Laurie Rizzo

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The Horace G. Richards papers at Academy of Natural Sciences of Philadelphia

Saturday, June 19th, 2010

I recently completed processing the Horace G. Richards papers at the Academy of Natural Sciences, my last collection here for the PACSCL project! Richards was Chair of the Geology and Paleontology Department at the Academy from 1960 to 1972, although he worked here from 1937 till his death in 1984. He also taught courses at the University of Pennsylvania and was a Research Associate at the Lamont-Doherty Geological Observatory of Columbia University. He frequently was a guest lecturer at various institutions. He did several radio interviews, presented papers, wrote articles, compiled comprehensive bibliographies and performed research that took him all over the world!

His papers were relatively in order. At the start, the materials were mostly grouped into series, but series or subseries were not necessarily always identified or arranged. At pre-processing, the collection measured 47 linear feet and at post-processing 41 linear feet. The arrangement of the correspondence took the most time, as there were seven preexisting subseries. The preexisting divisions were various spans of time, sometimes five years, sometimes full decades. Although the correspondence for each time had been pulled out alphabetically, the dates often overlapped, were not in order and were often incorrectly labeled on the folders.

Richards’ main area of expertise was the Quaternary Period, which is the past 1.8 million years. He studied invertebrate fossils, geologic formations and the changing shoreline of coastal plains, primarily the Atlantic coastal plain from Long Island to Florida. He started a project called the Atlantic Coastal Plain Project (ACPP), in which he studied deep water wells and oil wells along the Atlantic coast. As part of his work, he wrote a Bibliography of the Geology of the Atlantic Coastal Plains. He was also actively involved with International Union of Quaternary Research (INQUA), a society devoted to studying environmental and climate change. As I surveyed the materials of the ACPP and INQUA, which were in large boxes together, I discovered that he also worked on an Annotated Bibliography of Quaternary Shorelines, which was unrelated to ACPP and INQUA. Once identified, I created a series for the additional material.

Richards’ papers have an extensive amount of visual materials: photographs, negatives, lantern slides, scrapbooks and photo albums, but most especially slides! The slides are pictures from his expeditions and field work which led him to travel all around the world. The slides are housed in neat looking slide boxes, however, they are not archival. Sadly, due to minimal processing, I was not able to rehouse the slides. I was able to create a usable intellectual order and organized the existing boxes into a more convenient physical order.

Among the many amazing aspects of working at the Academy (namely head archivist, Clare Flemming), we have been lucky to be able to consult with subject specialists as needed. For example, while processing this collection I came across a few negatives of unidentified insects. Although I knew I could just write “unidentified insect,” I also knew an Academy entomologist, Greg Cowper, who would be able to and did come by to tell me what the negatives were of. What I found really neat was: although 8 of the negatives looked essentially exactly the same to me, Greg was able to identify that the images were of various species of grasshoppers! So with the exception of two of the negatives, they were of different insects!

While working on the scope and content note, I had the privilege to speak with Invertebrate Paleontologist, John Sime, who kindly looked over the collection and discussed with me the potential research value of the materials. It was amazing to hear about how salient Richards’ work still is today. The Quaternary period and especially Richards work on the changing shorelines and climate change is of special interest. Some raw data exists in the collection related to Richards’ work with the ACPP. The extensive images from his expeditions depict shorelines all over the world throughout the 1930s through the 1970s, and these images could provide evidence of past shorelines and geologic formations. Richards’ papers may also help catalog some of the specimens of invertebrate fossils that he collected for the Academy.

It was also interesting to discover how remarkable a figure Richards is. Richards kept thorough scrapbooks, which chronicle his career and activities at the Academy, as well as notable happenings of his colleagues and students. I feel very fortunate to have had the opportunity to get to know him through his papers and make them available to researchers.

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Academy President’s Office records and Provenance

Wednesday, June 16th, 2010

While at the Academy of Natural Sciences, we processed the Academy’s President’s Office records. On this collection, we got to work for a week with our Project Archivist, Courtney, who is always a pleasure to have around. It was especially nice to have additional assistance and her expertise on such a complicated and large collection. The collection comprised nine different accessions with little to no information regarding the transfers. There were 140 linear feet of boxes (or 240 containers), most with several sets of overlapping dates and various numerical schemes written on the boxes. Which numbers meant something? Which numbers should we go by? Well, as it turned out, all of the numbers on the the boxes meant something! But the numbers weren’t enough.

