UCSF Tobacco Control Oral History Collection

Posted on November 26, 2013 by René Radusky

You may know that the Center for Tobacco Control Research and Education here at UCSF is an internationally respected collaborative effort dedicated to reducing deaths associated with tobacco and the tobacco industry, conducting research in the areas of how to treat tobacco addiction, the effects of second hand smoke, and other tobacco-related topics. The Center works closely with the UCSF Library on the Legacy Tobacco Documents Library to collect and preserve documents created by major tobacco companies related to their advertising, manufacturing, marketing, sales, and scientific research activities. Our next activity together? Processing the UCSF Tobacco Control Oral History Collection – interviews with 150 physicians, epidemiologists, public health officials, community-based activists and educators, lobbyists and policy makers – all working in the area of tobacco control.

An interview with Stanton Glantz, Ph.D. Center Director and the American Legacy Foundation Distinguished Professor of Tobacco Control at UCSF revealed that the Oral History project, conducted between 1994-2001, was an integral part of his National Institutes of Health (NIH) funded project to travel to 24 states and complete detailed histories of tobacco control policymaking and efforts by the tobacco industry to thwart these policies. As Dr. Glantz and members of his research group travelled the country, they found key informants and recorded the interviews that would become part of this collection. In part, these interviews helped inform the resulting Reports on State Tobacco Policy Making. And the project goes on. As state reports are continually researched, written and published, more interviews with individuals who can shed particular light on political activities and state tobacco control programs are conducted and recorded.

So, check back here next month to see how you can find out what is available, and how you can access and listen to this collection of cassette tapes!

René Radusky
UCSF Archives intern and student at San José State University, School of Library and Information Science concentrating in Archival Studies and Records Management

Digitized Audiovisual Treasures from UCSF Archives Accessible Online

Posted on November 15, 2013 by Polina Ilieva

Today we would like to officially inaugurate the UCSF Archives and Special Collections audiovisual collection on the Internet Archive.

UCSF has been participating in the California Audiovisual Preservation Program (CAVPP) since its inception in 2010. This innovative program that received funding from the California State Library, the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) and the Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS) partners with diverse archives, museums and libraries from around the state to provide “digitization and access services for historic California audiovisual recordings.” The goal of the project is to save the rapidly deteriorating California audiovisual heritage: the majority of the cultural institutions in the state have hundreds of recordings in obsolete formats and poor physical condition.
The program selects the recordings based on the following criteria:

• statewide and/or local historical significance – (ideally) featuring widely known names and events
• risk of loss due to physical condition and format obsolescence
• never published commercially– must be primary source material
• intellectual property in the public domain, held by the owning library, or secured from the rights holder, when possible

CAVPP pays for digitization of materials according to best practices and standards, copies of digital files, management of metadata, and provides public access via the California Light and Sound online collection on the Internet Archive.

1964 School of Medicine centennial program

The UCSF collection includes 20 recordings with 11 more currently being digitized. Please take some time to browse these films and audio recordings documenting the development and growth of UCSF. In the next few months we will be showcasing individual items and today we would like to highlight a tape made at the centennial celebration of the School of Medicine on November 20, 1964:

[iframe src=”https://archive.org/embed/cum_000012″ width=”500″ height=”30″ frameborder=”0″ webkitallowfullscreen=”true” mozallowfullscreen=”true” allowfullscreen]

This tape contains almost 4 hours of recordings including addresses and presentations by William O. Reinhardt, Dean, School of Medicine; John B. de C. M. Saunders, Chancellor; Herbert Evans; H. Glenn Bell; William Kerr; Chauncey D. Leake; Peter Forsham; J. Englebert Dunphy; Alexander R. Margulis; Ernest W. Page; Harvey M. Patt; Seymor M. Farber; Henry S. Mass; Samuel Sherman; Alexander Simon; Lloyd H. Smith. To view the centennial program that included photographs by Ansel Adams please click here.

