Tag Archives: UCSF Archives and Special Collections

Digital Health Humanities: Showcasing “Archives as Data” for Analysis

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UCSF Archives & Special Collections includes numerous digitized collections documenting health sciences topics ranging from institutional, community, and individual response to illness and disease to industry impacts on public health. We make many of these collections available as data that can be computationally analyzed for health sciences and humanities research.

Voyant Cirrus term frequency visualization generated from AIDS health crisis workshops file data, 1986 from the UCSF AIDS Health Project Records, UCSF Archives & Special Collections (data available in the No More Silence dataset).

If you are curious about working with data from the UCSF Archives and Special Collections, the Digital Health Humanities (DHH) pilot program will showcase our “archives as data” throughout the month. In two upcoming sessions, we’ll provide an orientation to available data as well as methods for finding, accessing, and exploring these data resources:

Voyant Bubbleline term occurrence visualization generated from Letter from the FDA to Purdue re: new drug application for OxyContin Controlled-Release Tablets data, 1995 from the Kentucky Opioid Litigation Documents collection, UCSF Industry Documents Library (data available from from item page link or as part of collection dataset).

Python for Data Analysis series workshops

DHH programming also continues to partner with the Data Science Institute (DSI) to offer workshops on tools and methods well-suited to conducting research with “archives as data.” March workshops in the DSI Python for Data Analysis series will dig in to text analysis using natural language processing and building machine learning models:

Through these workshops and selected companion follow-up sessions with troubleshooting and guided process walkthroughs, researchers can learn and practice data analysis techniques and get familiar with data from our collections. Check out the library’s events calendar to find and register for the latest offerings!

OpenRefine workshops

If you have data you’d like to work with but it needs tidying and preparation attend a DSI OpenRefine workshop. This workshop will cover techniques for cleaning structured data, no programming required! There will be two OpenRefine sessions this month:

Previously-held DHH session slides, linked resources, and recordings are available on the CLE. There you will find materials from a Digital Health Humanities Overview session and recorded walkthroughs for Unix, Python, and Jupyter notebooks basics. Related resources will be updated on the CLE following DHH sessions.

Questions?

Please contact DHH Program Coordinator, Kathryn Stine, at kathryn.stine@ucsf.edu. The UCSF Digital Health Humanities Pilot is funded by the Academic Senate Chancellor’s Fund via the Committee on Library and Scholarly Communication.

Spotlight on Carlton B. Goodlett

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Carlton Benjamin Goodlett, PhD, MD (1914-1997) was a San Francisco newspaper publisher, civil rights leader and physician. He practiced medicine at Mount Zion Hospital (now known as UCSF Medical Center at Mount Zion) and at that time, was one of only three Black doctors in the city.

His 1997 obituary in Synapse, UCSF’s student newspaper, enumerated his many accomplishments and commitment to social justice. Goodlett graduated magna cum laude from Howard University in 1935. At the age of 23 he received his doctorate in child psychology from the University of California, Berkeley, making him one of the first Black students to receive a PhD from the UC Berkeley Department of Psychology. He went on to receive his medical degree from Meharry Medical College in Nashville, Tennessee.

Goodlett’s legacy includes leading boycotts of businesses that discriminated against people of color and participating in student protests at San Francisco State University.  He was also a co-founder of the San Francisco Young Democrats. According to the San Francisco Chronicle, “Until the emergence of the Black Panther Party in the late 1960s, Goodlett was the dominant figure in San Francisco’s civil rights movement in securing jobs for African Americans and appointments to important city commissions that blacks had never held.”

Another notable element of the Synapse article is a featured a drawing of Dr. Goodlett by the American graphic artist Emory Douglas (b. 1943). Douglas was the minister of culture and revolutionary artist for the Black Panther Party. He designed the Party’s newspaper, The Black Panther, and was responsible for the publication’s iconic imagery.