Although the size of the collection was slightly daunting, it seemed logical at first that the creation years of the documents would most likely correspond to the President in office at that time. Unfortunately, as we quickly discovered, not all of the materials were created by the President or his office. We realized that the provenance of the collection was not clear cut and that other materials were mixed in. Determining provenance was a little tricky at first as many of the employees shared a secretary or had secretaries that worked in a similar fashion. After going through each box, analyzing who created the materials and then determining what that person did at the Academy, we were able to determine that 87 boxes or 43 linear feet of the collection were actually created by the Managing Director, not the President. We also learned that there was a Managing Director collection at the repository. When we took a look at the Managing Director records, we noticed that the two sets of materials filled in gaps and really did belong together. There was still 93 linear feet worth of materials to work with in the President’s Office records, spanning from 1874 to 2003, with a bulk of the materials created between 1939 and 1993.

The larger numbers on the boxes were simply numbering each box throughout the entire collection, but the boxes weren’t necessarily in a particular order. The dates written on the masking tape often indicated a set of materials that went together and the smaller written date range reflected the actual dates of the material within the boxes. Of course, provenance was the single most important factor in determining how this collection needed to be arranged and what materials belonged together. After that, we were able to see what, if any, original order existed within each set of records. This collection was a prime example of why accessioning is so important. All and all, once the creator of each set of records became clear, the arrangement came together fairly well.

The next challenge was writing the historical note. The collection contained the papers of four Academy Presidents and one interim President, as well as the papers of several employees from various departments within the Academy, such as the treasurer, the comptroller, the director of eduction and others. What made writing a cohesive history so difficult was that the Presidents, whose papers are in the collection, did not always succeed one another, and the additional staff members, whose papers are in the collection, were not necessarily working with those Presidents. At first I wrote a chronological history, including the names and terms of service of all the Academy’s Presidents, but only highlighting those represented in the collection. Following Courtney’s suggestion to first discuss the history of the Presidents and follow with the additional staff, I realized that if I created a separate note within the finding aid listing each President and their term of service, I could tighten up the prose of the collection-level history, making it clearer and more specific.

These institutional records will be extremely useful to researchers interested in the history of the Academy of Natural Sciences, the activities of the Academy President and various projects undertaken during the dates of coverage.

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The J. Percy Moore papers

Thursday, April 1st, 2010

Dr. Moore was a professor of Zoology at the University of Pennsylvania. His involvement with the Academy of Natural Sciences of Philadelphia began as a young man. Dr. Moore wrote an amusing account about how he came to be associated with the Academy. Upon entering the Central High School in Philadelphia ". . .(which was really a Junior College granting the A.B. degree), Dr. Jacob Holt, Prof. of Natural History and Physiology, introduced me to Dr. [Edward James] Nolan, the Secretary and Librarian [of the Academy], and I was given the privilege of using the library and a free card of admission to the museum. From that time I attended the Tuesday evening meetings of the Academy (as an invited visitor). These meetings were held at the head of the long reading room of the Library. Here was a raised platform and a well-lighted counter at its front. Behind this were three ornate chancellor chairs, the largest one in the center occupied by President Leidy and the smaller but similar ones on each side by the General Secretary Nolan and Corresponding Secretary [Edward Drinker] Cope. We boys used to designate the three as the Father, the Son and the Holy Terror."

At the Academy Dr. Moore served several positions there throughout his lifetime, Assistant Curator, Corresponding Secretary, Trustee, Library Committee, Publications Committee, the Council, Research Fellow and much more. Dr. Moore is best known in his lifetime for being the world authority on Leeches! That’s right, Leeches!

I had never really thought much, or anything for that matter, about leeches. But I found myself, the night before I began work on the collection, reading about Leeches. They are quite amazing creatures. I learned that there are 650 species of Leech. Later I discovered that Dr. Moore had named 6 genera, 229 species, 5 subspecies and 4 varieties of polychaetous annelids (the classification that includes ragworms, earthworms and leeches).

Initially, Dr. Moore’s papers were estimated by the PACSCL survey as being approximately 15.5 linear feet, however, upon inspection during the first day it actually measured 18 linear feet pre-processing. At post-processing the collection measured 23 linear feet! This was my first experience with the collection growing upon processing.

