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Saturday, January 31, 2009

Abraham Lincoln Exhibit Coming up at NMHM, exhibit design by Navjeet Singh Chhina

Heres an early rendering of the exhibit. Kathleen took the photo of the the museum floor and I used that as a canvas to map the 3-d design to it, Its good to see what things look like at scale. I used photoshop, illustrator, Indesign, Vectorworks, and Cinema 4-d.

BTS on the new Lincoln exhibit

I've been able to get a few pictures of the in-progress Lincoln exhibit that will open next week at the museum.


This is the existing exhibit, one that's been on display long-term.


















The new cases that have just been delivered, and the backdrop panels that will have different things displayed on them:
















How the exhibit team plans what goes where, and will it fit:
















Navjeet, our immensely creative Exhibits Specialist, moving one of the panels (this is just for show; he was actually critically eyeing the existing set-up from a chair out front, but that doesn't photograph so well):


Friday, January 30, 2009

Historical Collections staffing at the Museum

Alan, our longterm collections manager, is off doing something more exciting for a year. Any queries about historical artifacts like equipment, microscopes, scalpels, wax models and the like should go to Jim Curley who's acting in his stead. Curley can be reached at 202-782-2206 or james.curley@afip.osd.mil

Long Tail idea, continued

I've gone on about this topic in the comments to Tim's post from earlier this week, but here's another example from the Smithsonian in today's Wash Post - "Going to Meet Its Public: Indian Museum Will Put Entire Collection Online," By Jacqueline Trescott, Washington Post Staff Writer, Friday, January 30, 2009; Page C01.

This Museum has a built-in lead - they were moved down to Washington recently (in Museum terms) and I'm sure they had excellent records and photos created at that time. When they set up the Museum, they decided to forego exhibit labels in the cases and instead provided a computer screen in front of the exhibit where you could look up what you were actually looking at (I despised this, because only 1 person at a time could look at an exhibit label and I didn't understand why they didn't just put that on the web back then).

So even with a running start, we read "The online project, part of the museum's regular Web site, will begin with 5,500 items and photographs. The goal is to have all 800,000 objects on the Web site, but it will take at least four years to achieve that. ... The museum has raised $750,000 for the first four years of the project, and Gover said a deadline has not been set for the Fourth Museum completion."

So that long tail takes a while to get long enough to trail off...

Thursday, January 29, 2009

Shhh, we had Flickr access today!

When I got to work this morning I had no network access at all. No email, no shared drives. When the network finally came up I checked out my (work-related, I swear) blogs on Google reader and actually saw pictures! Normally I just get text, and there was Mike's smiling face from Tuesday's post.
Hmmm, I thought. Could it be that we had access to other very bad things that we're normally blocked from? Is the suspense building for you like it was for me? In went www.flickr.com and there it was. Wow. Like a second chance at life. Quick, now, before they glom on to the fact that I'm at a banned place, what can I post? Eight went up before I got back to real work, so take a look.

Tuesday, January 27, 2009

Happy Anniversary, Mike!

Anyone who's read the Annual Report for the Archives (raise your hand if you did; there's a prize for you) will know that 2009 marks Mike's 20th year at the museum. Today we had a mini celebration at the Collections meeting and caught Mike totally off guard. It was worth making those cakes from scratch (beat the butter for 3 minutes and 14 seconds, add 1/4 cup less 1 tablespoon of sugar at a time...) just to see the surprise on his face when he realized they were for him.

So, Mike, I won't say "And 20 more!!!" because I still have to work with you, but congratulations on the first 20 and hang in there for as long as you can.



P.S. That red thing on the cake is, as I said at the meeting, the closest thing Harris Teeter had to a superhero anything. It's a kind of nerf football with a copyright-violation Spiderman pattern to it.

Gretchen


For those in the "business" (a term that hardly describes the work that goes on in places like the museum), the late Gretchen Worden of the Mutter Museum in Philadelphia was the undisputed kahuna.
Gracious, mysterious, witty beyond mere mortals and a true force to be reckoned with, she was the Mutter.

