Archive plans for 2014



Sir Ronald Ross

The Archives team is looking forward to a busy year with lots of events and activities already in the diary.

We are leading on two of the four exhibitions which are on display in the Keppel Street foyer in 2014. In the summer there will be an exhibition and events to commemorate the start of the First World War.  The focus of the exhibition is health and conflict and will showcase material from the archives and current information held by staff on the School’s contribution to conflicts since the First World War. We are part of a network of archives that are working on WW1 events and hopefully we can work with other London institutions on some joint activities.

Poster from the AIDS
collection

In the Autumn, we will be putting on an exhibition to celebrate the completion of the HIV/AIDS cataloguing project funded by the Wellcome Trust. This will bring together items from each of the six collections to showcase the fascinating content of the material held in the Archives. There will also be an event to mark the end of the project – more details to follow.

The Archives will also have input into the Malaria exhibition scheduled for the Spring, including material from the Sir Ronald Ross collection. Ross was the discoverer of the mosquito transmission of malaria and the first Briton to be awarded the Nobel prize for medicine. The Archives holds over 20,000 items including his scientific notebooks, correspondence, reports, publications, photographs and some artefacts including a microscope (which is currently on display in the foyer as part of the TB

Menu from Leeson
collection

exhibition).

Gems from the collections sessions will be held each term which give staff and students a chance to get a closer look at material from the archives and rare book collections. The team will also be running tours of the building for those interested in finding out more about the Keppel Street building and the origins of the School.



In the Archives, we do more than look after the School historical collections. We manage MediaLibrary, the School’s image and multimedia database. If you need an image, just go to MediaLibrary: http://www.lshtm.ac.uk/library/archives/medialibrary/index.html,  log in with your School username and password and access over 25,000 images. There is also a public version of the database and we are always happy to answer enquiries from the public regarding our images. We are currently running a photo competition with the theme ‘Improving Health Worldwide’ which staff and students are encouraged to enter, for more details please see: http://www.lshtm.ac.uk/library/archives/medialibrary/2013_photo_competition.html

2013 Photo competition winner

The Archives Service also deals with Freedom of Information requests which kept us very busy in 2013, the School received 98 in total, which increased dramatically from the 43 received in 2012; and offers a records management service for the storage of records, there are plans to hold Document Destruction days in 2014 which encourage staff to organise and destroy records that are no longer required.

Finally, it will be an exciting year for the Research Data Management Support Service which is due to launch its website soon, other plans include developing the data repository, delivering training events for staff and students and providing more interesting seminars on research data management topics. For further information, please see the RDM blog at: http://blogs.lshtm.ac.uk/rdmss/

If you have an enquiry about the archives, please do get in touch at: archives@lshtm.ac.uk

Christmas and New Year opening hours of local libraries

Today (Friday 20 December) is the last day the Library will be open before Christmas. We will reopen at 8.30am on 2 January.

If you are going to be in London over the holidays and would like to visit a library, here are some opening times of local libraries which you can go to.

• British Library
  Open on 23, 27, 28, 29, 30, 31 December, although the reading rooms are closed earlier than normal. Normal British Library hours resume on 2 January. More details are on the British Library website.
• UCL Libraries
  UCL Main and Science libraries will be open on 21, 22, 23, 27, 28, 29, 30 December, although with reduced hours. Normal UCL Library hours resume on 2 January. More details are on the UCL Library services website.
• SOAS Library
  Open on 21, 22, 24, 26, 27, 28, 29, 30, 31 December although with reduced hours. Normal SOAS Library hours resume on 2 January. More details are on the SOAS Library website.
• Camden Public Library
  Camden Public Library may be open, however there are no details on their website. Please contact the library for information if you wish to visit.

Christmas in Uganda in 1922

 

Carpenter diary

On showing a visitor the Archives earlier this week, I happened to open the Carpenter diary on the page for Christmas Day 1922. I thought that it would be interesting to share their experiences of Christmas in Uganda.

