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Glass plate digitisation

Digitisation of medical historical glass plates in the Düsseldorf University Archives

Project description

In the first quarter of 2021, over 6400 glass plate negatives and over 500 slides from the holdings 8/3 (20th Century Photo Collection) and 8/12 (Medical Image Teaching Material) were digitised in the Düsseldorf University Archives. The digitised material consists of medical history images and views of the Düsseldorf Medical Academy (Medizinische Akademie Düsseldorf) from the first half of the 20th century. The glass plates originate from the estates of Prof. Ernst Derra (1901-1979) and Prof. Hans Reinhard Schmidt-Elmendorff (1889-1967), among others. In addition to numerous clinical pictures and anatomical images, the plates document the Düsseldorf Municipal Clinics (Städtische Kliniken Düsseldorf), hygiene, maternity counselling centre, nutritional issues, paediatric medicine as well as statistics from the 1930s and 1940s. It can be assumed that most of the images were also used in academic teaching and that the collection thus reflects medical and scientific education in Düsseldorf in the first half of the 20th century.

The digitised image material can be viewed at Düsseldorf University Archives after individual examination (blocking periods on individual images, as patient data can be found on them). The finding aid for holding 8/12 can be viewed online, and the finding aid for holding 8/3 is available at Düsseldorf University Archives.

This conservation measure was made possible by funding from the Ministry of Culture and Science of North Rhine-Westphalia (Ministerium für Kultur und Wissenschaft NRW).

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