Here is a short excerpt from William O. Reinhardt, M.D. welcome introduction:

“…What are the functions of a school of medicine? The three basic essentials must be teaching, research and community service. The neglect of any one of these spells potential failure of its role. Indeed, the more that these three phases can be melded together, the greater the accomplishment of the institution will be.
Looking back with pride we see new potentials for the future. Therefore, the Centennial Committee has planned a program in which distinguished members of the faculty will survey the past and attempt to project the necessary directions of the future.
But for its greatest usefulness a school of medicine must offer more than narrow disciplines. It must turn our leaders in the community, thoughtful individuals well versed in many fields beyond the confines of the profession itself. Therefore, the celebration of the Centennial closes with a reconsideration of the role of the humanities in the education and profession of the physician.”

Florence Nightingale Letter

Posted on November 7, 2013 by Maggie Hughes

To commemorate Veterans’ Day, we bring you a letter from our collections written by Florence Nightingale in 1855 to the family of a solider who passed away in Scutari (now Üsküdar in Istanbul) during the Crimean War. Accompanying the letter is a document that appraises the Nightingale letter and provides a bit more back story written by a rare book dealer, J. W. Todd, Jr. in 1975.

MSS 2011-20, Letter from J. W. Todd, Jr., 28 January 1975

The Florence Nightingale letter was donated to the archives by Zina Mirsky RN, EdD in 2012. One of her former students, Darlene Anderson had given her this letter. Early in her career, Mirsky served on active duty as a Navy Nurse and later spent over 40 years at UCSF.

MSS 2011-20, Letter from Florence Nightingale to John Dancey, 22 September 1855

MSS 2011-20, Letter from Florence Nightingale to John Dancey, page 1, 22 September 1855

MSS 2011-20, Letter from Florence Nightingale to John Dancey, pages 2-3, 22 September 1855

MSS 2011-20, Letter from Florence Nightingale to John Dancey, page 4, 22 September 1855

October is Archives Month

Posted on October 15, 2013 by Polina Ilieva

The theme of the 2013 Archives Month in California is “Working to Preserve our History.” This month-long celebration helps highlight tireless efforts by archivists, librarians, historians, volunteers, and community members to safeguard the treasures of the past for future generations.

California Archives Month 2013 poster

UCSF Archives would like to invite everyone to visit the library to view two exhibits that display materials from our holdings:

1st floor gallery: Japanese woodblock prints: Pharmacy and Pharmacists
5th floor gallery: School of Pharmacy History: Robert L. Day Collection

If you are not able to travel you can enjoy our numerous digital collections online.

We are extending the invitation to all students, staff, faculty, researchers, and general public to make an appointment and visit the archives reading room to find out how we can help you and learn interesting facts about UCSF history.

Visit the California Archives Month website to learn about state-wide events and view images that were submitted by diverse repositories, including UCSF Archives, for this year’s poster that celebrates California’s workers and California archives’ ability to preserve labor history.

Rotating Art Program and Portraits in the Reading Room

Posted on September 30, 2013 by Maggie Hughes

Here at the Archives & Special Collections we have, in addition to papers, books, and artifacts, a collection of works of art. This collection is widely unknown on campus due to our limited ability to showcase the pieces. However, this anonymity will come to an end with our new rotating art program. Through this initiative, we will be displaying different pieces of art on the walls of our reading room and changing them approximately every three months.

The inaugural works are two portraits of people significant to UCSF’s history– John Bertrand deCusance Morant Saunders, M.D. and William John Kerr, M.D.

William John Kerr, M.D.
Alfred Jonniaux (Belgian, 1882-1974)
1949

Continue reading →

Robert L. Day Collection: Anatomy of an Archival Project – Part 3

Posted on August 14, 2013 by Gawain Weaver

Conservation treatment of a portrait of William M. Searby

William Martin Searby (1835-1909) was an important figure in the founding of the California College of Pharmacy (later UCSF School of Pharmacy). In addition to being the school’s first professor of Materia Medica, and later professor of pharmacy, he was also dean of the college for many of the school’s early years.

William Martin Searby (1835-1909), crayon enlargement. Portrait before treatment.

A portrait of Professor Searby in the UCSF archives, taken perhaps in the 1880s, was found in disrepair. The portrait was done in a format known as a crayon enlargement, which is a photographic image enlarged onto paper and enhanced by painting over in various media including airbrush, watercolor, or charcoal. Crayon enlargements were introduced in the late 1850s with the introduction of the solar enlarger—a means for enlarging negatives using the sun. They continued to be popular into the early 20th century and can be found on the walls of your local antique shop, often in large numbers. They can be oval shaped and mounted onto convex boards and placed in oval frames, or like the Searby portrait they can be lined with fabric and then mounted onto a wooden strainer. The Searby portrait had a silver-based photographic image as its base and was worked over primarily with charcoal. It was still housed in its original 5” Florentine gilded frame, but the portrait had suffered over time due to light exposure, variations in relative humidity, a poor-quality paper support, and the wooden strainer. These led to losses, yellowing of the image, embrittlement of the paper, and large tears.