For additional resources on Carlton B. Goodlett and Emory Douglas:

Welcome Allison Tracy-Taylor, Oral History Archivist

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We are excited to introduce Allison Tracy-Taylor who joins UCSF Archives & Special Collections as an Oral History Archivist. Allison will be leading the Oral History Program (OHP) supported by the Academic Senate Chancellor’s Fund and Committee on Library and Scholarly Communication that will enable the university to record and preserve diverse voices of the UCSF faculty sharing their stories in their own words and better shape the legacy they leave behind.

 This program aims to better understand and share the history of the health sciences education through recording, transcribing, and preserving oral histories with members of the UCSF teaching and research community and by making these oral histories available to the public. Through engagement with DEI leaders, the project will record their experiences and document efforts to address and remediate inequities in health, health care, and education. The Oral History Program will elevate the narratives, perspectives, and expertise of historically underrepresented populations in the education and research communities at UCSF. This one-of-a-kind public record will address “silences” and gaps in the existing historical narrative. Allison will collaborate with faculty to convene Oral History Advisory Committees at each of the schools to identify and develop the list of interviewees and perform outreach activities related to the program.

Allison Tracy-Taylor, Oral History Archivist
Allison Tracy-Taylor

Collecting and preserving archival material that documents nuanced historical narratives and encourages contemporary conversations has been a major theme of Allison’s work. Most recently as an independent oral historian based in Sacramento, CA, Allison was the project lead for the California State Library website Voices of the Golden State, a curated collection of oral histories exploring many facets of California’s history. She also worked on multiple oral history projects, including a project on the history of the medical device technology industry in Silicon Valley for Stanford BioDesign, and the Documenting the Experiences of Mexican, Filipina, and Chicana Women in California Agriculture Oral History Project for the Center for Oral and Public History at Cal State Fullerton.  

Allison is passionate about supporting oral history practitioners and growing the field into an inclusive, equitable space. She served as the 2019-2020 President of the Oral History Association (OHA), as well as on the OHA’s Council for several years. While president she initiated the development of the OHA’s Guidelines for Social Justice Oral History Work, convened and served on the Independent Practitioners’ Task Force, which developed a robust toolkit for independent oral historians, and chaired a task force that developed remote interviewing guidelines during the COVID-19 pandemic. 

Community engagement and education have also been central to Allison’s work. Prior to going independent, Allison worked as the Oral History Administrator at the Kentucky Historical Society, overseeing the Kentucky Oral History Commission (KOHC), the only commission of its kind in the United States. She provided outreach, education, and technical support to oral history practitioners and programs throughout Kentucky. Allison was also the Oral Historian for the Stanford Historical Society, documenting Stanford University’s history through the stories of faculty and staff and serving as the program’s senior oral history mentor. 

Allison began her work in oral history at the University of Nevada Oral History Program (UNOHP), serving in multiple roles, including as an interviewer for a multi-year project on the history of women’s athletics at the University of Nevada, and an editor for the resulting book We Were All Athletes: Title IX and Women’s Athletics at the University of Nevada. In addition to an M.A. in Oral History from Columbia University, Allison holds a B.A. in Sociology and English Literature from the University of Nevada. 

In her free time, Allison enjoys hiking, reading, the distinct hobbies of collecting craft supplies and crafting, and baking. Though she will always be a Nevadan at heart, she has come to love the profound beauty of California. 

Launching the Digital Health Humanities Pilot

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We are excited to launch digital health humanities pilot programming starting January 2023! Digital health humanities (DHH) is an emerging discipline that utilizes digital methods and resources to explore research questions investigating the human experience around health and illness. The Digital Health Humanities Pilot (DHHP) will facilitate new insights into historical health data. Participants will learn how to evaluate and integrate digital methods and “archives as data” into their research through a range of offerings and trainings.

Participants at the first workshop for the No More Silence project, a precursor to digital health humanities pilot programming

The programming from this pilot will bring a humanistic context to understanding institutional, personal and community responses to health issues, as well as social, cultural, political and economic impacts on individual and public health. The DHHP will offer researchers from all disciplines (including faculty, staff, and other learners) tailored workshops, classes, and skill-building sessions. Workshops will encourage the use of “archives as data” and utilize datasets from holdings within the UCSF Archives and Special Collections (including the AIDS History Project and Industry Documents Library, among others). Additionally, in spring 2023 we will be hosting the Digital Health Humanities Symposium. The symposium will provide space to consider theoretical issues central to this emerging field and highlight digital health humanities projects. More information on the symposium will be shared soon.

