Tag Archives: NHPRC grant

New Digital Collections: Selma H. Fraiberg Papers and Helen Fahl Gofman Papers

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The UCSF Library Archives and Special Collections is pleased to announce the digitization of the Selma H. Fraiberg papers and Helen Fahl Gofman papers. The digitization of the collections is part of our current grant project, Pioneering Child Studies: Digitizing and Providing Access to Collection of Women Physicians who Spearheaded Behavioral and Developmental Pediatrics, supported by the National Historical Publications and Records Commission (NHPRC). The grant supports the creation of digital collections on Calisphere containing materials from five collections held at UCSF. These collections document the life and work of five women physicians and social workers. The finding aids for theses collections are available publicly on the Online Archive of California.

Selma H. Fraiberg

Selma Fraiberg was born in Detroit, Michigan, where she received her education, graduating from Wayne State University with a B.A. in 1940. In 1945, she received her M.S.W. from the same institution and later completed her psychoanalytic training at the Detroit Psychoanalytic Institute. She became lecturer in the Department of Psychiatry at the University of Michigan Medical School at Ann Arbor. By 1968 she was professor of child psychoanalysis, becoming professor emeritus on her retirement in 1979. She was also professor of social casework at Tulane University, 1958-61, and lecturer and supervising child analyst at the Baltimore Psychoanalytic Institute, 1961-63. In 1967-69 Mrs. Fraiberg was lecturer and supervisor of the Child Psychoanalytic Program, of the Michigan Psychoanalytic Institute. In 1979, she taught at the University of California, San Francisco, as professor of child psychoanalysis, a position she held at her death in 1981. Mrs. Fraiberg was the author of four major books, including The Magic Years (1959) and Insights from the Blind (1977), both written with her husband, and Every Child’s Birthright: In Defense of Mothering (1977). The digital collection includes correspondence, teaching files, typescripts, manuscript drafts, project materials, meeting notes, lecture notes, articles, and grants. Mrs. Fraiberg wrote several articles regarding child development, but also wrote about parental development including one called, On Being the Parent of a Two Tear Old. Fraiberg wrote, “Knowledge of one’s own Imperfections as a parent soften the criticism of childhood. Many parents now discover a new and deeper understanding of themselves and their relationships to their own parents, and a compassion for their own parents which comes out of identification with the parental role.”

Helen Fahl Gofman

Helen Fahl Gofman, MSS 2014-17, carton 44, folder 20

Dr. Helen F. Gofman was involved with teaching, patient care, and research at the University of California for 42 years. Gofman was a national leader in the field of behavioral pediatrics. She completed both her medical degree and a residency in pediatrics at UCSF in 1947. Gofman next was involved with the Child Study Unit (CSU), within the UCSF Pediatrics Department, from the time it was founded in 1948 until her retirement in 1984. She served as director of the CSU from 1961-1973 and co-director from 1973-1983. Upon her retirement in 1984, Gofman was awarded professor emeritus. The digital collection contains documents of the life and work of Dr. Gofman. Materials include writings, lectures, correspondence, publications, research materials, diagnostic tools and tests, photographs, and biographical materials.  Towards the end of her career, Dr. Gofman wrote her Final Note, a note regarding the positive and negative changes she has seen in her field of behavioral pediatrics, she wrote,” I have seen a tremendous change in the teaching and acceptance of biopsychosocial issues as part of pediatric practice…In the field of behavioral pediatrics, there were no textbooks, manuals, or syllabi available; in fact, the term behavioral pediatrics was, as yet, unknown. And yet, I think many pediatric housestaff were hungry for training in this area…It is unfortunate that lack of funds in medical schools, state and federal budgets threaten to stunt it’s growth at this time. I see this as a critical time for behavioral pediatrics and for pediatrics itself.”

New Digital Collections: Carol Hardgrove Papers and Hulda Evelyn Thelander Papers

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The UCSF Library Archives and Special Collections is pleased to announce the digitization of the Carol Hardgrove papers and the Hulda Evelyn Thelander papers. The digitization of the collections is part of our current grant project, Pioneering Child Studies: Digitizing and Providing Access to Collection of Women Physicians who Spearheaded Behavioral and Developmental Pediatrics, supported by the National Historical Publications and Records Commission (NHPRC). The grant supports the creation of digital collections on Calisphere containing materials from five collections held at UCSF. These collections document the life and work of five women physicians and social workers. The finding aids for theses collections are available publicly on the Online Archive of California.