The collection dated from 1847 to 1963 and essentially had no original order. Only one linear foot had an order, it was of correspondence and was arranged alphabetically. However, it did not comprehensively include all of the correspondence in the collection. But this was among the least of my worries. Out of the 18 pre-processing linear footage, 9 contained materials lying stacked on top of each other mostly in envelopes, and sometimes in boxes within boxes. I couldn’t process the contents with the materials stacked and inside old manila envelopes. Keeping the original order of the materials, in case there was one, I took out the bundle of papers from the envelope and placed both the contents and the envelope in an acid free folder, vertically in an acid free box. After all the materials were transferred I could discern what the contents were and if there was an original order. . . there was not.

One bundle of papers which was wrapped in an old brown paper bag, was in German and French, and predated Dr. Moore’s birth by ten to twenty years. The papers were folded and in envelopes, and some were tied up with string. Upon closer inspection I could make out a few key words, "amphibian," "fish," "skeleton," "Wien" (German for Vienna), and the repetitive appearance of the name “Professor J. Hyrth” sometimes spelled, “Hirth”. Some documents I could tell were financial in nature and others I could tell were official transportation documents. Many were letters to Professor Hyrth. I wondered why Dr. Moore would have these papers? What exactly were they? How did Dr. Moore get them? And who was Professor Hyrth? Tucked inside papers, I came across a letter to Dr. Moore stating his inheritance of papers and some other materials from Dr. Cope, which was a name I recognized. Edward Drinker Cope, was a scientist at the Academy as well as the Corresponding Secretary. While this still didn’t answer all of my questions, it did provide me with the lead I needed to piece it all together. A quick search revealed that what I had thought was the letter "h" at the end of "Hyrth" was actually an "l", Hyrtl. I learned that Professor Joseph Hyrtl was a renowned Austrian Anatomist who collected fish skeletons, which were purchased by Dr. Cope for a paper he wrote in 1871. Upon Cope’s death in 1898 those papers were bequeathed to Dr. Moore, and the mystery of the foreign language documents about fish skeletons was solved!

Another interesting set of papers were correspondence about writing a biography on Joseph Leidy, who Dr. Moore first met when he was eleven and attended Leidy’s lectures on Zoology at the Wagner Free Institute of Science. The correspondence shows that completing Leidy’s biography was proving a difficult task, as every person who picked up the task died before completion.

Most of Dr. Moore’s papers were sketches and notes about various annelid specimens. He would write on the tiniest scraps of paper and on the back of anything, even his own work. There was one manuscript that had a draft of a paper on one side and a completely different paper drafted on the other side! The collection included lantern slides and 16mm film reels from his expedition to India in 1930-1931. There were also lots of photographs of leeches.

If you can’t tell, I absolutely loved this collection. It was wonderful to work on it. Examining the collection post-processing, there is a marked difference in access and usefulness, however, with minimal processing I was not able to do everything that I would have liked to do. For example, the many photographs of leech specimens are all well labeled with dates and species names. Time did not permit me to label each photographic envelope, nor put the photographs into an order (the photographs are only processed to the series level). This collection deserves further processing.

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Welcome to the Academy of Natural Sciences

Monday, March 1st, 2010

Eric and I have completed our first few weeks at the Academy of Natural Sciences of Philadelphia, where we will be processing nine collections over the next few months. The head Archivist is Clare Flemming whose warmth, professionalism and enthusiasm for the project has made us feel welcome and comfortable.

The first collection we processed here at the Academy was the Board of Trustees records. The Academy, founded in 1812, had an Academic Council made up of staff members who managed the financial and daily operational activities. As the institution grew, the council decided to divide its responsibilities by creating a Board of Trustees who would be made up of outside members. The collection dates from the establishment of the Board in 1925 through 1993, with a bulk of the materials covering the 1970s and 1980s.

The collection had a significant amount of original order and the remainder had a fairly clear intellectual order. The most challenging series in the collection was the “Working files of the President’s Office.” Through these papers, we were able to establish that on December 16, 1985 the Academy’s president, Thomas Peter Bennett announced his resignation due to taking another position in Florida, where he grew up and much of his family still lived. He was very torn as he had been President of the Academy since 1976. It was clear he had been speaking with the Board about a need for his replacement much earlier. A search committee was formed several months prior to the formal announcement. Bennett was so committed to the Academy, he helped in the search by remaining available to the endeavor for an entire year. After Bennett left he gave the Trustees his working files. I learned a lot about the presidential search from these records, but the portion of the records pertaining to the search was just a fraction of the series; perhaps one third of the series. The other two thirds of the records in the series covered a variety of different topics and had no original order which made the series challenging and time consuming.

