100+ Years of UCSF Yearbooks Accessible Online: UCSF Partners with Google Books for Digitization Project

Posted on October 10, 2014 by Polina Ilieva

The UCSF library is an important UC contributor to the Google Books digitization project. Through the collaboration with the California Digital Library (CDL) digitization team 1,317 volumes from the general and rare book collections were scanned and uploaded to Google Books and HathiTrust, a central repository for digital books.

As part of this project, we also digitized the university publications (yearbooks, announcements, departmental newsletters). These materials are among the most heavily used in archives and requested not only by university departments, but also by people doing genealogical research and alumni. As a result, 460 of these volumes are now full-text accessible on Google Books and HathiTrust sites.

Chaff’98, v.2, yearbook of the College of Dentistry, University of California. College of Dentistry baseball team, 1897-98.

With hundreds of volumes digitized proper organization assures quick and efficient discoverability of these treasures by diverse users. With the help of HathiTrust colleagues at CDL and the University of Michigan, we set up two collections:

University of California, San Francisco collection

This collection contains books, pamphlets, UCSF University Publications, and yearbooks dating back from 16th century through 2000s held at the University of California, San Francisco Library and Special Collections.

UCSF University publications

This collection contains materials published by UCSF schools, programs, and research institutes (course catalogs, announcements, student publications, annual reports, newsletters, etc.) as well as yearbooks dating back from 1864 held at the UCSF Archives. Among them is “The Introductory address delivered by Professor H. H.Toland at the Toland Medical College, San Francisco on Monday, October 24, 1864.”

Please read the full story on the UC Libraries web site and CDL blog.

UCSF Library Google Books Team. Front row: Andy Panado, Polina Ilieva, Bea Mallek, Karen Butter. Back row: Eric Peterson, Art Townsend, Alberto Luna, Tyrone McCloskey, Don Ciccone, Bazil Menezes, David Campbell, Anneliese Taylor. Not pictured: Margaret Hughes, Julia Kochi, Bertha Hall, Lucy Friedland, Mark Zanandrea, David MacFarland, Alan Daniel, Jubeda Azam, Deborah Freeze, Susan Boone and Kirk Hudson.

About CDL
The CDL was founded by the University of California in 1997 to take advantage of emerging technologies that were transforming the way digital information was being published and accessed. Since then, in collaboration with the UC libraries and other partners, CDL assembled one of the world’s largest digital research libraries and changed the ways that faculty, students, and researchers discover and access information. In 2006, CDL and the University of California libraries partnered with Google on a project to digitize millions of books from the campus collections.

About HathiTrust
HathiTrust Digital Library is a digital preservation repository and highly functional access platform. It provides long-term preservation and access services for public domain and in copyright content from a variety of sources, including Google, the Internet Archive, Microsoft, and in-house partner institution initiatives. Launched in 2008, HathiTrust has a growing membership, currently comprising more than 90 partner libraries. Over the last six years, the partners have contributed more than 11 million volumes to the digital library. More than 3.7 million of the contributed volumes are in the public domain and freely available on the Web. For more information, visit the HathiTrust About page.

Exploring the Archives for 150: School of Nursing Comic Books

Posted on September 29, 2014 by Kelsi Evans

In preparation for UCSF’s 150^th anniversary celebration exhibits, we’ve been doing a bit of exploring in the vaults. For the next several months, I’ll be posting some of the treasures we’ve discovered!

In 1944, the graduating class of the UCSF School of Nursing received a unique gift…a comic book dedicated to their experiences as student nurses.

Cover of The Adventures of Miss Smith, Archives Classification, N-S, folder 1:1

This homemade book, created by Marjorie Carlson and titled The Adventures of Miss Smith, includes 31 illustrations that parody everything from late-night cram study sessions to overwhelming patient and doctor requests.

Illustration from The Adventures of Miss Smith, Archives Classification, N-S, folder 1:1

Carlson makes special note of the imposing landscape of Parnassus, a reference to which current students and staff can definitely relate!

Illustration from The Adventures of Miss Smith, Archives Classification, N-S, folder 1:1.

In 1947, nursing student Phyllis P. Benson created a similar comic book, titled Nurses in Embryo.

Illustration from Nurses in Embryo, Archives Classification, N-S, folder 7:1

Cover of Nurses in Embryo, Archives Classification, N-S, folder 7:1

In her introduction, Benson notes that the book “is the realization of an idea one of us had during our pre-clinical semester – to record some of the amusing, humiliating and exasperating experiences we’ve had in training both on and off duty. Each of our twenty-nine class members is represented…these things couldn’t have happened – but they did!”