The UCSF Digital Health Humanities Pilot is funded by the Academic Senate Chancellor’s Fund via the Committee on Library and Scholarly Communication.

Register for an upcoming Digital Health Humanities overview session

Are you interested in learning how DHH can inform your research? We invite you to participate in our virtual session, Digital Health Humanities: An Overview of Methods, Tools, Archives, and Applications, Thursday, January 19, from 1 to 3 p.m. PT.

This session will include an orientation led by Digital Health Humanities Program Coordinator, Kathryn Stine and Digital Archivist, Charlie Macquarie. We will discuss various approaches in DHH research, including getting familiar with data analysis and programming skills, and will share an overview of the UCSF Library’s archival collections data available for research.

For questions about digital health humanities at UCSF, please contact Digital Health Humanities Program Coordinator, Kathryn Stine at kathryn.stine@ucsf.edu.

Register Now

Collaborating with the Data Science Initiative

The Data Science Initiative (DSI) is offering workshops in the coming months to support researchers interested in implementing DHH approaches. Follow-up sessions will be available for researchers to reinforce and contextualize programming foundations in practical application. Check out the upcoming sessions:

We invite you to check out the library’s events and classes calendar for upcoming DHHP (and related DSI) programming. If you are unable to attend any of the sessions listed above, we advise referring to the DSI Collaborative Learning Environment (CLE) (accessible with MyAccess credentials) for recordings and resources.



#ColorOurCollections Coloring Book

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Once again we contributed to the New York Academy of Medicine’s #ColorOurCollections. We’ve created a coloring book featuring images from our collection of Japanese woodblock prints. Please download the book, color, and tweet your creations @ucsf_archives using #ColorOurCollections.

Download the complete UCSF Archives 2022 Coloring Book here.

You can view other coloring books from participating institutions here. Happy coloring!

Peggy Tran-Le Joins UCSF Archives

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Please join us in giving a warm welcome to our new Research and Technical Services Managing Archivist, Peggy Tran-Le. Peggy comes to UCSF with over 15 years of diverse experience as an archivist, most recently at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (SFMOMA) where she has served as the museum’s Archivist and Records Manager.

Peggy Tran-Le

During her tenure at SFMOMA, Peggy developed and managed the archives programs including planning, policies and procedures, acquisition, description, and processing and preservation of analog and digital institutional records and special collections.  She established the museum’s records management program and advanced museum-wide policies and procedures through developing collaborative relationships and serving as a resource for museum staff regarding SFMOMA’s policies and procedures.

She oversaw research services provided to staff and external researchers, in addition to responding to reference inquiries, assisting researchers on site and remotely, and issuing permissions to publish for archival collections.

Prior to joining SFMOMA, Peggy spent time as an Archivist at the National Archives at San Francisco (NARA) and as the Research Archivist at Pixar Animation Studio. At NARA, she managed the volunteer and intern programs and established priorities for arrangement, description, and preservation of records. While at Pixar, she supported the international tour of PIXAR: 25 Years of Animation and the research for The Art of … series of Pixar art books.

She received a Master of Library and Information Science degree (MLIS) from San Jose State University, a Master of Arts (MA) in Art History from the University of Chicago, and Bachelor of Arts (BA) in Art History and US History from the University of California, Santa Cruz.

