After establishing provenance, archivists seek to preserve the original order of the material. This is generally considered the same sequence the original creator stored the records. It preserves the context of the materials.

Then there are times when records come to the archives without any provenance and are out of sequence. When enough clues are available, the restoration of original order is the best possible solution.

Such is the case with two folders labeled "Wilson, Dr. L. B. Mayo Foundation Rochester Minn." One dated "1921-1925," the other "1926-".

Found among 1970s Medical School administrative records, the look of the folders, the dates of the material, and the content they contained all support the conclusion that they were not created by the dean's office of the 1970s and were thus out of context and without an established provenance.

These folders primarily contain correspondence between Louis B. Wilson and Clarence Jackson, then head of anatomy at the University of Minnesota. The letters pertain to the transfer, release, and burial of corpses used for dissection between the University of Minnesota and Mayo.

It can be said that due to their intimate knowledge of an institution and changes in an organization over time that archivists figuratively know where all the bodies are buried. Yet, these two folders quite literally tell the story of where they are buried. The "they" being unclaimed bodies available for anatomical study and managed by the Medical School according to a 1913 state law.

A review of existing collections in the archives proved to be fruitful. A two box set of records transferred from the Department of Anatomy to the archives in 1951 contained identical folders, similar correspondence between Dr. Jackson & other individuals regarding the management of bodies for anatomical study, and a noticeable absence in the alphabetical order of correspondence files for an entry under "Wilson."

At some point between 1926 and 1951 someone removed these two folders from the Dept. of Anatomy, yet the folders managed to remain paired together as they moved from office to office, hand to hand over the next 60 to 80 years until finally sent to the archives. The transfer of these seemingly miscellaneous materials to the archives was the key step in restoring their provenance and establishing their original order.

What is an archivist to do?

The time has come where archives and libraries are better equipped and staffed to manage the latter rather than the former. Maintaining AV rooms filled with half-working equipment for playback is a no win situation. Institutional repositories and internet based applications are better able to store, playback and preserve digitally created information than ever before.

A recent discovery of a box full of 8 inch floppies all marked as correspondence from the office of the Vice President for Health Sciences demonstrates the conundrum in the collection of historical documents. On the one hand, the content of the disks are absolutely central to the collecting focus for the History Project, yet on the other, the media is so obsolete and likely degraded to the point of being unable to retrieve any information.

The 8 inch floppy, like its successors the 5 in., 3.5in., Jaz and Zip disks, were tied to specific hardware operating systems. Yet, it often had multiple formats, disk densities, transfer rates, and spinning heads that made them even in their prime incompatible with other 8 inch disk drives. The ability to rescue data off any 8 inch diskette today would be beyond most IT skill sets and, due to the low data capacity they actually held, not worth the expense.

1980s computing taught us in the 1990s to fear the question of "how will I be able to save, read, open, edit this after the media, format, software, hardware changes?" However, in the last ten years the migration of electronic records has become easier to understand and to accomplish with only minor cautionary steps.

Changes in storage media will always challenge our preservation techniques and cause a few gaps in recorded history. This is to be expected and for the most part accepted as progress to better record keeping. I'm sure the first few recipes for baked clay tablets didn't quite turn out as expected, yet I've never heard anyone mention cuneiform tablets as an unstable media.

So with this in mind I will look at my box of 8 inch floppies, and the information they might contain, and realize that this gap of documentation is an example of the jumps made from one media system to the next that is likely lost to history.

There is an interesting historical division between those who knew and worked within the University Hospitals and those who have only known Fairview as the owner/operator of the University of Minnesota Medical Center. For the latter, Fairview has always owned the hospital and University of Minnesota Physicians (UMP) has always been the faculty group practice.

Yet, this view seems to imply that the transition was spontaneous and effortless on January 1, 1997. In fact, the early part of the 1990s was a major time of restructuring within the AHC and in health services in general that set the stage for this change. This reorganization included a new mission for the Board of Governors as well as a closer alignment to the University of Minnesota Clinical Associates, the then faculty practice.

For a snapshot of where the University stood in 1993 read the executive summary below. Find out why a university hospital was important then. And, whether it was absolutely necessary that the University owned the hospital.

In 1976 Dr. French requested a review of his position by the Office of the President to evaluate its effectiveness. The final report was very complimentary of Dr. French and the success of the still relatively new position of Vice President for Health Sciences. In 1981, Dr. French stepped down from his position as Vice President and returned to teaching and research.

After eleven years, the Office of the Vice President for Health Sciences was set to become vacant and the first formal search to fill the position began. Below are draft copies of the job ads sent to the Chronicle and various professional journals. You'll note that the position does not oversee the College of Veterinary Medicine. Although the 1970 reorganization aligned the CVM closely with the AHC, the reporting structure did not officially change until 1985.