Illustration from Nurses in Embryo, Archives Classification, N-S, folder 7:1

While Benson maintains a humorous tone throughout, she also illustrates some serious issues that mid-century nursing students faced. For instance, five of the twenty-nine anecdotal illustrations reference sexual harassment from doctors and patients.

Illustration from Nurses in Embryo, Archives Classification, N-S, folder 7:1

Documents like these provide excellent evidence for researchers looking to better understand students’ lives and experiences. They speak to the history of nursing training at UCSF and showcase unique individual stories. To view more images from the books, visit our digital collections or come see the real thing in the UCSF Archives and Special Collections.

New Faces in Archives

Posted on September 25, 2014 by Polina Ilieva

Kelsi Evans

Kelsi Evans
Our new Assistant Research Archivist, Kelsi Evans who joined the archives team a month ago, will help with research and organization for several onsite and online exhibits, as well as processing, cataloging, digitization, and social media projects related to the University sesquicentennial. She will respond to reference requests relating to UCSF History and 150th anniversary, research and provide historical information for UCSF schools and departments. Kelsi will be contributing to the Archives blog and support Archives outreach programs.
She will also spend half of her time completing processing of the Lawrence Crooks Radiologic Imaging Laboratory Records and establishing the Lawrence Crooks Radiologic Imaging Technology Digital Collection.
Dr. Crooks’ collection provides insights into the history of the development and testing of magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) technology. The material donated by Dr. Crooks is a major addition to the archives holdings and is treasured for its high scholarly value and ability to broaden research perspective. Some of these treasures are lacking intellectual control and have no or minimal descriptive data. The goal of this project is to create a detailed finding aid and digitize a sizable and significant part of this material to build a comprehensive on-line collection. The archives will produce an exhibit at the UCSF library showcasing the key documents and artifacts. Subsequently, an online companion exhibit will be built and will be accessible through the UCSF library site.
Kelsi holds a master’s degree in Archives and Public History from New York University and completed graduate coursework in American History at UC Santa Cruz. She has worked as an archivist in the Fales Library and Special Collections at NYU, the Foundation for Landscape Studies in NYC, and the Lowe Art Museum at the University of Miami. Additionally, she has planned events and coordinated volunteers for non-profit organizations, including Old Spanish Days Fiesta in Santa Barbara. Originally from Kansas City, Missouri, Kelsi has lived in the Bay Area for the past several years and enjoys California’s farmers’ markets and beaches.

Armani Fontanilla

Armani Fontanilla

This fall semester the UCSF Archives & Special Collections is hosting an intern from the University of San Francisco (USF) public history program. Armani is currently a senior at the USF majoring in History with an emphasis on European and Asian Studies. He is originally from San Jose, and has lived in California his entire life. After he graduates from USF, he hopes to be able to earn a teaching position at his old high school, Bellarmine College Preparatory, and eventually pursue a Masters. In choosing the UCSF archives through the USF internship program, he hopes to not only practice skills that can only be found through working at an established institution but to also enhance his ability to do archival work and explore history of Western medicine at the archives.
Armani is working on organizing and creating an inventory of biographical files. This frequently consulted collection includes CVs, newspaper clippings, obituaries, bio sketches of hundreds of UCSF researchers, clinicians, staff, and alumni. Armani will also assist with digitizing images and documents for the University sesquicentennial events.

Archives Lecture Series: Early Interdisciplinary Cancer Research at UCSF, October 13th, 2014

Posted on September 17, 2014 by Polina Ilieva

Join us on Monday, October 13th as M. Michael Thaler, M.D., M.A. (Hist.) gives a lecture in a series launched by UCSF Archives & Special Collections.

Date: Monday, October 13th, 2014
Time: 12 pm-1:20 pm
Location: Lange Room, UCSF Library, 530 Parnassus, 5th floor
This lecture is free and open to the public.
Please RSVP to reserve a seat.

Shimkin’s “Lost Colony” (1947-1953): Early Interdisciplinary Cancer Research at UCSF

Michael B. Shimkin, Director of the Laboratory of Experimental Oncology at UCSF, 1947-1953