UCSF Archives and Special Collections acquires and makes available the papers of Dr. Michael S. Gottlieb, pioneer HIV/AIDS researcher and clinician

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By Erin Hurley, User Services & Accesioning Archivist

June 5, 1981 is widely known as the beginning of the AIDS epidemic in the United States because it was the day that the Center for Disease Control (CDC) published, in its Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report (MMWR), the appearance of a cluster of diseases that would later come to be known as AIDS (Acquired Immune Difficiency Syndrome). The report, titled “Pneumocystis Pneumonia — Los Angeles,” was authored by five UCLA doctors: MS Gottlieb, MD, HM Schanker, MD, PT Fan, MD, A Saxon, MD, JD Weisman, DO, of the Division of Clinical Immunology-Allergy at the UCLA Medical Center. The article reports, “In the period October 1980-May 1981, 5 young men, all active homosexuals, were treated for biopsy-confirmed Pneumocystis carinii pneumonia at 3 different hospitals in Los Angeles, California.”[1] The primary author of this report, Doctor Michael S. Gottlieb – then 33 years old – made history as the person who discovered AIDS.  UCSF Archives & Special Collections is pleased to house Dr. Gottlieb’s archives, which are now processed and available for the first time. 

Photo of Dr. Michael Gottlieb by Elizabeth Nathane, originally published in the Los Angeles Blade

A record of his professional life and accomplishments, as well as the many honors and awards he received over the course of his career, the Michael S. Gottlieb papers contain published papers by Gottlieb and many others on AIDS-related topics. They also include information on various AIDS drug treatment studies (including AZT), professional and personal correspondence, and information about various talks and events attended by Gottlieb during the 1980s – a busy decade for him. They also document his prodigious philanthropic activities and AIDS advocacy.

Gottlieb figures prominently in this UCSF-generated timeline of the AIDS epidemic. The timeline, which begins with the 1981 MMWR report, notes that, in 1985, Rock Hudson – star of classic Hollywood films like Giant, All That Heaven Allows, and Written on the Wind – announced that he had AIDS and later died, becoming “the first major celebrity to succumb to the disease.”[1] Later that same year, the timeline reports, “The American Foundation for AIDS Research is founded with the help of movie star Elizabeth Taylor.” Gottlieb, who served as Rock Hudson’s physician from the time of his AIDS diagnosis to his death from the disease, was also one of the founding chairs of the American Foundation for AIDS Research, along with medical researcher Mathilde Krim and Taylor, who was a close friend of Hudson’s and his costar in Giant. The Foundation was established with a $250,000 gift from Hudson’s estate.  The Gottlieb papers also contain a fascinating trove of letters, which he dubbed “Crazy letters,” that he received after becoming publicly associated with Hudson in newspapers and the press. The letters indicate a fascination with the disease, which was still very new and widely misunderstood by the world at large.

If you’re interested in checking out the Michael S. Gottlieb papers, you can consult the finding aid or the library catalog record for the collection. The papers were a gift from Michael Gottlieb.

[1]Center for Disease Control. (1981, June 5). Pneumocystis Pneumonia — Los Angeles. https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/preview/mmwrhtml/june_5.htm

[2] Cisneros, Lisa. (2021, June 4). 40 Years of AIDS: A Timeline of the Epidemic. UCSF News. https://www.ucsf.edu/news/2021/06/420686/40-years-aids-timeline-epidemic

Highlighting the work of Freeman Bradley, of UCSF’s Research Development Department and the Black Caucus

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By Shannon Foley, Archives & Special Collections Intern

Brought to Light wants to bring attention to remarkable former UCSF faculty member Freeman Bradley. His significant contributions to the medical community and the Black community at UCSF deserve to be recognized. Bradley grew up in Alabama, and after high school, he continued his education at Howard University in Washington D.C., where he received his bachelor’s degree in Biology. After his graduation, Bradley moved to Maryland and started working at the National Institute of Health, where he remained for four years before starting his career at UCSF. His position was with the Cardiovascular Research Institute, where he conducted research about respiratory changes associated with various anesthesias.