Since we will be processing several collections here, I was glad we began with this one. It enabled me to gain familiarity with the organization, structure and history of the Academy. The information I learned from these records will be helpful in the processing the proceeding collections.

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Evening College Materials on Exhibit

Wednesday, January 27th, 2010

While processing the Evening College records, I was aware that Drexel University Archives was putting together an exhibition in honor of Veterans Day, I came across two folders worth of materials related to students of the Evening School who fought in World War II. I informed the Head Archivist about the materials and several items from the collection did in fact become part of the exhibition.

In 1941, Dean Laura Campbell organized a memorial service in honor of the students who lost their lives in the war. The memorial service program, a newspaper article about the service and a few of the letters from parents to Dean Campbell stating if they could attend or not, and if so how many tickets they required are included.

An online version of the exhibition titled, “Scholars Who Served: A History of Drexel’s Veterans” is now available!

The materials from the Evening College records can be seen in the World War II section or in a list format following this link.

It was wonderful to see how our work with minimal processing made a collection immediately useful for the archives and its patrons.

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Go to the Wagner- You’ll Be Glad You Did!

Thursday, January 21st, 2010

Written by Eric Rosenzweig and Laurie Rizzo.

Next time you get off the Broad Street line at the Cecil B. Moore stop, walk up a block to Montgomery Avenue and go see the Wagner Free Institute of Science.

The Wagner Free Institute of Science is a unique and amazing place. Established in 1865 by William Wagner (1796-1885), who, for ten years prior, was holding classes and lectures out of his own home. He built the Institute at its current location.

The Wagner Free Institute of Science is a natural history museum and educational institution that is dedicated to providing free public education in the sciences, and is the oldest program of that kind in the United States. The Institute includes an exhibit gallery, classrooms, and a library.

The Natural History Museum on the third floor was organized according to Darwin’s evolutionary theory by Joseph Leidy, a renowned scientist, who became director of the academic programs of the Wagner Free Institute of Science after Wagner’s death. The Leidy’s display remains virtually untouched in the Museum to this day. The Institute very much feels like a museum within a museum.

The collections Eric and I worked on at the Wagner’s Library and Archives were institutional and mainly financial documents. Financial materials from the late 19th and early 20th century are certainly aesthetically more interesting to look at than contemporary financial records. The most challenging part was understanding the terminology associated with the documents. For example, often terms like voucher and canceled check were used interchangeably to describe the same material, other times the materials were clearly different. The confusion with terminology may have been a result from the collection being previously processed.

Through processing the collections, we learned that Wagner owned a large portion of land surrounding the Institute. He built and purchased buildings that he rented as apartments or stores as revenue for the Institute. Although the Institute no longer owns these properties, they were instrumental to its founding and development. Things certainly have changed, what once was a series of late 19th century row houses is now a modern police station. Some houses in the area appear to have been built during the same era as the buildings Wagner rented out, giving us a sense of how things might have looked during his time.

I highly recommend taking a trip to the Wagner Free Institute of Science, especially if you have an interest in the natural sciences or the history of science. It is a beautiful and fascinating place.

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Librarians have a sense of humor!

Wednesday, January 13th, 2010

The final collection Eric and I processed at Drexel was the Library records. The collection was the largest we have processed so far (approximately 40 linear feet).

The MPLP processing went well. To begin, we reevaluated our processing plan and established a different set of series than originally intended. We also had to decide what to do with a third of the collection that was previously processed at the item level, but not in an intellectual order. It took some time to decode the collection, but once we had a good plan of action, the documents all fell into place. It was fun having the opportunity to read through the collection. Librarians, so I have found, have a wonderful sense of humor.

Some fun finds were:

A leather bound gold gilded book from the dedication of the W.W. Hagerty Library in October 1983. In an acquisitions policy binder, there was a memo that read:

“Whoever finds this book: Well, this thing is so out of date that it is past the point of being laughable, therefore, we have decided to put it out of its misery by shelving it up here. And here it stayed until you picked it up, you dummy!!! Disregard anything and everything written in this book. The only reason we have not given it the heave-out is the basic librarian-like urge to preserve and protect all defenseless books.”