Carol Hardgrove

Carol Hardgrove worked in several nursery and childcare centers and was an educational consultant for Project Head Start from 1966 to 1970. The collection includes correspondence, published and unpublished manuscripts, photographs, and secondary materials on her subjects of interest. One of the items in the collection is an essay, “Play in the Day Care Center” which was written by Mrs. Hardgrove on the interpretation of the word “play”. She writes, “Play means different things to different people; serves different purposes at different stages of development. Play is to the infant, the toddler, and the preschooler the life breath of childhood; the force that carries into experiences of reasoning, relating, rehearsing, and researching. Through play, the child works to understand, to master, to integrate, to try on different roles in fantasy. Children learn through play.”

Another item in the collection is a travel study report called “Parent Participation and Play Programs in Hospital Pediatrics in England, Sweden, and Denmark,” granted by the World Health Organization. She shares her experience in Europe and meeting parents, patients, nurses, psychologists, and physicians. She writes, “I truly learned the meaning of “hands across the sea,” and hope that together, we may continue to work to improve the situation for young hospitalized children and their families.”

hardgrove newspaper
UCSF Journal, February 1978. Carol Hardgrove papers, carton 1, folder 14

Hulda Evelyn Thelander

Hulda Evelyn Thelander, MD, interned at Children’s Hospital in San Francisco, and later became the pediatrics department chief in 1951. During WWII she was a lieutenant commander in the U.S. Navy, retiring as commander and serving as Chief Consultant for Women Veterans, Western Area. Dr. Thelander founded the Child Development Center at Children’s Hospital in 1952 and conducted studies on children with traumatic brain injuries and general pediatric neurology. The papers in this collection consist in large part of correspondence (many with friends and family members), diaries, memoirs, travel accounts, some medical manuscripts and research notes. Several newspaper articles were written about Dr. Thelander praising her hard work helping children with disabilities. She wrote an essay on the history of pediatrics at Children’s Hospital called “The Department of Pediatrics of Children’s Hospital“. She also wrote several guides to inform parents and the community about children with physical disabilities.

From 1967 – 1971, Dr. Thelander attended medical school for a second time. It had been 40 years since she graduated with her medical degree from the University of Minnesota. She kept a diary about her experience returning to medical school at UCSF. Additionally, in 1971 she received a special citation from the Gold Headed Cane Society completing medical school a second time.

thelander newspaper
“Gentle Hand With The Handicapped,” undated. Hulda Evelyn Thelander papers, carton 3, folder 81

More to come

Next month we will digitize our last two collections of this project and publish them on Calisphere. Stay tuned for our next update.

How to Digitize 68,000 Pages of Documents

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Guest post by Heather Wagner, Digitization Coordinator at UC Merced Library

For the Pioneering Child Studies project the UC Merced Library’s Digital Curation and Scholarship unit was tasked with digitizing 68,000 pages of documents. So, how do we go about digitizing 68,000 pages of documents? With some help. That help comes from four undergraduate student assistants who play an important part in the digitization process.

The first part of the process is the actual digitization. Our undergraduate student assistants digitize materials on a variety of equipment. These include high speed document scanners and flatbed scanners for documents, book scanners for bound material, and cameras on stands for oversize or fragile materials.

Student Nicolas Fleming digitizing bound materials using a book scanner

Once the digitization is complete, the next step is quality checking. Students review each image in Adobe Bridge and zoom in to check for issues such as lines in scans or items out of focus. Some images may need minor editing such as straightening and cropping which is completed during the quality checking step in Photoshop. The quality checking step is time consuming but necessary, so we are sure we are receiving the best possible results from digitization.

Student Dathan Hansell quality checking digitized documents.

PDFs with optical character recognition (OCR) are created from the digitized image files so they are accessible to users. OCR makes the PDF document searchable. The PDF documents are then quality checked by the students, and the documents are then optimized. Optimizing the PDF files reduces their file size, which makes them better suited for web viewing. The files are then ready for uploading.