During his time at UCSF, Freeman Bradley worked as a technician to Dr. John Severinghaus and and Bradley’s contributions were fundamental to Severinghaus’s groundbreaking work. From 1957 to 1958, Dr. Severinghaus and Mr. Bradley combined technology created by Richard Stow and Leland Clark to create the first blood gas analysis system. Shortly after the first system was created, they were commercialized and proved revolutionary in health care. In Dr. Severinghaus’s written account of his research and the evolution of the invention of the blood gas analysis system, he emphasizes how his and Mr. Bradley’s invention changed medicine. By the 1960s they blood gas analysis systems were widely available, and and these tests provided essential information about a patient’s illness.. These systems are still used today, and in 1985 Dr. Severinghaus donated the first apparatus he and Mr. Bradley worked on at the Smithsonian Museum. In 1977 after his research with Dr. Severinghaus, Mr. Bradley was appointed Director of Development and Research. In this position, he helped progress the technology and development of medical tools. One of the other advancements he made at his time at UCSF was in the transportation technology of newborn babies or neonates. His contributions to medical advancements do not go unnoticed. 

Image taken from SYNAPSE – THE UCSF STUDENT NEWSPAPER, VOLUME 27, NUMBER 19, 24 FEBRUARY 1983, https://synapse.library.ucsf.edu/?a=d&d=ucsf19830224-01.1.3.

Freeman Bradley was not only an incredible asset to advancing medical research, but he also was an active member in UCSF’s Black Caucus. The Black Caucus is a club at UCSF whose mission statement is “The Black Caucus is a forum open to all Black-identified individuals and allies on this campus. Here they may openly express themselves regarding matters of race as they affect life on the campus and in the community. The Black Caucus serves as an instrument for the formation of a Black consensus on those racial matters that affect every person on this campus. This consensus will then be presented to the Administration for appropriate action.” One of the founding members and President of the Black Caucus, David Johnson, worked to create this community where Black members of UCSF could have their needs and concerns met. During Freeman Bradley’s time at UCSF and as an active member of the Black Caucus and used his calm temperament to make sure issues could be addressed and changes made. Mr. Bradley is quoted saying that even though he was criticized for staying diplomatic, he knew that it was the way to be more successful in the long run. In a 1983 interview of Mr. Bradley printed by Synapse, he shared his concerns with the lack of Black role models for youths in the sciences. He believes that minorities would be more likely to become a part of the medical field with more role models. Freeman Bradley is the perfect example of a role model to the youth and can be seen as an inspiration to all.

Works Cited:

“David Johnson, Freeman Bradley – Black Caucus Leaders.” Synapse, Volume 27, Number 19, 24 February 1983, synapse.library.ucsf.edu/?a=d&d=ucsf19830224-01.1.3, accessed April 21, 2021.

Severinghaus, John W. “The Invention and Development of Blood Gas Analysis Apparatus.” Anesthesiology, vol. 97, no. 1, 2002, pp. 253–256., doi:10.1097/00000542-200207000-00031, accessed April 21, 2021.

“They Were Really Us”: The UCSF Community’s Early Response to AIDS — A New Exhibition on Calisphere

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By Polina Ilieva, Head of Archives and Special Collections

When HIV/AIDS first seized the nation’s attention in the early 1980s, it was a disease with no name, known cause, treatment, or cure. Beginning as a medical mystery, it turned into one of the most divisive social and political issues of the 20th century. The University of California, San Francisco (UCSF) was at the forefront of medical institutions trying to understand the disease and effectively treat early AIDS patients.

Drawing on materials from the AIDS History Project collections preserved in UCSF’s Archives and Special Collections, the UCSF Library presents “They Were Really Us”: The UCSF Community’s Early Response to AIDS, a new digital exhibition on Calisphere that highlights the ways UCSF clinicians and staff addressed HIV/AIDS from its outbreak in the 1980s to the foundation of the AIDS Research Institute in 1996. 

From medical professionals defining the disease and developing a model of care, to activists calling for treatments and public education, this exhibition amplifies the resilience of a community not only responding to its local needs, but also breaking ground on a larger scale with efforts that continue to impact HIV/AIDS care and research today. 

The NAMES Project AIDS Memorial Quilt panels displayed at San Francisco City Hall during San Francisco Lesbian and Gay Freedom Day Parade, UCSF Library, Archives and Special Collections.

This exhibition, including the digitization of materials used in this exhibition, has been made possible in part by a grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities (PW-253755-17) “The San Francisco Bay Area’s Response to the AIDS Epidemic: Digitizing, Reuniting, and Providing Universal Access to Historical AIDS Records,” awarded to the UCSF Library in 2017-2020.