There were several issues of what must have been an internal newsletter titled, “The Call Number,” that contained a series of humorous articles. One folder contained several buttons with library related slogans on them — one read: “Librarians get paid weakly.” Also, one of the library directors, Richard L. Snyder, made his Annual Reports to the President enjoyable by inserting humorous chapter headings, amusing anecdotes, playful commentary, and laughable stories. All of which demonstrated his main points of the report, in what only must have been considered a refreshing change of pace for the president of the university after reading one dry annual report after another. Some of the directors were much more formal, stating: “I hereby take the pleasure in presenting the (insert year) annual report of the Drexel Institute of Technology Library.”

The Library records were both challenging and fun to process and Drexel University has been a wonderful repository to work at. We would like to thank both the Drexel University College of Medicine Archives and the Drexel University Archives and Special Collections for hosting us. Now we’re off to the next archive . . . The Wagner Free Institute of Science!

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Me and Roy

Monday, January 4th, 2010

In twenty hours, Eric and I processed the College of Engineering records (15 linear feet) at Drexel University. Almost half the collection was in original order, so a majority of our time was spent becoming acquainted with the collection. When doing minimal processing, original order has both its advantages as well as its disadvantages. It certainly makes arranging the collection easier, less time consuming, and more authentic, however, it puts you at a disadvantage when describing. We were lucky that the arrangement didn’t take us terribly long to do, which gave us more time to spend familiarizing ourselves with the contents of the collection. Even with the extra time, we couldn’t open every folder or look at every document — I would have liked to.

Somehow, in a just a short time, I was on a first name basis with LeRoy A. Brothers, who served as Dean of the College of Engineering from 1958 to 1969. Approximately a third of the collection was his files, with his original order and folder titles, and a bulk of the entire collection was created during his administration. I was thoroughly impressed by Dean Brothers, even though his choice of folder titles sometimes perplexed me and other members of the processing team. His efforts working with the faculty and outside business community to constantly improve the curriculum demonstrated a high level of devotion to the students, their education, and the community at large.

Conveniently for me he kept carbon copies of his responses stapled to the letters he was responding to, so it was easy to follow chains of events. I did eventually come across a handwritten note of his, and noticed why he typed most of his letters, even his personal correspondence. Needless to say, his handwriting was not the best (neither is mine, so we have that in common).

There was one series of letters that I found particularly touching. When Brothers’ predecessor, Dean Harry L. Bowman, died it was several years after his retirement. The student newspaper, the Triangle, published a short obituary. In response, Brothers wrote a letter to the editor as a tribute to his colleague, mentor and friend. Brothers states that he wrote it because after seeing the brief front page story, it occurred to him that perhaps many were unaware of the contributions of Dean Bowman to Drexel and goes on to outline Bowman’s impressive career. Brothers writes that his own relationship with Bowman was a unique one; “I have often thought that I had all of the advantages of being his son without the disadvantages that sometimes go with the relationship between father and son.” There are letters from President James Creese, Bowman’s daughter, and other faculty thanking Brothers for writing the tribute. Creese writes, “Aren’t we lucky to have been his friends and worked with him?” President James Creese, President William Hagerty, and faculty members Larry Mains, Jack Kolb and Brothers were all pallbearers.

Perhaps because I have never worked someplace for more than a few years, it surprised me that someone’s pallbearers would be their co-workers. After thinking about it, I realized that these people worked together for twenty, thirty years and were at this time more than colleagues, these people cared deeply about each other, they were friends, confidants.

Although this particular series of letters are not characteristic of the entire collection, which contains mostly professional and academic correspondence, these letters gave me a different perspective on the College of Engineering. It was interesting to see another side of these gentlemen and it gave me a sense of the connection between the individuals as I read their correspondence and annual reports. It exposed a personal side of these professionals.

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I’m Dreaming of Evening College records!

Wednesday, November 18th, 2009

Some people talk in their sleep, others sleep walk, I’ve been “sleep processing.” In my waking hours I didn’t feel like I was obsessing about the collection, but as soon as I closed my eyes I was surrounded by 36+ record carton boxes and I was looking through files and files of Evening College materials at Drexel University. “Who made this banner?”, “Why did the Drexel Wives Club use this gigantic background for this tiny pin?”, “How do you pronounce Gwiazda?”.

In real life, processing the Evening College records with Eric has been a great experience. While becoming familiar with the collection we uncovered many significant events in the program’s history.

The Evening College is one of Drexel University’s original programs and still exists today. The program went through several changes as it progressed from simply offering coursework at night, to offering vocational certificates, then diplomas and through much effort the program became accredited to award bachelors degrees in 1950. The alumni wanted the courses to either be transferable towards a degree or become an official degree program. The faculty and alumni worked very hard to make this a reality. The Evening College administration put a lot of effort in easing the transition which was the most difficult for previous graduates.

