A Fond Farewell

Posted on May 26, 2016 by duhlich

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The Archives has recently had the pleasure of hosting three outstanding volunteers/interns, all of whom are moving on to greener pastures this month. While we are sad to see them go, we are grateful for all the excellent work they did, and wish them well on their continuing journeys. Below is a brief synopsis of their accomplishments in their all too brief time at the Archives. Many thanks to Phoebe, Jessica, and Kristin!

Phoebe Jones

During the eight months that she has volunteered at UCSF A&SC, Phoebe has been a great pleasure to work with. Despite never having worked in a library or archives, she has shown great aptitude for archival work, both in processing collections and using the ArchiveSpace collection management system. Her work on the UCSF Committee on Arts and Lectures records in particular was instrumental in materials from that collection being digitized by the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) grant-funded California Audiovisual Preservation Project. She has also been a great help in other A&SC projects, including assisting with the Archives Lecture Series, and contributing to the A&SC blog and social media. Her dedication and enthusiasm has been a great asset, and she will be sorely missed.

Jessica Jones

A participant in the Excellence through Community Engagement & Learning (EXCEL) Program, Jessica has been a great addition to the Archives team for the past four months, especially in her work rehousing, organizing and creating the inventory for the Portrait section of the Photograph Collection. She was an essential member of the State Medical Society Journals project team and helped with volumes review for digitization, page estimation and conducted quality control. She also contributed to the Archives & Special Collections digital initiatives by digitizing and creating metadata for material from the Black Caucus records, and helped rehouse and inventory numerous manuscript collections, including the Laurie Garrett papers. Jessica has successfully completed the EXCEL program, and was even selected as one of the student speakers at her graduation.

Kristin Daniel

Although she has only been with us for a few short months, Kristin has been an excellent intern for UCSF A&SC. We especially appreciate her help starting the massive survey of our archival collections, a project that will greatly increase department efficiency, intellectual control, and user access once it is completed. Kristin has also assisted in organizing and inventorying the archives biographical files, performing quality control on digital files for the State Medical Society Journals project, and any other projects that we assigned to her. A soon-to-be graduate of San Jose State University’s iSchool Masters in Library and Information Science program, Kristin is certain to find a professional librarian position in the near future.

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The Mystery Doctor’s Bag

Posted on May 18, 2016 by Kelsi Evans

We don’t know much about this doctor’s bag. It was manufactured by the Feick Brothers medical supply company, probably in the late 19th or early 20^th century, in a manner common to the bags that family doctors carried during that time, but much beyond that remains a mystery. We aren’t sure whose bag it was, or how it came into the possession of UCSF Archives & Special Collections. Beyond being a doctor’s bag, we don’t know if it has any connection to UCSF at all.

Even the tools inside the bag invite more questions than give answers: Were all these tools original to this particular bag, or were more tools added after it fell out of use? Is that a bullet extractor scoop, a curette spoon, or a lithotomy instrument? And it seems to have a lot of instruments related to gynecology and child birth—could it perhaps have been the bag of some nameless OBGYN?

For archivists, who rely on provenance to establish historical context, these types of questions can be a little uncomfortable. Yet despite all its mysteries, this doctor’s bag remains a fascinating artifact—and it definitely has some very interesting things inside. It’s almost like unwrapping a gift to discover it is actually a puzzle!

Written by David Uhlich.

Remembering Helen Gofman

Posted on May 17, 2016 by Kelsi Evans

This is a guest post by Kristin Daniel, UCSF Archives & Special Collections Intern.

The UCSF Archives is pleased to announce the official addition of the Helen Fahl Gofman papers. This collection, spanning several decades between the 1950s and the 1980s, details a woman who was a much loved teacher, mentor, doctor, and leader. Dr. Gofman’s affiliation with UCSF pediatrics began in 1945 when she graduated from the School of Medicine and also completed her internship and residency on campus. Gofman received faculty status in 1953 and worked in various programs until her retirement in 1983. Gofman is best remembered as a founding member, and then director, of the UCSF Child Study Unit (CSU).

Helen Gofman playing the viola, circa 1950. MSS 2014-17, Gofman papers.

Helen Gofman playing the bass, circa 1950. MSS 2014-17, Gofman papers.

Helen Gofman was, by all accounts, a passionate and cheerful woman. She was dedicated to the care of the “total patient”—not just the physical or mental condition of the child, but also how that condition impacted their social, emotional, developmental, and behavioral well-being. Considered a national leader in the field of behavioral pediatrics, Gofman was involved with UCSF’s Child Study Unit (now known as the Division of Behavioral and Developmental Pediatrics) since its inception in 1948.

