STHC-L: The Science, Technology and Health Care Archives Forum

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STHC Roundtable meeting at SAA 2002 (Birmingham, Alabama: 19-25 August) 

Mark your calendars/PDAs: the following is a blurb for the Science, 
Technology, and Health Care Roundtable at SAA's upcoming annual meeting 
in Birmingham.  Although the specific content might be sci/tech/med, 
many SAA members will find value in the presentations and discussion.

Note that STHC once again has the coveted Saturday 8 a.m. slot.  We 
have an eye-opening program in the works, however, so do plan to attend!

Cheers from the STHC co-chairs,

Russell Johnson  [rjohnson@library.ucla.edu]
Lisa Mix  [lisa.mix@library.ucsf.edu]



Science, Technology, and Health Care (STHC) Roundtable
Saturday, August 24, 8:00 am - 9:30 am

The STHC meeting will feature presentations about two large, 
innovative, Web-based digitization projects of primary sources in the 
history of medicine and science.  Joan Echtenkamp Klein (University of 
Virginia Health Sciences Library) will describe the _Philip S. Hench 
Walter Reed Yellow Fever Collection_ project 
<http://yellowfever.lib.virginia.edu> and Jennifer Sullivan and Gregory 
Pike will examine the National Library of Medicine's _Profiles in 
Science_ online collections <http://profiles.nlm.nih.gov/>.  Regular 
STHC business will conclude with a Roundtable Roundrobin/STHC Slam, in 
which attendees get 3 minutes apiece to pitch their repositories, 
organizations, projects, products, problems, and ideas.


Program:

"History of Medicine and Science Projects on the Web: Untangling 
Complex Strands to Make Primary Resources Accessible"

   Joan Echtenkamp Klein
   University of Virginia Health Sciences Library
   University of Virginia Health System
   "Two Years and Over 5,000 Documents Later: The Philip S. Hench 
   Walter Reed Yellow Fever Collection Digitization Project"

   Gregory A. Pike and Jennifer Sullivan
   History Associates Incorporated
   [working at] National Library of Medicine
   "Building a Digital Archives: The Makings of Profiles in Science"

This session will discuss two large, innovative digitization projects 
of primary resources in the history of medicine and science.  The 
projects, though undertaken separately by the National Library of 
Medicine and the University of Virginia Health Sciences Library, are 
complementary.  The project participants will talk about the similarity 
and differences of questions and solutions developed while working on 
these two complex, multi-faceted plans, both of which make primary 
resources available to a world-wide audience and enhance research and 
teaching in the history of medicine and biomedical science. 

The two digitization projects, "Profiles in Science" created by the 
National Library of Medicine (NLM) and "The Philip S. Hench Walter Reed 
Yellow Fever Collection" created by the University of Virginia (UVa) 
Health Sciences Library, with funding from the Institute of Museum and 
Library Services, were both undertaken to make archival collections of 
prominent physicians and biomedical scientists available on the Web - 
to use new technologies to bring primary resources to the homes or 
offices of researchers, historians, students, and the general public.  
"Profiles in Science" was launched by NLM in 1998, and features 
multiple archival collections of Nobel Laureates.  "The Philip S. Hench 
Walter Reed Yellow Fever Collection" opened in December 2001, and 
features selections from Philip S. Hench's massive collection on Walter 
Reed, an 1869 graduate of the UVa School of Medicine, and the members 
of the U.S. Army Yellow Fever Commission.  A physician and biomedical 
researcher, Hench coincidentally was awarded a Nobel Prize in 1951.  
The participants in the NLM and UVa projects grappled with a number of 
critical digitization issues.  Both projects sought to present not only 
the original materials in a searchable format, but to provide context 
for the primary documents through exhibit text; endeavored to provide a 
model for the integration of state-of-the-art standards compliant 
information technology and scholarly resources to make unique library 
materials more widely available; and made extensive use of metadata to 
enable researchers to tailor their searches and approach the digitized 
materials to best suit their personal interests and needs.  This 
session addresses how these projects fulfilled their goals.

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