The Mutter just unveiled her portrait. We can only hope to achieve the same in the afterlife.

[Mike here - it's a lithotrite for breaking bladder stones - aarggh! as Charlie Brown might say. Paul says that Chris Quigley has more info on her blog.

Monday, January 26, 2009

The Long Tail, Museums, the Smithsonian, oh my...

There is simply too much awesomeness in this article in today's Washington Post about this past weekend's Smithsonian 2.0 event. Please, read it, and I imagine that for curators working in today's environment, the quote from Anderson in the eleventh paragraph from the end, well, that might prove to be the fodder for watercooler talk, eh? I don't think I agree with Anderson, though. There will always be a place for the expert, especially in museums.

Here's one paragraph though, referring to Wired magazine's Chris Anderson:
"That would be Wired's Anderson. His "long tail" hypothesis has revolutionized how Web entrepreneurs think about their businesses. The basic idea, he explained at the event, was that in the Industrial Age, sales of anything were limited by shelf space. The result was the elevation of a priesthood of curators, editors and gatekeepers whose job it was to try to winnow through everything and offer up what they thought might be the best of the best -- or at least the most likely to sell to the most people. The Web has changed all that..."
I am a huge fan of The Long Tail. Like Good to Great by Jim Collins, it's the sort of book that offers a seachange in how you could consider approaching your work on a daily basis. I think about the long tail all the time in my work in communications. Both books, and their authors, are worth checking out if you've not had a chance to follow these movements (that's what they are, if you think about it) yet.

Now, go read. And let us know if you are reading something interesting!

Coming up at NMHM in Jan, Feb, and Mar

(Updated with an actual title. Sorry about that...)

Coming up at NMHM in the next few months:


How can you stay on top of the latest news and events?
  1. Visit our Events page often.
  2. Subscribe to our print newsletter Flesh & Bones or request a subscription to our new-ish monthly e-newsletter.
  3. Subscribe to this blog (Feedburner offers those options, see the right-side of the blog.)
Hope that helps! See you at the Museum!

Sunday, January 25, 2009

The Museum on Facebook

As Andrea mentioned in the previous post, the Museum now has a Facebook Page and you are invited to join.

I've been on Facebook for some time and its been an interesting experience, maybe better described as a learning experience. As we've thought of additional ways to promote the Museum in this new year, Facebook and other social media platforms always come up. I've done some reading on this - it's not hard to find critical, constructive thinking about the use of social media in museums - and as we explore the medium further, and even explore other platforms possibly in the future, I'll link more often to others who are talking and thinking about these issues.

Dozens, maybe hundreds, of museums (including heavyweights like the Brooklyn Museum of Art and cousins of ours like at the Navy Museum here in DC) have taken to Facebook in recent months in order to engage with the audience that the platform offers. If the research is accurate, there are potential segments of our core audiences that are best reached through platforms like Facebook. These are audiences who don't necessarily subscribe to e-newsletters or respond to appeals through traditional print advertising campaigns. It's not fair to generalize these audiences as simply 'young people' and move on: Facebook audiences do cross generational divides especially as the services grow in popularity. The number of baby-boomer moms joining FB is growing, I think, so that those moms can communicate with their children living in faraway states. (That's just one example I've seen on several occasions with my own circle of FB friends in recent months.)

So, here we are. It's likely we'll make a few missteps as we get used to how to use the Page and its features. But I remain convinced that this is a great direction for us. I hope you will join us.

The page, for now, includes links to two of our newest exhibits, as well as links to the Museum's five major collections. You will see that we take advantage of a Flickr badge to show off the latest images from the Archives' most recent Flickr uploads. And we'll promote new programs there, too, as well as news and notes from around the Museum.

Hopefully this link works: NMHM on Facebook. Obviously, you need to join Facebook to get the full picture. Let me know if that link fails. If you are already on Facebook, simply search for the Museum and look for the official page. Click the button to become a fan and let us know what you think.

