The Importance of Preservation
No matter what material is being preserved from the past, the method of preservation has to be very precise in order to get valuable use out of the primary resource.
To preserve something, according to Dictionary.com is “to keep in perfect or unaltered condition; maintain unchanged.” We all have different objects that are meaningful to us and worth preserving. My roommate says she plans on saving her diaries from when she was a kid. A floor mate of mine plans on saving her old Barbie collection. More specifically, The Dittrick Medical Center thrives on saving unpublished documents and family records. All sorts of things are being saved every day, but it is how we preserve them that determines how useful the material will be in the future.
There are several floors in the Dittrick dedicated solely to storing medical records and documents. With so much archival material, archivists at the Dittrick have a primary objective of organizing what they have in a logical, efficient manner. Planning a preservation strategy for an archive is taken very seriously, as was the case for Percy Skuy’s contraception collection. Skuy’s collection of contraception items, prototypes, and devices is displayed as an exhibit in the Dittrick Center. The organization process started off with a group collaboration of medical doctors, professors, and archivists. By working together, they sorted through the collection and made groups, labels, etc. of similar items. It is very important to preserve the original form of the collection—as Skuy makes clear in his extensive video clip about the collection.
The contraception collection reminds me of the Human Body Exhibit that I saw while in Detroit, Michigan. Dozens of human bodies were preserved and put on display, each one showing emphasis on a certain body part that was diagnosed with a disease. Before walking into that museum, I simply thought that I would get to see dead bodies, and I didn’t think that I would actually be learning something. One thing I learned is that the preservation process is very important. The corpse has to be encased in an airtight container which contains inert gas after being treated with preservatives. The method of preservation was taken very seriously by doctors, who had a primary goal of keeping the bodies from decaying. Each body had a file with it that gave a background and a quick synopsis of the ailment. The Dittrick Medical History Center organizes the undocumented archives in a similar manner. Each box is accompanied with a file that includes an introduction, biographical notes, scope/content notes, a container list, and a description of the series. It is important both for the medical record archivists and the corpse preservers to keep the material unaltered. A change in a human body would completely defeat the purpose of preserving it for an exhibit. Similarly, destroying documents of a family’s history can alter the way someone may interpret the resource.
The purpose of preservation can vary among the circumstances. For example, some human bodies are preserved for medical research. Medical schools go through dozens of human cadavers which are used by medical school students for dissection. Alternatively, human bodies can be preserved for human body exhibits to help others understand the complexities of the body by direct reference and observations. However, people still disagree with the idea and whole heartedly believe in burial or cremation. Similarly, people have different views about preserving their medical records. Some find it completely pointless, and they carry the view of why worry about the past. Others believe family records are private and should not be kept in an archive. On the contrary, the Dittrick Medical History Center is over flowing with documents because of those who are willing to donate organizational and family records to preserve history.
Whether it is preserving human bodies, a contraception collection, or unpublished documents, the method of preservation is nonetheless important. By preserving the material in an effective manner, we can provide ongoing evidence about our history and learn about our past. However, deciding what to keep and what not to keep is still an ongoing challenge archivists hold today.
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