The Laboratory of Experimental Oncology (LEO) was established in 1947 at Laguna Honda Hospital in San Francisco as a “colony” of the National Institutes of Health, to be jointly administered by the National Cancer Institute (NCI) and UCSF. The LEO was the brain child of Michael B. Shimkin, a career U.S.P.H.S. physician and cancer researcher at the NCI. Shimkin was a native San Franciscan, having successively graduated from Lowell High School, UC Berkeley and UCSF. After 8 years at the NCI and war service, Shimkin returned to his native city and alma mater as ideal environments for a “combined” interdisciplinary clinical and basic research unit embedded in a medical school and staffed by full-time research teams of M.D.’s and Ph.D.’s. These unprecedented ideas directly challenged the traditional separation between patient care and laboratory research. Shimkin introduced a ‘release’ form that fully informed patients with terminal cancer admitted to the LEO about the incurable nature of their illness, and clearly distinguished between therapeutic and experimental procedures. This prototypical “informed consent” approach met with mounting resistance from the clinical faculty. In response, Shimkin organized a symposium at UCSF in October 1951 on the subject on human experimentation. In his presentation, Shimkin became the first American physician to draw on the injunctions from the recently concluded Nuremberg trials against German physicians who had conducted medical experiments in Nazi concentration camps, as a source of universal guidelines for the ethical conduct of experiments with human subjects. The LEO treated 500 patients and generated over 130 publications before being replaced by the Moffitt-based Cancer Research Institute in 1953.

About M. Michael Thaler

M. Michael Thaler, M.D., M.A. (Hist.)

Michael Thaler received his M.D. from the University of Toronto, trained in pediatrics, pediatric pathology and internal medicine, and completed research fellowships in cell biology at Washington University and in developmental biology at Harvard University. As professor of pediatrics at UCSF, he established the first academic division of Pediatric Gastroenterology, Hepatology and Nutrition in North America, was awarded the first NIH Research Career Development Award in Pediatric Gastroenterology, and was P.I. of the foundational NIH Research Training Program grant in Pediatric Gastroenterology. He also directed the Laboratory of Pediatric Hepatology and served as associate director of the UCSF Liver Center. His publications include approximately 200 clinical and basic research articles on perinatal bilirubin metabolism, infantile cholestasis syndromes, Reye’s syndrome, and bile salt metabolism. As professor emeritus, he earned a M.A. degree in History of Health Sciences at UCSF in 1998, and received appointments as Visiting Scholar at the Stanford Center for Bioethics, and Research Associate at the Stanford Center for History and Philosophy of Science. For the next 12 years, he taught undergraduate courses on the history of medical sciences as Visiting Professor of History at UC Santa Cruz and UC Berkeley. He continues to lecture at the Osher Life Long Learning Institute in Berkeley, and for the fellowship program in Pediatric Gastroenterology at UCSF. His awards include the UCSF Chancellor’s Faculty Award for Public Service and the Shwachman Lifetime Achievement Award in Pediatric Gastroenterology. He presently serves as president of the UCSF Emeriti Faculty Association.

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.

Reminiscences about UCSF History

Posted on June 20, 2014 by Robert Sherins

Within 18 years of California Statehood in 1850, the University of California was established in Oakland (1868). Already well-known in San Francisco were 2 private medical colleges, Cooper Medical College, which later was aligned with the University of the Pacific and then became the Stanford School of Medicine, and Toland Medical College, which first offered classes in 1864. Within 9 years (1873), Hugh Toland gifted the University of California with the school buildings and property in North Beach across from the San Francisco City and County Hospital. Continue reading →

UCSF Archives Lecture Series: Lessons at UCSF from the Early AIDS Epidemic, April 16, 2014

Posted on April 11, 2014 by Polina Ilieva

Join us on Wednesday, April 16th for a special program featuring prominent UCSF faculty. This is the second lecture in a series launched by UCSF Archives & Special Collections.

Learning from Our History: Lessons at UCSF from the Early AIDS Epidemic

UCSF played a leading role in the early response to the AIDS epidemic. UCSF faculty and staff helped create important models of care, made many key discoveries into the nature of the disease and its management, and faced the many emotional and ethical burdens at a time when personal safety could not be assured in patient care. This event will be less a lecture and more a conversation of those early days with four prominent UCSF faculty members, each of whom were present and active from the very first days of what would become a massive epidemic. They will offer their own perspectives on this history and engage with each other and the audience in this program.

Presenters: Drs. John Greenspan, Paul Volberding, Molly Cooke, Jay Levy (UCSF) Date: Wednesday, April 16, 2014
Time: 12:00 pm – 1:15 pm
Location: Lange Room, UCSF Library, 530 Parnassus, 5th floor

This lecture is free and open to the public. Information on how to sign up or donate to AIDS Walk San Francisco will be available before and after this event. AIDS Walk San Francisco benefits HIV/AIDS programs and services throughout the Bay Area, including some at UCSF.

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.