Searby portrait before and during treatment.

Searby portrait during treatment.

The portrait was brought to the photograph conservators at Gawain Weaver Art Conservation in San Anselmo, CA. The first step was to unframe the portrait and cut it away from the wooden strainer and then remove its fabric lining. The loose areas of the lining fabric were cut away with a surgical scalpel. However, the lining fabric was strongly adhered to the fragile print along the edges with a very stubborn adhesive. An enzyme poultice was used to weaken the starch component of the adhesive, but it was still very difficult to remove and had to be slowly mechanically separated after softening with enzymes. The print was then free from its support but the paper was still very brittle, yellowed, and in multiple pieces. The next step was to wash the paper to remove degradation products and restore some flexibility to the print and to light bleach the print to remove the overall yellowing and discoloration.

Light bleaching uses the free radicals generated by light interacting with water molecules to gently remove staining and discoloration in a print while it is being washed. Light bleaching was developed in Marin County by pioneering paper conservator Keiko Keyes in the early 1980s and since that time has been widely adopted by both paper and photograph conservators.

The pieces of the print were placed on a support and washed and light bleached until the discoloration was sufficiently removed and some flexibility had been restored. The fragile print needed mending and physical support, so these were accomplished together by lining the print with a thin and strong sheet of Japanese paper attached with wheat starch paste, the most stable and commonly used adhesive in the conservation of photographs and works on paper. The mended cracks and remaining losses were then filled and retouched to make them all but invisible to the viewer.

Searby portrait after treatment.

The original aesthetic of the portrait was perfectly flat. To achieve that flatness and to provide further physical support, the newly lined print was mounted overall to a sheet of 4-ply rag museum board. The glass was replaced with UV-filtering acrylic to eliminate the danger of breaking glass and provide protection from ultraviolet light. The old nails keeping the two parts of the frame together were dangerous and often very loose, so they were removed and the frame and print were assembled more securely to be put on display for the first time in many years outside the UCSF archives.

Gawain Weaver
Photograph Conservator
Gawain Weaver Art Conservation
http://gawainweaver.com/

Robert L. Day Collection: Anatomy of an Archival Project – Part 2

Posted on August 7, 2013 by Kate Tasker

A Processing Prescription for School of Pharmacy History

Have you visited the 5th floor of the UCSF Library lately? If so, you might have seen the latest UCSF Archives and Special Collections exhibit featuring items from the new Robert L. Day Collection. With photographs, scrapbooks, letters, books, and dozens of curious artifacts, the collection illustrates School of Pharmacy history from 1872 to the present day.

When School of Pharmacy Associate Dean Robert Day retired after a distinguished 50-year career at UCSF, his office was bursting at the seams with historical items he had collected. From 19th-century faculty meeting minutes to recent academic plans and reports, from the School’s 1873 Inaugural Address to the research that pioneered the Clinical Pharmacy Program in 1966, his collection tells the story of more than a century of education and innovation in pharmacy practice at UCSF.

Show globes containing colored liquid were displayed in shop windows to identify the business as a pharmacy or drug store. This show globe belonged to Otto A. Weihe (1896-1961), an alumnus and instructor of the California College of Pharmacy. It contains the original colored liquid used by Weihe family when the globe was installed in the Modesto, CA pharmacy in 1911. Robert L. Day Collection, MSS 2011-23, UCSF Archives & Special Collections.

In addition to papers and photographs, Professor Day gathered enormous pharmacy ledgers containing prescriptions from the 1930s and 1940s, reels of 16mm film and audio tapes, and curious artifacts like a liquid-filled glass show globe. He generously donated these materials to the UCSF Library in 2012.