The search concluded in 1982 when the Regents approved the appointment of Dr. Neal Vanselow, Chancellor of the University of Nebraska Medical Center, as the new Vice President for Health Sciences.

Read the job ads below. Would you have applied?

According to McIver, the regulations of the unit required all personnel to wear a cap, mask and gown and restricted holding the children. The children were frightened and sick. Left alone on her first night, McIver removed her mask and cap and began wrapping each child and rocking them in her arms until they calmed down and took fluids. She would spend her night working her way through the ward of approximately 30 patients. One night, she was interrupted by an intern whom she thought would expose her. Instead, he offered to help. McIver kept her method of care during the influenza outbreak a secret for years until a chance meeting with the intern who was now a pediatrician.

McIver graduated from the School of Nursing in 1919 and continued to work at the University Hospital until taking a position with the United States Public Health Service in 1922. She retired in 1957 after serving as chief of the Division of Public Health Nursing.

Since then, her story has been told and re-told numerous times including by James Gray in his book Education for Nursing and Katherine Densford in her tribute piece to Pearl McIver in the April 1962 volume of the American Journal of Nursing. However, these two accounts are the re-telling of McIver's story, paraphrased and embellished.

Below is a particularly poor mimeographed copy of the story that Pearl McIver dictated on July 3, 1958. It is the source used by both Gray and Densford, but it is her first-person account. The story as she told it.

If you said graduates then you must be paying attention.

In the past I've discussed how the original requirements for admission to the Medical School (then known as the Department of Medicine) where formulated in April of 1888 with the first class entering in October of that same year. Prior to that, the College of Medicine consisted of faculty members that served as an examination body that recommended candidates to the Board of Regents to receive a Bachelor of Medicine or M.D. It did not provide instruction, rather it assessed all candidates on their scientific and professional skills. The first graduates earned their degrees in 1884. Four years before the first entering class. Those graduates were James Simpson and Hugo Speier.

The following is a partial list of examination questions they faced in 1884.

Anatomy

• Give Chemical composition and microscopic structure of bone.


• Give boundaries of the Fourth Ventricle.

Physiology

• Fats: Variations and use in the economy.


• Protein compounds: Characteristics and ultimate destination.

Medical Chemistry

• Describe the symptoms of poisoning by oxalic acid. (a) Mention the antidote or antidotes for oxalic acid, with an explanation of their actions. (b) How is oxalic acid liable to be taken by mistake?

Pathology

• What condition of the brain would you expect to find in a case of death from acute alcoholic poisoning?


• What is Cancer? Describe its varieties.

Sanitary Science

• What do you understand by Preventive Medicine as distinct from public or private hygiene? Give an illustration.


• Name the dangers to health most likely to occur in the house of a farmer or in a private house in towns or cities. State how you would search for them and how prevent or remedy them.

Surgery

• How should a punctured fracture of the skull be treated?


• For what injuries and diseases is amputation generally performed?

Practice of Medicine

• Is there a distinction between functional and structural diseases? If so, give a definition of each kind and illustrate by example.


• What is Meningitis and what are its results?

Diseases of Women & Children

• Give anatomy of the Uterus.


• Give differential diagnosis of scarlitina and measles.

Read the faculty minutes for the College of Medicine from 1883-1886 and see the full set of examination questions (pages 21-28) below.

Many of the concepts in Coffman's letter are echoed in today's discussions regarding the clinical enterprise and partnerships. To see the parallels one has to look no further than last month's presentation to the Board of Regents "Moving the Clinical Enterprise from Partnership to Integration: Conceptual Framework."

Although the style of language for the most part reveals their age, read the following excerpts from the above two mentioned documents and see if you can guess their date of origin: 1926 or 2009.

1. Enhanced ability to recruit and retain faculty and compensate them at a competitive market rate. 1926 or 2009?
2. The problem of securing and keeping a staff of talented and enthusiastic teachers is one of the most difficult and continuous tasks that confronts any university. 1926 or 2009?
3. Greater access to a larger population for participation in clinical research and to support the education of the next generation of health professionals. 1926 or 2009?
4. The University here faces the practical necessity of providing enough hospital beds to insure those types of cases and diseases, and in sufficient numbers, that may be necessary for the education and training of those proposing to enter the professions of nursing and medicine. This is a great educational responsibility which the University cannot fail to discharge. 1926 or 2009?
5. Enable the health professions of the AHC to achieve relevance, leadership and excellence into the 21st century. 1926 or 2009?
6. Ambitious clinical and laboratory teachers will not associate themselves, even for high salaries, with an institution which cannot offer good opportunities for their continuing growth and intellectual development. 1926 or 2009?

Feel free to leave your answers in the comments and read the full letter from President Coffman as well as the details about the clinical framework at the University in 1926 below.