Geoffrey Hale Carpenter was a student at the School in 1910, he became the specialist officer for the control of sleeping sickness in Uganda in 1920. This diary was written jointly by Carpenter and his wife Amy Frances. As well as diary entries documenting their day to day activities, there are photos, pressed flowers, press cuttings, concert programmes and their wedding invitation.   The diary gives a good insight into the life of a scientist working in Africa and the experiences he and his wife had while travelling to different regions, attending events such as dances and cricket matches with the colonial community at Entebbe and the various illnesses they contracted while abroad.



December 23^rd

Geoffrey: Our dance at the club.

We had a busy day preparing – P (Geoffrey’s name for his wife) with help from Mrs Neill, Mrs Lyall, Mrs Griffin and the hospital cook did the food.  Mrs Duke and Miss Richardson (I won’t call her Hope) and Mrs Neill helped decorate and arrange room while I did the greenery and garlands which P got at Kampala. I got lamps from C and made a bandstand on the grass below the balcony for the K.A.R.

Amy: In the evening, we arranged the supper, dealt out the crackers. Geoff and I had a hurried dinner and went down to the club, I was later than G and only just arrived before the first guests!



The Carpenters

We had an extra to start, but no supper extras. We had a definite interval and the band had refreshments too.

We thoroughly enjoyed the evening and everyone else seemed to as well, and they said very nice things about the dance – we had great difficulty in getting people away at 10 o’clock.

Geoffrey: My love was not overtired as everything had worked smoothly. She wore her apricot frock, I my black coat with silk revers! (moth eaten!!!!)

December 24^th

Amy: We went down to the club to clear everything up, and found nothing had been broken. Mrs Neil came to help. We returned all the borrowed spoons and forks etc.

Geoffrey (the point of this remark is that we might not have done this until later! As any ass would know)

Amy: Yes but there are not any asses her to read this!

Christmas Day

Geoffrey: We went to Church at 8 and 10.30. That evening we dined with the Grays, Whittles, Mr Turton, Mr Hayden and Capt. Walters. I won a box of chocolates.

In the afternoon we read our mail, which we had had since the 23^rd.

December 26^th

Amy: Dined at the Neill’s, also the C.J’s, Mrs Griffin, Montgomery’s and Dr Aders of Zanzibar who was with the M’s, Braggs. Rather a hot dinner party! Turkey from East Africa.

 

Merry Christmas to all from the Archives Team

 

 

Monkeys of the Month

While we all work hard here in the Library & Archives team we also like to indulge our creative side with animals, each month one member of staff customised our Monkey calendar and the fruits are below, we have been voting for our favourite Monkey and will be giving a prize later this afternoon during our Christmas Party. Enjoy!

January

 

February

 

March

 

April

 

May

 

June

 

July

 

August

 

September

 

October

 

November

 

December

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Online catalogue of Peter Piot's archives now available

The archive collection of Professor Baron Peter Piot is now available online on the archive catalogue. The papers held at the School reflect his career in fighting epidemic disease not only through his epidemiological work on the Ebola virus and HIV/AIDS but also his role as Executive-Director of UNAIDS (1995-2008).



Peter Piot 

Baron Professor Peter Karcl Piot, was born on the 17th February 1949 in Louvain, Belgium. He studied medicine at the University of Ghent (achieving his M.D. in 1974) and after graduation moved to the Institute of Tropical Medicine, Antwerp, to work under Dr S. R. Pattyn. In 1976, he and his colleague, Guido van der Groen, were chosen from the School to join the WHO International Commission investigating the then unknown Ebola virus in Zaire (now Democratic Republic of Congo), having been part of the team that had isolated the virus.

In 1980 he received his PhD in microbiology and became Associate Professor of Microbiology and Head of the Division of Microbiology at the Institute. Based in Antwerp, he set up a number of international projects in Africa chiefly looking at the spread of the HIV/AIDS on the continent. In 1983, he helped establish the international project based in Kinshasa, known as Projet SIDA that was the initial source of epidemiological work on HIV/AIDS in Africa. Between 1986-1987 he became an Associate Professor, Department of Medical Microbiology at the University of Nairobi, Kenya.

