“With Evolving Technology, Museum Digitizes Collection
(Click on a photo to see larger image)
For more than two years, the National Museum of Health and Medicine has been engaged in a collaborative project with Information Manufacturing Corporation (IMC) to digitize and offer electronic access to its Medical Illustration Service (MIS) Library.
The MIS Library is one of the museum’s largest collections, comprised of more than 2,000 boxes of medical illustrations and photographs and is unparalleled in its scope.
The Library became the Department of Defense’s medical photograph library beginning in the late 1940s. It was transferred to the museum in late 2004 and now houses millions of photographs from World War II through the 1990s, representing diseases and their effects on humans and animals. Included in the collection are rare illnesses such as smallpox and the Asian flu. Photographs from major wars show the evolution of military medicine, as well as the human cost of war.
The digitization of the MIS Library is being supervised by the museum’s chief archivist Michael Rhode, and the Library’s chief, Tom Gaskins, in cooperation with IMC’s Health Services Sector program manager Liz Dennison and team leader Donna Rose. This project is a federally funded program.
Each historical illustration or photograph is digitally photographed to generate high-resolution images that are then integrated with expert curatorial data for searching and viewing by researchers and the general public.
 | Mohammedan Feast of Ide. “After the gathering,
close-up.” World War II, 20th General Hospital.
This image was one of the photographs digitized
from the Museum and Medical Arts Service (MAMAS)
in 2005.
| More than 272,000 images have been scanned, catalogued and indexed by the contract’s assistant archivists and technicians.
Digitizing the museum’s collection increases access to this special collection while preserving its contents. Artifacts not in digital form, scholars and archivists say, are in danger of disappearing from the collective cultural memory.
However, many archival collections in the midst of digitizing also face additional challenges, including project funding, staffing and time restrictions.
“With our museum, the collections are unique and different from each other, and within themselves,” said assistant archivist Kathleen Stocker. “Archivists and inventory technicians working on these collections need to be nimble and adaptable to change.”
 | Casts are applied to a patient from the 163rd Infantry,
a casualty from a Japanese landmine explosion.
Operating room is at the 8th Portable Surgical
Hospital during World War II. Albee type orthopedic
table was made by Technician 3rd Class Rudolph Henkel
(right foreground), a surgical technician from Baltimore, Md.,
out of Japanese pipe and ammunition rods, one piece from
a stove pump, one piece from windshield of a Jeep. This
image was one of the photographs digitized from the Museum
and Medical Arts Service (MAMAS) in 2005.
| Beginning in 2005, three major groups of photographs were digitized: the Museum and Medical Arts Service (MAMAS) photographs taken by museum staff during WWII in Europe and Asia, images from the Armed Forces Institute of Pathology’s publication “Atlas of Tropical and Extraordinary Diseases,” and historical portraits along with a run of general photographs dating from 1985-1986.
In 2006, the scanning included 200,000 images dating from U.S. involvement in World War I in 1917 including other military medical photographs from the Civil War, World War I, the Spanish-American War, the Korean War, the Vietnam War and the Russo-Japanese War. Medical histories published by the U.S. government on the Civil War (six volumes of “The Medical & Surgical History of the War of the Rebellion”), World War I (15 volumes of “The Army Medical Department in the World War,” and the Spanish-American War (“The Use of the Roentgen Ray in the Late War with Spain”) were digitized.
One of the largest collections of embryological material in the United States was also digitized as the museum’s collections are a primary source for centralized research in developmental anatomy. Digital imaging of collections such as the Arey-Dapeña slides and the Carnegie Collection of Embryology will aid in the reconstruction of embryo development models.
The Arey-Dapeña Pediatric Collection is a set of more than 7,000 lantern slides representing a wide variety of pathologies, demonstrating both anatomical gross and histological images.
The Carnegie Collection of Embryology focuses primarily on normal embryologic development in the first eight weeks of life. Collateral materials include photographs, plaster and acetate models, reprints, and curatorial information which will be made available for research and education. Because of the limited lifespan of so many of the artifacts (such as the acetate models, consisting of drawings of embryos on layers of transparent plastic, which can degrade over time) the digitization process is imperative if the collections are to be preserved for future use.
In 2007, scanning continued with the digitization of several book collections:
“Autopsy of President Kennedy” (including the Warren Commission Report); Cantor lectures from the Journal of the Society of Arts, Volume 34; “Catalogue of the Medical and Microscopical Section of the United States Army Medical Museum”; “Catalogue of the Surgical Section of the United States Army Medical Museum”; the Blumberg Collection; “History of the U.S. Army Medical Museum;” “1st Class Achromatic Microscopes”; “United States Army in the World War”; and “Meeting of the American Academy of Forensic Sciences.”
In 2008, 350,000 images will be scanned and includes museum object accession files, New Contributed Photographs, the Public Affairs Office photos for the Armed Forces Institute of Pathology and images from the Army Medical Museum Collection. It is also planned to scan Steggerda, a collection of anthropometric records collected by the Carnegie Institution anthropologist Morris Steggerda that includes photographs, measurements, hair samples, palm prints and dental records of American Indians, Jamaicans, Tuskeegee University students and white Americans.
The archives databases are open to the public for research by appointment only, Monday – Friday, 9 a.m. – 4 p.m. Appointments can be made by contacting the archivist at (202) 782-2212.
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