I joined the Archives and Special Collections staff from November 2012-May 2013 as a Project Archivist to process the Day collection and to prepare it for research and exhibit use. It was fascinating to peruse items like 19th-century textbooks from “Materia Medica” courses and to examine boxes of patent medicines for ailments like “dyspepsia” and “pleurisy.” I cataloged leather-bound volumes of faculty meeting minutes and reviewed letters from dozens of alumni recounting colorful stories of their early-twentieth-century student days and later careers. (A complete collection description and research guide is available on the Online Archive of California.) Continue reading →

Robert L. Day Collection: Anatomy of an Archival Project – Part 1

Posted on July 31, 2013 by Susan Levings

Robert Day as a student, in a UCSF School of Pharmacy lab, 1957. Robert L. Day Collection, MSS 2011-23.

We were fortunate this past spring to benefit from the generosity of Dr. Robert Day and the expertise of the Library’s Archives and Special Collections. Dr. Day retired in 2012 from the UCSF School of Pharmacy faculty after an accomplished 50+-year academic career at UCSF. He retired as well from his unofficial position as the School’s historian. He was a magnet for all things old and wonderful related to the School and pharmacy in general. His office was a floor-to-ceiling treasure trove, the precious contents of which he generously donated to UCSF upon his retirement. The new Robert L. Day Collection is complete with the 1906-1910 School of Pharmacy faculty meeting minutes; glorious show globes, the predecessors of which were used originally to mark the physical location of a pharmacy; a 1930 prescription for one pint of whiskey (undiluted); photos of our bell-bottomed and side-burned faculty members in the 60’s; and priceless detailed documents showing the transformation here at UCSF of pharmacy into a clinical profession. Coming soon is Dr. Day’s oral history, a must read. Just as impressive as the items in the collection was the skilled and focused work of the archive professionals in the Library. Under the direction of UCSF Archivist Polina Ilieva, the boxes and boxes of precious items from Dr. Day’s office were collected, preserved, digitized, and catalogued into a findable resource that is now accessible worldwide. I encourage anyone who might have archival documents or special collections of health- or science-related items to contact the Library. In the meantime, enjoy the Robert L. Day Collection.

Susan Levings, MS
Associate Dean, Planning and Communications
UCSF School of Pharmacy

Robert L. Day Collection: Anatomy of an Archival Project – Introduction

Posted on July 30, 2013 by Polina Ilieva

Group of pharmacy students from the class of 1889 posing in front of California College of Pharmacy building at 113 Fulton Street, San Francisco. Otto A. Weihe (later Instructor of Materia Medica at the College) is standing 2nd from left. Robert L. Day Collection, MSS 2011-23.

In April of 2013 the UCSF Archives unveiled recently acquired Robert L. Day collection documenting the history of the School of Pharmacy. This project included not only arrangement and processing of the collection, but also preservation and restoration of damaged oversized photographs, digitization, design and creation of a companion digital portal, physical and online exhibits, oral history and organization of events to showcase the history of the School. It was successfully accomplished as a result of the close cooperation between the School’s leadership and the Library. With the approval and continuing personal involvement of the dean, B. Joseph Guglielmo, PharmD., the School of Pharmacy provided generous support and funded the hiring of a part-time processing archivist for a period of six months, digitization of brittle scrapbooks and photographs, work of a photo conservator, and an oral historian.

In the next couple of weeks we will bring to your attention entries written by the participants of this project…

We’re on Zazzle!

Posted on July 23, 2013 by Maggie Hughes

We wanted to announce to all of you that a selection of our beloved treasures, here in the Archives & Special Collections, is featured in the UCSF Zazzle store. The online store allows you to purchase customizable note cards, tote bags, mugs, iPhone cases, water bottles and t-shirts that feature one-of-a-kind images from our collection.

Recently, we’ve added items that showcase pieces in the “Pharmacy and Pharmacists” exhibition of Japanese Woodblock Prints– currently on display in the UCSF Library.

The online store also includes items with images from past exhibitions of the Japanese Woodblock Prints Collection. These represent a cross-section of the collection, featuring colorful ukiyo-e scenes on topics such as women’s health, diet and nutrition, spirituality, views of foreigners, and traditional Chinese healing methods.

Items with historical UCSF photographs from the Photograph Collection are also available. Check out the fascinating views of campus from the turn of the twentieth century.

Brought to Light

Stories from UCSF Archives & Special Collections

Category Archives: Collections