Duke Medicine… MORE
Category: DUMC History, News
Online Resources Round-Up
Posted On: August 13, 2018 by Rebecca Williams
While we always welcome visitors to our physical location, the Archives has a variety of online resources to help users learn about the collections and the Medical Center’s history. The resources listed below can all be found or linked to elsewhere on our website, but they are grouped here together for your convenience.
MEDSpace – If you’re looking for historic images, our digital repository, MEDSpace, is an excellent place to start. MEDSpace contains nearly 700 photographs documenting the history of Duke Medicine. You can also find early publications, medical illustrations and artwork, and medical artifacts.
Digitized Intercom – The Intercom, Duke Medicine… MORE
Category: DUMC History, News
Durham-Orange County Medical Society Auxiliary Scrapbooks
Posted On: July 9, 2018 by Rebecca Williams
The Medical Center Archives is pleased to announce that the Durham-Orange County Medical Society Auxiliary Scrapbooks are open for research. The Durham-Orange County Medical Society Auxiliary was initially organized in 1930 to oversee the entertainment of the wives of the doctors attending that year’s North Carolina Medical Society meeting in Durham. After the meeting, the auxiliary was inactive until 1944, when 26 doctors’ wives from Durham and Orange Counties formally organized the group and expanded its mission. The objectives of the Auxiliary was to assist the Durham-Orange… MORE
Category: News
A Brave New Digital World: Providing Access to Digital Files at the Duke Medical Center Archives
Posted On: June 26, 2018 by Rebecca Williams
The Medical Center Archives is happy to announce we are able to make digital files accessible in our reading room through AXAEM, our content management system (CMS). An archival CMS is necessary for archives to run efficiently. This software is created specifically for the management, organization, and control of archival collections from one central point. AXAEM makes it possible for the Archives to track our collections’ accessions, containers, container lists, description, finding aids, preservation concerns and actions, donor information, and research inquires and use. The ability to easily collate all of this data in one place makes the effective administration of our archival collections possible. Now we can add tracking, describing, and giving access to digital files to the list… MORE
Category: News
Galen S. Wagner Papers
Posted On: June 11, 2018 by Rebecca Williams
The Medical Center Archives is happy to announce that the Galen S. Wagner Papers are processed and open for research. The collection documents Wagner’s career as a cardiologist at DUMC. Wagner was the director of the Duke Cardiac Care Unit (CCU) from 1968 to 1981 and was involved with the Myocardial Infarction Research Unit, Duke Cardiology Fellows Program, and Duke University Cardiovascular Society. Materials in the collection date from 1964 to 2008.
During his career at Duke Wagner was instrumental in developing the Duke Cardiovascular Databank. Wagner’s mentor, Dr. Eugene Stead (pictured to the right), began the project in the mid-1960s when he saw the great potential computers offered the medical… MORE
Category: News, Collection Spotlight
Galen S. Wagner Papers
Posted On: June 11, 2018 by Rebecca Williams
The Medical Center Archives is happy to announce that the Galen S. Wagner Papers are processed and open for research. The collection documents Wagner’s career as a cardiologist at DUMC. Wagner was the director of the Duke Cardiac Care Unit (CCU) from 1968 to 1981 and was involved with the Myocardial Infarction Research Unit, Duke Cardiology Fellows Program, and Duke University Cardiovascular Society. Materials in the collection date from 1964 to 2008.
During his career at Duke Wagner was instrumental in developing the Duke Cardiovascular Databank. Wagner’s mentor, Dr. Eugene Stead (pictured to the right), began the project in the mid-1960s when he saw the great potential computers offered the medical… MORE
Category: News, Collection Spotlight