Helen Gofman and child, circa 1980. Photograph collection, portraits, Gofman.

Dr. Gofman and the rest of the CSU staff of doctors, nurses, social workers, speech pathologists and special education experts sought to help children whose conditions might have otherwise been misdiagnosed or gone untreated (including cases of dyslexia or ADHD) by other healthcare professionals. The goal of the CSU was not only to help these children and their families, but also to develop a new generation of pediatric health professionals; the CSU trained clinicians to value their patients and focus on finding personalized treatments that take into account all aspects of the child’s life, not just their condition.

Helen Gofman at her retirement party, 1984. MSS 2014-17, Gofman papers.

The Helen Gofman papers (MSS 2014-17) include research subject files, restricted patient files, and personal correspondence. Also included are some of Dr. Gofman’s published works, such as The Family is the Patient: An Approach to Behavioral Pediatrics for the Clinician, which is considered a classic work in the field. Multimedia artifacts (such as lecture slides, teaching toys, and film reels) are also included. The Archives is proud to house this material and make it available to researchers.

Songs of a Nurse…

Posted on May 12, 2016 by Polina Ilieva

We would like to commemorate this International Nurses Day by sharing with you a poem that was written by a San Francisco nurse, Margaret Helen Florine a century ago:

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This poem comes from a book, Songs of a Nurse that was published in 1917.

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Ms. Florine’s poetry was later advertised in the Pacific Coast Journal of Nursing (volume 15, 1919, p.770).

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Upcoming Lecture: Heightened Expectations

Posted on May 6, 2016 by Polina Ilieva

Date: Tuesday, May 17th, 2016
Time: 12 pm – 1:15 pm
Lecturer: Aimee Medeiros, PhD (UCSF)
Location: Lange Room, 5th Floor, UCSF Library – Parnassus
530 Parnassus Ave, SF, CA 94143
This event is free and open to the public. Light refreshments will be provided.

REGISTRATION REQUIRED: http://calendars.library.ucsf.edu/event/2544252

Join UCSF Archives & Special Collections for an afternoon talk with author Aimee Medeiros as she discusses her book Heightened Expectations: The Rise of the Human Growth Hormone Industry in America.

Heightened Expectations: The Rise of the Human Growth Hormone Industry in America

Heightened Expectations is a groundbreaking history that illuminates the foundations of the multibillion-dollar human growth hormone (HGH) industry. Drawing on medical and public health histories as well as on photography, film, music, prose, and other examples from popular culture, Aimee Medeiros tracks how the stigmatization of short stature in boys and growth hormone technology came together in the twentieth century. Historical materials from the UCSF Archives collection were used in the research for this book.

Aimee Medeiros, PhD

Aimee Medeiros is an assistant professor of the history of health sciences at the University of California, San Francisco.

About the UCSF Archives & Special Collections Lecture Series
UCSF Archives & Special Collections launched this lecture series to introduce a wider community to treasures and collections from its holdings, to provide an opportunity for researchers to discuss how they use this material, and to celebrate clinicians, scientists, and health care professionals who donated their papers to the archives.

Highlights from the Photograph Collection – Lost on the Shelf

Posted on May 3, 2016 by duhlich

You never know what you’re going to find in an archives office. While the idealized vision is probably a mirror-image of the storage vault, with its neat rows of gray manuscript boxes and acid-free record cartons, this is almost never the case. Any flat surface can become a not-so-temporary resting place for the odd accession or accrual, or the item that was removed from its collection for research or exhibit, but has yet to find its way back to its proper housing.

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This photograph of an early 20^th-century surgical procedure was found a few weeks ago on top of one of our many filing cabinets. Who knows how it ended up there—or how long it had been waiting to be found again. Luckily, it carried a notation that it was from the Julius Comroe collection and the carton dedicated to illustrations for his book, Exploring the Heart. Looking at his notes, it is evident that Comroe had intended to use this photograph as the first illustration in his chapter on open heart surgery, but had later opted to use the Thomas Eakins painting, “The Agnew Clinic,” instead. Unfortunately there are no other notations or attributions on the photograph or its folder to tell us more about it, but at least this orphan work has found its way home—and we were given this opportunity to share it.

“The Agnew Clinic” by Thomas Eakins, courtesy of the University of Pennsylvania: http://www.archives.upenn.edu/histy/features/1800s/1889med/agnewclinic.html

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Stories from UCSF Archives & Special Collections

Monthly Archives: May 2016