We appreciate the hard work of our undergraduate student assistants. We would not be able to complete digitization projects of this size without them.

Pioneering Child Studies: Digitizing and Providing Access to Collection of Women Physicians Who Spearheaded Behavioral and Developmental Pediatrics Update

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We are at the one-year point of the project Pioneering Child Studies: Digitizing and Providing Access to Collection of Women Physicians who Spearheaded Behavioral and Developmental Pediatrics. UCSF Archives & Special Collections and UC Merced have made significant headway towards our goal of digitizing and publishing 68,000 pages from the collections of Drs. Hulda Evelyn Thelander, Helen Fahl Gofman, Selma Fraiberg, Leona Mayer Bayer, and Ms. Carol Hardgrove.

To date we have digitized over 33,000 pages. The digitized material are still undergoing quality assurance (QA) procedures. Here are some items we have digitized so far.

Dr. Leona Mayer Bayer

This collection features professional correspondence of Dr. Leona Mayer Bayer. Her work focused on child development and human growth and psychology of sick children.

MSS 86-54, Leona Mayer Bayer Correspondence, Carton 1, Folder 9, PSR Award acceptance speech
MSS 86-54, Leona Mayer Bayer Correspondence, Carton 1, Folder 9, Memo thanking Nancy W. Zin for collecting her archive

Dr. Selma Horwitz Fraiberg

This collection includes several drafts of her research papers on important aspects of developmental-behavioral pediatrics.

MSS 83-9, Selma Fraiberg Papers, Carton 14, Folder 8, draft of “Transference and Resistance in the Analysis of a Child with a Severe Behavior Disorder”
MSS 83-9, Selma Fraiberg Papers, Carton 14, Folder 6, draft of “Observations On The Homosexual Conflicts of Adolescence”

In the next year we will continue digitizing and will soon publish our collections on Calisphere.  Stay tuned for our next update.

New NHPRC Grant Will Bring to Light Stories of Women Physicians and Social Workers

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UCSF Archives & Special Collections (A&SC) is excited to announce that it was awarded a grant by the National Historical Publications and Records Commission (NHPRC) in support of the project titled Pioneering Child Studies: Digitizing and Providing Access to Collection of Women Physicians who Spearheaded Behavioral and Developmental Pediatrics.

The $149,814 award will support the creation of a digital collection on Calisphere containing materials from five collections held at UCSF documenting life and work of five women physicians and social workers, Drs. Hulda Evelyn Thelander, Helen Fahl Gofman, Selma Fraiberg, Leona Mayer Bayer, and Ms. Carol Hardgrove, who were pioneers in the developmental-behavioral pediatrics research, patient care, and public-health policy. These materials will enable researchers and general public to understand evolution of social policy and cultural norms as they relate to special education, people with disabilities, and equitable access to health care.

Dr. Selma Fraiberg

In her support letter for this project Dr. Alicia F. Lieberman, the Irving B. Harris Endowed Chair in Infant Mental Health and Vice Chair for Academic Affairs at the UCSF Department of Psychiatry, and Director of the Child Trauma Research Program stressed that this grant is extraordinarily timely because these women physicians and social workers “have been trailblazers in creating new knowledge and revolutionizing clinical care, but their contributions are at risk of being neglected or overlooked. These five women excelled against enormous odds in fields where women had difficulty establishing their own independent contributions, and the long-term ramifications of their work continue to benefit millions of children worldwide.”

A relatively new field in medicine, developmental-behavioral pediatrics came out of an increased demand for mental health services in pediatric care starting in the 1920s. While infant and child mortality rates declined in part due to public health campaigns and medical breakthroughs, concerns over behavioral problems and developmental delays grew as pediatrics began to look beyond mere survival and started to consider the whole child.

Dr. Leona Mayer Bayer

“These five women,” says Dr. Jeffrey L. Edleson, Professor and Harry & Riva Specht Chair Emeritus in Publicly Supported Social Services in the School of Social Welfare at the UC Berkeley, “studied and practiced in the same time period and were instrumental in establishing and developing training programs for pediatricians, nurses, and social workers. All of them also published works for the general public addressing issues that emerged at that time and continue to be discussed today, including the role of the mother in the early life of the child, emotional life of children and the importance of including the whole family in pediatric patient care.