It's a work in progress, which will have to be worked on away from work since social media sites like Facebook are blocked at the office. That doesn't diminish our enthusiasm for the project, though.

See you on Facebook.

Saturday, January 24, 2009

NMHM Facebook page

The Museum has a new Facebook page. Search for National Museum of Health and Medicine and become a fan!

Friday, January 23, 2009

White House Physician Talk Set for 2/4/09

Thanks, Suture for a Living, for the link to our upcoming 'Health, Illness and the Presidency' program on Feb. 4th. I'm looking forward to this talk and we're hoping that it's well attended. The speaker worked as White House Physician for three presidents and was at Walter Reed, and we're glad Dr. Mohr was interested in talking about his experiences at the Museum. Are you planning on attending? Let us know in comments! See you there.

Ghoulish ride


Ghoulish ride
Originally uploaded by rasputina2
Another one. I can't contain myself.

Spinal


Spinal
Originally uploaded by rasputina2
I just might ride again if I could have a bike like this.

New malaria book by one of our researchers

One of our researchers, Leo B. Slater, just let us know that his book has been published. That's our photo on the cover, which has been cropped a bit and edited a bit more, and here it is, full size, from one of our Flickr accounts.

Tuesday, January 20, 2009

National Museum of Health & Medicine is CLOSED TODAY

The National Museum of Health & Medicine is CLOSED TODAY because the Walter Reed Center is shut for the Inauguration.

Monday, January 19, 2009

Otis Historical Archives Annual Report part 4 and final

Rhode served on the AFIP's Institutional Review Board and HIPPA committees as well as Museum committees including the Admin group, the collections committee (as did Stocker), and the database committee (as did Stocker). Volunteering to do so, Stocker photographed parts of collections for use in the museum’s newsletter, for exhibit production, and for uploading to the Internet Archive, and has photographed both in-progress and completed exhibits. Montgomery and Strigel worked on a brochure on the museum’s photographs and IMC’s role in scanning them, which is still in draft form.

Gaskins retired in September. He had been part of the Museum staff since 2004, but he was a mainstay of AFIP for years longer than that. He had been with the Institute for seventeen years, joining it from the Federal Records Center in Suitland. Gaskins singlehandedly ran the fifty-year old Medical Illustration Service Library of 3,000 boxes of hundreds of thousands of photographs. The library was the Department of Defense's official medical photograph repository from 1949 on into the 1990s and he inherited all of the responsibility for the Library as staff left and were not replaced. Gaskin's sense of duty and responsibility preserved the Library, through at least two moves, and in spite of disinterest or worse on the part of some. Gaskins joined the Archives due to the Information Manufacturing Corporation scanning project. The initial plan was to do a low-resolution scan of the Library’s photographs and then discard the originals. Fortunately we were able to modify that plan and add the collection to the Museum. Gaskins was an integral part of making possible hundreds of thousands of scans. His knowledge of the collection and willingness to share it has been the only thing that enabled us to make sense of the staggering amount of pictures. Without Tom, the project would not have gotten off the ground. He also worked in the Archives and scanned all of our Civil War photographs. Lauren Clark volunteered in the archives over the summer to see if she was interested in a museum career. She rehoused parts of the Vorwald Collection and added folder headings to the finding aid, as well doing cataloguing and filing trade literature in the GMPI Collection.

