Tracking historical material...

[Tom Munnecke]

I'm trying to figure out what information on the early days of MDC and
MUG is stored where.

I know that Valerie Powell has collected some material that resides at
RMU, but I haven't been able to reach her. Does anyone know where
this material is, or how to access it? Or how to reach her?

I've also talked to Clayton Curtis about IHS/VA stuff, and he's
promised to rumage around his boxes.

I've checked up on some of my oral history videos that I posted to
YouTube, only to find that my carefully prepared HD quality videos are
being downgraded from 1080P to 240P resolution... apparently they
throw away the higher res material after it hasn't been viewed over
time.

I also discovered that the Internet Archive doesn't really have a
search capability. You have to know the exact URL of what you are
looking for to retrieve it, unless it is in some curated collection.
I'm even having trouble finding my own material.

While Ed deMoel has a great collection of material, it is now behind
an IP address that is unlikely to have long-term access.

David Whitten has much of my material stored at his home.

The bottom line to all this is that our historical documents are
scattered about in hard-to-reach places that are unlikely to have long
term, permanent access.

Ross Travis (from this list) and I have been talking about the
situation, and he introduced me to archivist Robyn Rogers of the VA's
History office https://www.va.gov/HISTORY/VA_History_Team/index.asp
Robyn is a professional archivist and knows how to handle these
things. And the VA History office is certainly more likely to be
around in the future than any of the other storage attempts we've been
talking about.

One issue is that VA would only be interested in archiving material
that is relevant to the VA. Which leaves us with a separate problem
for material that is not accepted by them.

In any case, I think it's critical that we get this information into a
permanently accessible format.

Happy to hear anyone's suggestions.

Tom

[Valerie J H Powell]

Dear Tom,

I now reside at a senior residence (age 83).

Postal address is:

Valerie Powell

2960 Bethel Church Rd., Room 301

Bethel Park, PA  15102-1680

Best wishes,

Valerie

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Valerie J H Powell RT(R) retired, MS, PhD
University Professor Emerita, Computer & Information Systems
Project on Clinical Data Integration (CDI)
Robert Morris University
6001 University Boulevard
Moon Township, PA 15108-1189 USA 

[Wolfgang Giere]

You brought the problem to the point: "it's critical that we get this information into a
permanently accessible format."

What about NLM? Do they have any activity that could support us? Has anybody contacts? (I'm not speaking of my Mumps Memorabilia collevtion, but of documents, oral history and the like.)

Wolfgang


-----Original-Nachricht-----
Betreff: [Hardhats] Tracking historical material...
Datum: 2022-01-06T17:54:08+0100
Von: "Tom Munnecke" <munn...@gmail.com>
An: "hardhats" <Hard...@googlegroups.com>



[Wolfgang Giere]

Hi, Valerie,  nice to hear from you!

 

Wolfgang

 

 

 

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Datum: 2022-01-06T19:18:25+0100

Von: "'Valerie J H Powell' via Hardhats" <hard...@googlegroups.com>

An: "hard...@googlegroups.com" <hard...@googlegroups.com>

 

 

 

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[K.S. Bhaskar]

Perhaps the appropriate place for the material is the Library of Congress? The materials would certainly fit with its mission (https://www.loc.gov/aba/about/).

Regards

– Bhaskar

[ivaldes]

Hey Valerie, My 1922 Model T Touring turns 100 this year. See attached. You are a spring chicken! 

[Ed de Moel]

Hi Tom,

I'll be happy to share any documents that I have in digital form.
When a permanent destination is known, contact me at "demoel at jacquardsystems dot com" and we can arrange copying the documents over.

Regards,

Ed 

[Travis Ross]

Hi everyone,

Thanks Tom for working so hard to coordinate this and thank you to everyone else for your interest. 

I think the suggestions for other/additional repositories are useful. NLM is an especially good idea. At the moment, the VA archivist, Robyn Rodgers—an experienced professional in a new position, in a new office, so there's a lot of well-directed energy there—is willing to take the lead on figuring how to proceed. VA probably won't be able to keep everything, but I think Robyn and I can provide a central coordination to create a comprehensive plan for preserving this important historical material in the minimum number of archives/special collections as possible. 

To get started, we've got to figure out who has what, how much, and in what formats. 

In the meantime, I can reach out to the chief historian at NLM. I've talked to him about this history before and he's interested. He also works closely with the head of informatics at NLM, too, so I think we can hope for some good coordination.

Best,

Travis

[Travis Ross]

Hi everyone,

I wanted to offer a quick update. The VA archivist is in the process of acquiring Henry Heffernan's papers, which he had left in the possession of Judith Faulkner at Epic. It looks like they had four shrink wrapped pallets of materials, which he had cataloged and labeled before sending them off. Based on his cataloging, it looks nearly all of it will belong at the VA archive unless they clearly, legally belong elsewhere (e.g. boxes full of NIH documents should go to NIH). 

This conversation started, however, with a more general question about materials currently in the wild. I was curious whether there are people here who have materials that they're still trying to preserve somewhere and whether I could help to facilitate that.

Best,

Travis