The following year, he became chair of the Steering Committee on Epidemiology and Surveillance of WHO's Global Programme on AIDS. In 1991 he was elected President of the International AIDS Society and then left his position in Antwerp to move to Geneva to become an Associate Director of the Global Programme on AIDS, World Health Organisation. In 1995, he was elected Executive-Director of  the Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS (UNAIDS) and served in this position for thirteen years before leaving in 2008 to become Professor of Global Health, Imperial College London. In 2010, he was appointed Director of the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine.


Archives

The papers held at the School reflect his career in fighting disease with fieldwork based on his epidemiological work on the Ebola virus and HIV/AIDS in Kinshasa. Correspondence files from his time as Professor of Microbiology in Antwerp provide an insight on the international network of medical experts working on the AIDS pandemic in the 1980's with conference papers on notable meetings such as the first African meeting on AIDS in Bangui, 1985. 

The majority of the papers in the collection relate to his tenure of Executive-Director of UNAIDS. The papers incorporate material relating to the establishment and governance of the organisation and also the working life of the Executive-Director through his speeches; correspondence; conferences; meeting notes; travel documents and also hold a rich source of working papers on significant developments in his tenure such as the South African AIDS epidemic; the formation of the Global Fund against AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria and the United State's
President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR). Papers also include collected articles, newspaper articles and reports relating to Piot's career and various topics relating to the global strategy for the prevention of HIV/AIDS.

The collection can be viewed by appointment by contacting the archive service by email at the following address, Archives@lshtm.ac.uk.

Merry Christmas from the Archives - Ready, Steady, Bake!

 

This collection of seasonal recipes dates from December 1945. The recipes were produced by the Ministry of Food during the period of food rationing in Britain during and following the Second World War. (Click on the images for a better view)

The recipes for Christmas pudding and Christmas cake are fairly standard, apart from keeping the dried fruit to a minimum, but it’s doubtful whether the ‘mock’cream and marzipan tasted anything like the originals.

This and many other Ministry of Food leaflets form part of the LSHTM Archive's Nutrition Collection, which contains over 4500 records relating to all aspects of nutrition research. Please see the Archives website for further information.

 

Material from our collections relating to war will be on display next year for the exhibition to commemorate the centenary of the First World War.

Image: LSHTM Library & Archives Service, Nutrition/06/05 Ministry Of Food cookery leaflets and pamphlets

2013 Photo Competition

It's the time of year again when budding photographers have the opportunity to show off their photographic skills to the rest of the School. Staff and students are encouraged to submit photos which represent the theme of the competition: Improving Health Worldwide. This can be interpreted to reflect our work activities - both in London and overseas, studying at the School and even working in the laboratories. The judging panel are keen to see all types of photos including microscope images.

Here's 2012's winning entry, taken by Dr. Lena Lorenz  in Ifakara, Tanzania. If you'd like to find out more about this photo and how it came to be taken, you can read more here

'Dona's Son' 2012 Photo Competition winner

The 2013 winning entry, chosen by a judging panel, will appear in a forthcoming issue of the Chariot News blog, on the School’s website and past entries have featured in annual reports and other School publications.

The winner will receive £100, with a second prize of £75 and a third prize of £50.

All entries will be available for staff and students to view in MediaLibrary, the School's image database which has just been upgraded.

Submission guidelines are as follows:

• Entries must be sent to photos@lshtm.ac.uk
• Entries will be judged on originality, quality, composition and appropriateness to the theme
• Entries may be in colour or black and white
• No more than three entries per person
• Deadline for entries is 28 February 2014
• Please provide a caption for your photos
• If identifiable individuals appear in your photo, please ensure that you have their permission before submission
• All entries will appear in the competition category of MediaLibrary which will be accessible by School staff and students
• The winning entry will appear in the Chariot and on the MediaLibrary webpage
• An exhibition of competition entries, including the winning photo will be on display in the Library foyer
• Entries may be used for promotional purposes eg Annual Report, Chariot, prospectus, exhibitions etc
• Copyright - by entering the competition, competitors warrant that they own the copyright in their photograph and they give consent to LSHTM to store the image and reproduce it in any School related publication or medium

Enjoy your Christmas break and get snapping