Research and historical material, mostly on military medicine, was provided to AFIP, especially the Public Affairs Office and the Departments of Dermatologic Pathology, Telemedicine, Radiologic Pathology, and Soft Tissue Pathology among others. External users included US Army Office of the Surgeon General; US Navy Bureau of Medicine and Surgery; OTSG’s Borden Institute; Bay Pines Veterans Administration Healthcare System; Home Front Communications; Samuel Merritt College (California); Columbia University; US Patent and Trademark Office; The Scientist Magazine; TRICARE Management Activity; Fort Lee (Virginia); Kunhardt Productions; USUHS; Ambo|Anthos Publishers (The Netherlands); Baker-Cederberg Museum and Archives (New York); Medical Museion, University of Copenhagen; George Washington University Law School; National Inventors Hall of Fame (Ohio); Command Surgeon, USSOCOM; NCI Communications; The Burns Archive; Canadian Broadcasting Corp.; Boston University; Wood Library-Museum of Anesthesiology (Illinois); Henry Holt Publishers; Actuality Productions, Inc.; Fuji Television Network, Inc. (Japan); Fairfax County Public Library; Taniwaki & Associates, Inc. (Washington, DC); Oxford Film & Television (England); National Museum of American History; US Army Historian’s Office; Los Angeles Daily News; Historian’s Office, Walter Reed Army Medical Center; The Many-Headed Monster, Live Art Development Agency (England); American Red Cross; National Library and Archives Canada; St Paul's Cemetery; Esras Managing; Steptoe and Johnson LLP (Washington, DC); Institute for the Study of Occupation and Health; National Geographic; ColourFIELD (Germany); Wisconsin Historical Society; Aslan Productions; Tucson Medical Center; NARA; Kingsmen Exhibits Pte Ltd (Singapore); North Carolina Museum of History; James F. Humphries & Assoc. (West Virginia); Rice University; National Building Museum; University of Michigan; Gettysburg National Military Park; Sovereign Pharmaceuticals; Communications Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry (New Zealand); Health Protection Agency, United Kingdom; Compass Point Books; Public Affairs and Content Development, Armed Services Blood Program; CBS Eye Too Productions / Discovery Channel; Mind & Media; Phoenix Controls (Massachusetts); Foundation El Portavoz (Costa Rica); Indiana University; Hiroshima Peace Institute (Japan); Victorian Society at Falls Church; AOTF American Occupational Therapy Foundation; Weider History Group, Inc.; Synvasive Technology, Inc.; Journal AnBlokk (Hungary); International Group for Historic Aircraft Recovery (TIGHAR); Visual Eyes, Inc.; South Windsor Historical Society and Wood Memorial Library; PMA Sciences (Canada); Turn of the Century Electrotherapy Museum (Florida); St. John's Riverside Hospital,/Cochran School of Nursing (New York); University of California – Irvine; Shawnee town, City of Shawnee, Kansas; University of Missouri – Columbia; Veterans Administration Medical Center (Wisconsin); Twofour Digital Ltd. (England); Design Minds, Inc; University of Alberta; University of Manchester; University of Toyama (Japan); Army Historical Foundation; Oxford University; NBM; AUDLM; and the University of Newcastle.

Sharing historical photographs

Boy, those Otis Historical Archives annual report segments are riveting, aren't they? But they're all about attempting to get information out to you, our interested constituency. Here's a good article about the Flickr Commons site, which we may still join, and mentions Wikipedia's Commons site that we'll be looking into now -

Link by Link
Historical Photos in Web Archives Gain Vivid New Lives

By NOAM COHEN
Published: January 19, 2009
Over the last year there have been important new efforts to put these classics online.

Sunday, January 18, 2009

Otis Historical Archives Annual Report part 3

The Archives has a significant presence on the Internet including the Guide to the Collections of the Museum on the museum website which remains the main way researchers begin to use the archives. Stocker has revamped the Guide for the first time since 1998 and has it almost ready to go on the web. Several finding aids were added to the website. Finding aids for the Townsend Collection of aviation pathology records, the Donald Collection of World War 2 hospital ship material, the NMHM Audiovisual Collection, and the General Medical Products Information Collection (GMPI) were loaded onto the Museum’s website. Stocker has reformatted, added material, and edited the Ball Collection of ophthalmologic materials, and it is almost ready to be added to the website. No more archival collections were listed in the Library of Congress' National Union Catalogue of Manuscript Collections (NUCMC); however, finding aids should still be sent to NUCMC in the future for the different audiences it reaches.