 A digital collection unifying the records of these five remarkable women scholars […] will benefit historians of medicine and public health, sociologists, educators, social workers, policymakers, health care providers, patient advocates, and parents.”

Carol Hardgrove with unidentified colleagues
Carol Hardgrove with unidentified colleagues

Documents from these five collections often illustrate the work of their creators on the same or similar projects and collaboration between the creators; these will be digitally “reunited” in the course of the grant by being posted on the same digital platform, Calisphere and being linked through extended metadata. They speak to the contribution women made early on in developmental-behavioral pediatric clinical research through the papers of Dr. Thelander. In 1952, she founded the Child Development Center at the Children’s Hospital of San Francisco where she conducted studies on children with brain-damage and general pediatric neurology. These women were influential in the training of pediatricians as documented by the records of Dr. Gofman. Since 1966 she served as a director of the Child Study Unit at UCSF, one of the first training programs in behavioral pediatrics in the US. The papers of Dr. Fraiberg document several important aspects of developmental-behavioral pediatrics, including the influence of psychoanalysis on the field and her groundbreaking work on intergenerational transmission of trauma. These women were also instrumental in the evolution of pediatric nursing. Ms. Carol Hardgrove collection documents her role as an educator with the School of Nursing and Child Care/Study Center who authored many works dealing with children and parents and the hospital experience. The collection also features professional correspondence of Dr. Leona Mayer Bayer whose life’s work was focused on child development and in particular human growth and psychology of sick children.

Hulda Evelyn Thelander
Dr. Hulda Evelyn Thelander

According to Dr. Andrew J. Hogan, Associate Professor and Director of the Science and Medicine in Society Program at Creighton University, “Filling in these silences and gaps in the historical records, by making available more widely their various ideas, aspirations, and institutional negotiations, will allow this story to be told in much fuller detail. Gofman, Thelander, and others’ stories are likely to inspire another generation of groundbreaking young physicians to organize care for populations in need. It will be valuable for students and researchers to learn more about the many challenges that these women physicians faced, and how they overcame them to provide improved resources and support for children with behavioral and developmental conditions and disabilities, a population that was historically overlooked in pediatrics, especially in the mid-20th century, when these women were professionally active.”

As part of this project UCSF archivists will engage with communities of women physicians, researchers, and health care providers, discussing how to document their voices that have been underrepresented, absent, or excluded from the history in general and history of their institutions (including UCSF) or professions in particular. By collecting their stories and learning how to document and share them, we will create a more inclusive and equitable historical record.

Helen Gofman, MD, playing with girl with tea set and toys
Helen Gofman, MD, playing with girl with tea set and toys

This 24-month project was launched in September and will be managed by our processing archivist, Edith Escobedo. The materials will be digitized by the UC Merced Library’s Digital Assets Unit that has been partnering with UCSF on successful collaborative digitization projects for more than 10 years. 

A&SC would like to thank the National Historical Publications & Records Commission; the California Historical Records Advisory Board; Dr. Aimee Medeiros, assistant professor in the Department of Humanities and Social Science at UCSF; Emily Lin, Head of Digital Curation and Scholarship, UC Merced Library; and other supporters for their help with this proposal.

About UCSF Archives & Special Collections

The mission of the UCSF Archives and Special Collections is to identify, collect, organize, interpret, and maintain rare and unique material to support research and teaching of the health sciences and medical humanities and to preserve institutional memory. Please contact Polina Ilieva, Associate University Librarian for Collections with questions about this award.

John S. Greenspan Papers Update: The Women’s Interagency HIV Study

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We are currently processing and digitizing material from the John S. Greenspan papers as part of our National Archives NHPRC grant, “Evolution of San Francisco’s Response to a Public Health Crisis: Providing Access to New AIDS History Collections.”

John S. Greenspan and Deborah Greenspan. Photograph by David Powers. AR 2015-31, carton 2.