About UCSF Archives and Special Collections

UCSF Archives and Special Collections identifies, collects, preserves, and maintains rare and unique materials to support research and teaching of the health sciences and medical humanities and to preserve UCSF institutional memory. The Archives serve as the official repository for the preservation of selected records, print and born-digital materials, and realia generated by or about the UCSF, including all four schools, the Graduate Division, and the UCSF Medical Center.

The Special Collections encompasses a Rare Book Collection that includes incunabula, early printed works, and modern secondary works. The East Asian Collection is especially strong in works related to the history of Western medicine in Japan.The Japanese Woodblock Print Collection consists of 400 prints and 100 scrolls, dating from 16th to the 20th century. The Special Collections also contains papers of health care providers and researchers from San Francisco and California; historical records of UCSF hospitals; administrative records of regional health institutions; photographs and slides; motion picture films and videotapes; and oral histories focusing on development of biotechnology; the practice and science of medicine; healthcare delivery, economics, and administration; tobacco control; anesthesiology;  homeopathy and alternative medicine; obstetrics and gynecology; high altitude physiology; occupational medicine; HIV/AIDS and global health.

About Calisphere

Calisphere provides free access to California’s remarkable digital collections, which include unique and historically important artifacts from the University of California and other educational and cultural heritage institutions across the state. Calisphere provides digital access to over one million photographs, documents, letters, artwork, diaries, oral histories, films, advertisements, musical recordings, and more.
Calisphere Exhibitions are curated sets of items with scholarly interpretation that contribute to historical understanding. Exhibitions tell a story by adding context to selected digital primary sources in Calisphere, thereby bringing the digital content to life. Calisphere Exhibitions are curated by contributing institutions and undergo editorial review. We are currently refining these processes, which are outlined in the Contributor Help Center. Please contact us if you’re interested in learning more about Calisphere Exhibitions.

Upcoming Lecture: “Vaccination and Society Since the Sixties”

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Date: Friday, September 30, 2016
Time: 12 pm – 1:15 pm
Lecturer: Elena Conis, PhD (UC Berkeley & 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: tiny.ucsf.edu/vaccination930

Join UCSF Archives & Special Collections for an afternoon talk with author Elena Conis as she discusses her book Vaccine Nation: America’s Changing Relationship with Immunization. A limited number of books will be available for purchase.

conis_lecture

W. McD. Hammon with triplets participating in a polio study at the Hooper Foundation (UCSF)

The past fifty years have witnessed an enormous upsurge in vaccine use in the United States: American children now receive more vaccines than any previous generation, and laws requiring their immunization against a litany of diseases are standard. And yet, while vaccination rates have soared and cases of preventable infections have plummeted, an increasingly vocal cross-section of Americans have questioned the safety and necessity of vaccines. In this talk, Elena Conis explores the emergence of widespread acceptance – and rejection – of vaccines from the 1960s to the present, finding the origins of today’s vaccination controversies in historical debates over topics ranging from national security to body piercing to the role of women in contemporary society. Vaccine acceptance, she argues, has never been simply a scientific matter, but one profoundly shaped by our politics, economics, and culture.

Elena Conis, PhD

Elena Conis, PhD

Elena Conis is a writer and historian of medicine, public health, and the environment. She is a member of the faculty of the Graduate School of Journalism at UC Berkeley and an affiliated faculty member of the Department of Anthropology, History, and Social Medicine at UCSF. Previously, she was a history professor and the Mellon Fellow in Health and Humanities at Emory University; the Cain Fellow at the Chemical Heritage Foundation; and an award-winning health columnist for the Los Angeles Times. Her first book, Vaccine Nation, won the Arthur J. Viseltear Award from the American Public Health Association and was named a Choice magazine outstanding title and a pick of the week by the journal Nature. She is currently working on a book on the history of the pesticide DDT. She holds a PhD in the history of health sciences from UCSF, masters degrees in journalism and public health from Berkeley, and a bachelors degree in biology from Columbia University.

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.