In fall 2006, archives staff began adding interesting photographs to Flickr’s website. By late January 2008, approximately 400 photographs had gotten 48,000 views; in January 2009, 683 images had received 107,526 views, an increase of about 155%. This clearly demonstrates the appeal of the photographs held in the Archives; however, WRAMC now blocks access to Flickr so any additional photographs are added by staff from home. The Archives also received an invitation to join the Flickr Commons, a site for displaying the public photo collections of cultural institutions, which would increase viewership into the millions, but this has been waiting Legal Counsel’s review for several months. In the spring, Rhode began A Repository for Bottled Monsters, an unofficial blog for the museum, which has also attracted a worldwide audience. Because WRAMC blocks access to the blog, all posts to it are added by staff from home in their own time.

Books and documents scanned by IMC were uploaded to the free Internet Archive, where they are available for downloading. Titles uploaded included The Armed Forces Institute of Pathology - Its First Century 1862-1962 (1962); A History of the United States Army Medical Museum 1862 to 1917 compiled from the Official Records (1917) by Daniel S. Lamb; the Medical and Surgical History of the War of the Rebellion (six volumes, 1870-1888); the Medical Department of the US Army in the World War (15 volumes, 1923-1929); "The Annual" (Nursing Yearbook) from Walter Reed General Hospital in Washington, DC, and Letterman General Hospital in San Francisco, California (1921-1927); “Taps" Annual (Nursing Yearbook) from Walter Reed General Hospital (1929-1931); An Illustrated Description of First-Class Achromatic Microscopes, Apparatus, Specimens, etc., Miller Brothers (1879); A Catalogue of Surgeons' Instruments, Air and Water Beds, Pillows, and Cushions, Bandages, Trusses, Elastic Stockings, Inhalers, Galvanic Apparatus, and Other Appliances Used by the Medical Profession, Maw and Sons (1866); A Medical Survey of the Bituminous-Coal Industry (1947); The Kennedy Autopsy Report by Pierre Finck of the AFIP; Cantor Lectures: The Microscope (1888) - lectures on the history of the microscope by British collector John Mayall, Jr. excerpted from the Journal of the Society of the Arts, 1885-1888; Decorations and Medals of the United States of America (1943), John Wyeth and Brother broadsheet; Frances Pleasants' photograph album from the Civil War; When You Go Home - take this book with you - a WWI pamphlet directed at US troops about the dangers of venereal disease; Nouveau Appareils a L'usage des Medecins et des Chirurgiens - M.G. Trouvé Medical and surgical instruments from the M.G. Trouvé company, 1872, excerpted from Les Mondes, May 9 and 16, 1872; Nouveau Appareils a L'usage des Medecins et des Chirurgiens - M.G. Trouvé Medical/surgical instruments from the M.G. Trouvé company, Paris, excerpted from Les Mondes, July 15, 1869; Phase Contrast Equipment with the Heine Condenser microscope instruction manual; Instructor's Guide for Casualty Simulation Kit Device, a handbook for casualty simulation in disasters; The Graf-Apsco Company, 1943 catalog: a catalog of microscopes, dissecting instruments, and related medical and laboratory equipment; The Graf-Apsco Company 1946 catalog: a catalog of microscopes, dissecting instruments, and related medical and laboratory equipment; Kolff-Brigham Artificial Kidney (ca. 1950s) manual; Variable Axis Total Knee Surgical Techniques (ca. 1977) advertising booklets; Gillette Receipts (187?): a handwritten "receipt" (recipe) book from the late 19th century, of mostly pharmaceutical remedies, including those for asthma, cough, gangrene, "the itch," cholera, and bilious colic, but also for lucifer matches and liquid blacking.

Saturday, January 17, 2009

Anatomy of the Orbit

Two more illustrations from the Ball Collection, from Agatz's "Atlas zur chirurgischen Anatomie und Operationslehre," 1860. These are real beauties when viewed in a larger size.

Acc. 18938
















And Acc. 18938-2