One piece of interesting ephemera was a twenty year long history of the career of Howard W. Benfield who was head of student activities. Benfield’s written account covers the Evening College history from 1950 through 1970, which is when a bulk of the materials within the collection were created. Benfield also provides detailed information about the Evening College’s active student life, of which he oversaw and his experience as a counselor during the significant transition from a diploma school to awarding degrees.

Among the neat finds was a large Banner for the Evening School, which Drexel tradition leads me to believe hung in the Main Building as part of the “Banner Drop” ceremonies; the official announcement of the school colors on May 20, 1937 on a note card with swatches; and a letter from Mr. Rogers Neighborhood expressing that Mr. Rogers would not be able to go to the Evening College’s Christmas party in 1977, but perhaps Mr. McFeely or the Purple Panda might be able to attend.

Because of this project, the collection was immediately accessible and useful for the Drexel University Archives. Two folders of news clippings included information about Evening College students who fought in World War II. Among the news clippings was a program for a memorial service held by Drexel, news clippings about the memorial service and several letters addressed to Dean Campbell from the families of those being honored. The correspondence expressed appreciation to Dean Campbell for organizing the Memorial Service and how many tickets they would like. One letter stated that their son was very proud to be a student at Drexel. A few of these letters, the service program and the newspaper clipping were included in a recent exhibition in honor of Veterans Day.

I think the materials that interested me the most and slowly solidified my waking life obsession with the collection were the various materials related to the 1956 Tidewater Granary explosion that destroyed the Student Union Building. The explosion occurred at 8:03 p.m. while Evening College courses were in session. 1800 students and 78 faculty were evacuated from the building, although there were several injuries sustained by Drexel affiliates, none were serious. However, the loss of the building meant the college needed a new place for student activities and classes. The Student Union Building was owned by the Day College and access for the Evening College was rather limited. The Evening College actively participated in the planning of the new building. In 1962 the Drexel Activities Center opened and was later renamed the Creese Student Center. When the Drexel Activities Center was completed the Evening students were given space for the Evening College’s Student Council and for the Evening College student newsletter publication Drexel Evening Dragon.

It was amazing to see the development of the collection from an unknown pile of boxes to an organized series of materials that tell a story. The collection is a great addition to preserving the institutional memory of Drexel University.

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Week One of Processing

Wednesday, November 4th, 2009

This past week I worked on two collections for Drexel University College of Medicine! The first one was a collection of scrapbooks by a man named Thomas Lindsley Bradford. Bradford was a homeopathic doctor who served as librarian at the Hahnemann College from 1894 until his death in 1918. The collection consisted of 36 bound volumes of his scrapbooks of biographical information about homeopathic physicians, with entries arranged alphabetically. Although the years have worn many bindings, torn some casings and the paper is wood pulp paper of the early 20th century (Very Brittle!!), the contents of the volumes are actually in excellent condition. On the title page of the volumes Bradford wrote, “They (the volumes) represent much labor, but it has been a labor of love.”

It is clear from leafing through the volumes the great care he took in assembling them. Since the volumes were already in an intelligent order there was no arranging for me to do, description and creating the finding aid was the bulk of my work. For Bradford’s biography, he included an entry on himself in the scrapbooks. His entry had several magazine clippings of biographies about him. There were several photographs, one from his graduation in 1869,

and then several portraits throughout the years and some candids of him outdoors. There was a photograph of his office and other ephemera -including his wedding announcement and change of office location cards. Upon his death, someone kindly included his obituary in the scrapbook, signed and dated the entry.

The second collection was partially processed when I started and was relatively small. Dr. Bertha Van Hoosen was a notable obstetrician and gynecologist, as well as a surgeon. She was active in the creation of the American Medical Women’s Association and was the association’s first President. She also developed a new surgical procedure for appendectomies and wrote an autobiography called “Petticoat Surgeon.” The collection is mostly her correspondence from missionaries, other physicians about the American Medical Association and later the American Women’s Medical Association and the funding of a new Medical Women’s Library. The papers also included many images, however, they were all medical related, so I will not show them here.

While Bradford’s collection was an excellent candidate for minimal processing, I think the Van Hoosen collection would have benefited from a more traditional processing plan. Regardless, these two collections which have valuable information for those interested in either general biographical information about homeopathic physicians or about women in medicine are now available to researchers, whereas these two great collections were previously inaccessible.