By Matt Richardson, Archivist and Special Collections Librarian
Did you set a New Year’s Resolution to finally organize your closet or garage? Well, that’s pretty much what your friendly neighborhood MHC archivists have been up to with our digitized images. The McGovern Historical Center has accumulated a pretty good assortment of scanned images over the years. Many of these have been digitized in response to patron inquiries, library exhibits, or other “on-demand” requests. But prior to the launch of our collections site in March 2020, there wasn’t always a natural way to get these images organized and shared online. But you can bet we held onto them.
In recent weeks, we’ve begun the process of sifting through these digital file folders. Unsurprisingly, there were plenty of great images waiting to be re-discovered. After all, there was a reason folks selected these for scanning in the first place.
The first batch of over one hundred photographs has now been posted online. These are all part of IC 104 Texas Medical Center (TMC) Photograph Collection. While a drop-in the bucket for this 2,500+ image collection, the digital selections offer a good sampling with no shortage of highlights.
The photographs now online depict major TMC institutions and figures, many from the TMC’s formative decades. There are photographs of iconic structures under construction, including Baylor College of Medicine, M. D. Anderson Cancer Hospital, St. Luke’s Episcopal Hospital, Texas Children’s Hospital, and the Jesse H. Jones Library. Accompanying these are a progression of aerial photographs showing the TMC’s growth. And, of course, there are photographs of TMC leaders like Denton Cooley, John Norman, R. Lee Clark, Ernst W. Bertner, and Josie M. Roberts.
With these photos, our digital content continues to grow—we now have over 4,500 objects online! At the same time, the benefits of searching by Name or Subject are really starting to shine through. Now it’s easier than ever to retrieve sets of images from TMC institutions like the M. D. Anderson Cancer Center; the UT School of Nursing; Texas Children’s Hospital; or Baylor College of Medicine.
Don’t see your institution or interest represented yet? Drop us a line at mcgovern@library.tmc.edu and we’ll see what we can do.
We hope you enjoy these photographs, and we look forward to sharing more!
