Michelle Krause, New York Academy of Medicine, Spring 2015, IMLS
The New York Academy of Medicine is a health policy and advocacy association founded by New York City physicians in 1847 and acts as a voice for the medical profession in relation to public health reform. Under the supervision of archivist Rebecca Pou, I worked with the NYAM’s collection of audiovisual materials, which included audiotape reels (447) and VHS tapes (113). The audiotape reels consisted of recordings of events and lectures that took place at the NYAM; half of the VHS tapes in the collection were donated by cardiologist, Dr. David Schechter, while the other half contained material the NYAM previously owned. My duties included, organizing the materials, matching the materials with their appropriate label (labels had fallen off almost every reel or tape) and corresponding the reels/tapes back to their appropriate series. After this task was complete, I catalogued all of the information on each reel or tape into an item-level spreadsheet.
