UCSF Awarded California Revealed grant

We’re happy to announce that we have been selected to digitize several of our collections through the latest round of the California Revealed digitization granting program. California Revealed is a California State Library-funded initiative to digitize, preserve, and serve historically significant Californiana in partnership with archives and other repositories across the state.

For this latest round of digitization, which will begin in April of this year, we will be digitizing our Tales and Traditions scrapbooks, several of our scrapbooks documenting the experiences of Hospital Unit 30 in World War II, and several folders from the records of the Black Caucus, specifically production materials for their Black Bulletin newsletter.

All of these collections combined document some fascinating slices of California history where it intersects with the history of UCSF. Since UCSF is one of the older UCs (though it has changed form several times), it should come as no surprise that they intersect a lot! Just as a sample, these materials contain histories of the development of a public health program in the state of California, an account of California survivors of WWII war crimes such as Nazi medical experiments and the dropping of the Atomic Bomb of Hiroshima, the development of one of the first summer camps created specifically for people with diabetes, the medical questions that were at the beginning of the California drug craze, and the development of the civil rights movement in California and the intimate ties between organizers who were employed at UCSF and the larger nationwide movement.

We’re excited to get these materials digitized and available to everyone, no matter their location. We’ll announce when they’re online.

Digitized Audiovisual Treasures from UCSF Archives Accessible Online

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

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:

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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.”