Included in the Greenspan papers are files related to the Women’s Interagency HIV Study (WIHS). WIHS was organized in 1993 to investigate the impact of HIV infection on women. It is one of the largest and longest ongoing U.S. studies of its kind, with clinical sites and cohorts throughout the country. John Greenspan and Deborah Greenspan, his wife and longtime research partner, participated in research activities associated with WIHS.

In the collection are copies of WIHS newsletters created for and by women living with HIV. The newsletters include updates on WIHS research, stories and letters from participating women, event announcements, and other related information. Below are sample pages from the Spring 1997 issue of Health WIHS, a publication of the Women’s lnteragency HIV Study in Chicago.

To learn more about the Greenspan papers read our earlier post, “Processing the John Greenspan Papers.”

You can view the complete Greenspan digital collection on Calisphere.

Processing the John Greenspan Papers

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As part of our current National Archives NHPRC grant, “Evolution of San Francisco’s Response to a Public Health Crisis: Providing Access to New AIDS History Collections,” we’ve been processing the papers of John S. Greenspan. Greenspan served as the founding Director of the UCSF Oral AIDS Center and the UCSF AIDS Specimen Bank. He is Distinguished Professor Emeritus of Oral Pathology in the Department of Orofacial Sciences and the former Associate Dean for Global Oral Health in the School of Dentistry at UCSF along with Director-Emeritus of the campuswide AIDS Research Institute at UCSF.

John S. Greenspan and Deborah Greenspan. Photograph by David Powers. AR 2015-31, carton 2.

Greenspan’s work has played a major role in HIV research and care. He and his longtime collaborator and wife Deborah Greenspan, BDS, DSc, discovered the lesion hairy leukoplakia and determined the significance of this and other oral lesions in HIV/AIDS. He has published and lectured widely on the oral aspects of AIDS, oral pathology, and immunopathology.

Photographs of the Second International Workshop on the Oral Manifestations of HIV Infection, 1993. Greenspan papers, MSS 2016-14.

Greenspan’s research interests include the global health aspects of AIDS and his professional service reflects this. He has served as President of the American Association for Dental Research (AADR) and the International Association for Dental Research (IADR). He is the founding President of the IADR Global Oral Health Inequalities Research Network (IADR-GOHIRN) and of the Consortium of Universities for Global Health’s Global Oral Health Interest Group (GOHIG).

Conference programs. Greenspan papers, MSS 2016-14.

Greenspan’s papers include records of his research and work developing the Oral AIDS Center and the AIDS Specimen Bank. They also include material related to his teaching and service in professional organizations, including AADR and IADR. Greenspan’s papers feature correspondence with members of his global network of researchers and healthcare providers and records of the various national and international conferences and meetings of which he was a part. The collection includes some unique types of material, including audiovisual recordings, glass microscope slides, health science instruments, and conference posters and photographs of events.

Dissection instruments. Greenspan papers, MSS 2016-14.

At the conclusion of the Greenspan processing project, a detailed finding aid will be available to researchers online and a small portion of the collection will be digitized and made available on Calisphere.

UC 150th Anniversary Highlight: Jay Levy

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This is a guest post by Edith Martinez, UCSF Archives Volunteer.

The University of California is celebrating its 150th anniversary this year. Over the 150 years, the UC campuses have accomplished great things that have changed California and the world for the better. To commemorate the anniversary, a 150 year timeline has been created that features the history and accomplishments of the UC and its students, faculty, and staff.

One of the accomplishments that stood out to me was that of UCSF’s Jay Levy. Jay Levy, virologist and immunologist, became the third independent discoverer of the Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV), the virus that causes AIDS. Levy received a request for advice about a patient with rare skin cancer lesions which led him to research the virus. His work led to better treatments for the disease and he has dedicated his career to further understanding HIV/AIDS.

Jay Levy

UCSF remains at the center of HIV/AIDS research and patient care. As a volunteer with the UCSF Archives, I am working on the NHPRC-funded grant, Evolution of San Francisco’s Response to a Public Health Crisis: Providing Access to New AIDS History Collections, an expansion of the AIDS History Project. I have learned the important role that UCSF has played in research and treatment and will continue to play in finding the cure for AIDS.