All change at LHSA!

This has been a busy week in LHSA’s corner of the Centre for Research Collections office. Not only have there been new enquiries to respond to and new readers to help as usual, but our desk allocation is finally full!

From last Monday, we’ve been joined by two new members of staff: Liz Course joins us as the Project Cataloguing Archivist working with the case notes of Norman Dott, and Karyn Williamson will be the Project Cataloguing Archivist in charge of the remainder of our unlisted HIV and AIDS collections. The work of both Liz and Karyn is funded by the Wellcome Trust.

Liz will be with us for 12 months, and she’ll be taking over the reins of the Norman Dott case note cataloguing project while Louise is seconded to the role of LHSA Archivist. You may remember hearing from Liz during her internship working on the Norman Dott project earlier in the year.

 

Norman Dott on steps of Royal Infirmary, 1937 (LHB1 CC/20/PR1.1536)

For the next eight months, Karyn will be cataloguing the remainder of our UNESCO-recognised HIV and AIDS collections. She’ll be working really closely with our Project Conservator, Emily, as they get to grips with making LHSA’s final four HIV and AIDS collections that are uncatalogued and not conserved accessible to the public by preserving and describing them to archival standards.

 

These two Wellcome Trust projects focus on numerous Edinburgh firsts. The city’s co-ordinated approaches to the fight against HIV and AIDS (involving the NHS, individuals, campaign groups and charities) led the way for initiatives across the United Kingdom. Not only did Norman Dott set up the first dedicated neurosurgery department in Scotland, but LHSA’s project to catalogue the results of this pioneering work employs a methodology without known precedent in UK medical archives.

Postcard from Take Care collection, to be catalogued by Karyn during her project (GD22)

I’m sure you’ll be hearing much more from Karyn and Liz on the blog in the coming weeks, complete with images of what they’ve been working on and have discovered. Welcome to the team, Karyn and Liz!