Vassar Brothers Medical Center Library

The archives at Vassar Brothers Medical Center Library offer a chance to discover many documents, photographs, and moments from the hospital’s long history. While there are complete documents (a lot of newspapers), there are so many scattered photographs that offer a snapshot of the workings of the hospital. Unfortunately, the scattered nature of the photographs makes it harder to find notable lengthy stories. Rather they tell a lot of several short stories that are important for history, the hospital, and the Hudson Valley region as a whole. Some photographs do not necessarily make it; there are a lot of empty spaces, so there are probably a lot more stories that are missing from the hospital. However, in going through and examining documents, you are likely to come across photos that resonate with you more than others. One specific photo, originating from the 1950’s, shows a gathering of Vassar medical staff and board members on a conference call with University of Albany medical staff. This photo stood out to me because it’s basically a Skype-conference call with radio. It’s these moments that provide a personal connection with history, because people are doing exactly what we would be doing, just 60 years apart.

Once that photo, or photos like it, are chosen for re-upload, then it’s time for the process of digitization to begin. The first step is to scan the document, which itself can be a hassle if the document is older and thus requires more handling. The document or photograph gets scanned, then saved to my folder on the laptop. Most times the source requires cropping, since there can be a lot of blank space around the sides. Then comes the most time-consuming part, which is filling out the metadata. The categories are fairly straightforward, and once you do it once it becomes a copy-and-paste adventure, but doing it the first time does require time, especially to make sure everything is correct. Even with all that done, it still requires approval before it makes its way to an online source. The trickiest part can be providing a detailed enough description. For one source, it was a certificate announcing the ascendency of one candidate to the Ulster County Medical Society in the late 19th century. Part of the problem was actually reading it so we could translate it. A good majority of it was easy to read but a couple of words here and there gave me trouble. However, those one or two words can make a difference and it finally got done after a decent amount of revision.

However, when filling out the metadata, the section where you upload a statement of image rights became a lot trickier. This began an interesting diversion from the archival and digital work, as these images that were chosen for upload all had copyright. Even though they were for Vassar, the photographs were held by the photographer/studio and were still under their rights under U.S copyright law. I went on to search for the existence of these studios, at least to find their contact information. Unsurprisingly, I wasn’t able to find a lot, but it shows the other factors public historians have to deal with when they make images or documents available for public use.