He’s certainly visited the LHSA offices early this year with confirmation from the Wellcome Trust (WT) of funding for a new cataloguing project. Under the Research Resources funding stream, a grant of £90,497 for ‘RVH v TB: a project to catalogue LHSA’s Royal Victoria Hospital Tuberculosis and Diseases of the Chest Case Notes and Registers (c.1920 – 2000)’ will see the creation of a 29 month Project Archivist post due to begin in autumn 2014. The catalogues will be created in Encoded Archival Description (EAD), building on the methodology developed as part of the current WT-funded Norman Dott case note cataloguing project, enabling dissemination to researchers worldwide.
 |
| Royal Victoria Hospital, c.1910 |
The case note collections relate to the fight against pulmonary TB and Diseases of the Chest in twentieth-century Edinburgh and Lothian, a particularly prevalent and severe threat to public health. TB is one of the long-standing and ubiquitous infectious diseases of the world. With the first TB dispensary in the world (founded by Dr Robert Philip in 1887 at Bank Street), Edinburgh has a long-established record in attempting to prevent, detect, and treat it. Its resurgence worldwide provides impetus for the interpretation of long runs of patient clinical data, and historical public health policy for its treatment and eradication.
This latest funding news comes on top of the award of Wellcome Trust funding for a project to catalogue and conserve LHSA’s UNESCO-awarded HIV/AIDS collections which is due to get underway next month. 2014 promises to be a year with lots of project activity, and we look forward to welcoming new project staff to the LHSA team.
.jpg)