Fiat Lux: Ansel Adams images of UCSF

Posted on March 20, 2014 by Polina Ilieva

Published in 1967 Fiat Lux: The University of California is dedicated to “those who will make the future.” This book was commissioned by UC President Clark Kerr in the early 1960s. He invited photographer Ansel Adams and writer Nancy Newhall to not only commemorate the past and present of the University, but to project, as far as possible, “the next hundred years.” This was a challenging idea and the authors spent three years touring the nine campuses as well as scientific and agricultural experimental stations, meeting hundreds of people from chancellors to freshmen. Ansel Adams produced 605 fine prints and over 6,700 negatives for this centennial publication that is just 192 pages long and this endeavor almost rivals his body of work dedicated to Yosemite.
At the beginning of the book the authors profiled the campuses or as they were called by Clark Kerr, “Cities of Intellect” and they selected a beautiful panoramic image of the UCSF campus, as viewed from the Golden Gate Park. This photograph together with seven others was also used for the UCSF School of Medicine centennial celebration program in 1964.

University of California San Francisco Medical Center from the tower of De Young Museum, Golden Gate Park, August 1964

The authors of the volume witnessed rebuilding and expansion all around the University, including the UCSF campus where the old medical building that was photographed for the project was demolished in 1967.

Ansel Adams, Clock Tower of old Affiliated Colleges building, with new structures in fog, August 1964

Fiat Lux includes just 5 photographs of the UCSF campus, but there are dozens of others that can be found in the Ansel Adams Fiat Lux collection on the UCR/California Museum of Photography website.

If you would like to learn more about the book, please visit the Bancroft Library website created for the recent exhibit “Fiat Lux Redux: Ansel Adams and Clark Kerr” that featured 50 original photographs selected from Ansel Adams prints in Bancroft’s collection.
The book Fiat Lux: The University of California is available at the UCSF Library.

UCSF’s 150th Anniversary

Posted on March 20, 2014 by Polina Ilieva

Earlier this year the UCSF Chancellor Susan Desmond-Hellman, MD, MPH sent out a message to the campus community announcing key events that will be organized to mark the 150th anniversary of the founding of UC San Francisco. The UCSF’s sesquicentennial celebration will start this year with the Founders Day events in April and continue through May 2015. Additional details can be found on the website that was developed for the 150th anniversary.

UCSF Anniversary Logo

For the past several months the archives staff has been working on several projects that document and bring to life the rich history of UCSF. Our stories about these projects will be accompanied by the UCSF Anniversary Logo, and today we are publishing the first installment from these series.

UCSF on Historypin

Posted on February 11, 2014 by Maggie Hughes

Historypin is a website that allows users to view and post historical photos that have been digitally “pinned” to a map– thereby highlighting the location which may be unrecognizable in the photo. It allows photographs to be searched by place, time, or channel– channels are accounts that have been set up by various people and organizations.

We created our channel on Historypin– UCSF Archives & Special Collections— in part to begin celebrating the 150th anniversary of UCSF! Toland Medical College began in 1864 in the heart of San Francisco’s North Beach neighborhood, moved to the wide-open countryside of the Parnassus/Inner Sunset area, and has continued to change and grow.

We will continue to add images and information throughout the coming year. Check back often for new and interesting images of the ever-evolving UCSF campus. We encourage you to add comments or information to our pinned images!

One of the niftiest features of Historypin is the ability to pin an image directly onto street view. If the photograph was taken from the street (or similar angle and location), it can be placed on the map over the Google street view image of the image’s location– just like the image of Market Street Earthquake Damage, 1906 shown below. You can toggle the fade slide bar to play with photograph’s opaqueness.

For more detailed information on the history of UCSF, please see A History of UCSF.

Adopt-a-Book: Help Us Restore and Preserve 150 Rare Books

Posted on January 28, 2014 by Polina Ilieva

UCSF’s Rare Book Collection contains more than 15,000 volumes, including items from the 15th century, collected over the past 150 years through donations and gifts from faculty, alumni, and friends of the Library. Over time, many books have deteriorated so that additional use would add further damage to their condition. As a busy research library, it is important that we keep these materials accessible to present and future researchers.

A conservator at the UC Berkeley Library conservation lab.

In honor of UCSF’s 150th Anniversary, UCSF Archives & Special Collections has launched the Adopt-a-Book program, which aims to fund the restoration of 150 books that were published before 1864, the year that UCSF was founded. Your generous donations will support the work of conservators that will stabilize the books and prevent future damage, in addition to paper restoration, cleaning, and some cosmetic treatment.

Bartolomeo Eustachi; Bernardi Siegfried Albini, Explicatio tabularum anatomicarum, 1744. One of the books that is featured on the Adopt-a-Book website.

The Library is very grateful to the members of the Bay Area History of Medicine Society, who have already donated money to restore a copy of De Humani Corporis Fabrica, 2nd edition (1555), written by Andreas Vesalius.

Interested in adopting a book from this exceptional collection? Learn more about the Adopt-a-Book program. We sincerely appreciate your generosity and continued support!

Brought to Light

Stories from UCSF Archives & Special Collections

Category Archives: 150th Anniversary