News From the Center

Congratulations

This past fall, Janna Dieckmann completed her doctoral dissertation and degree. The title of her dissertation is "Caring for the Chronically Ill: Philadelphia, 1945-1965." Dr. Dieckmann, the 1993 Lillian Sholtis Brunner Summer Fellow at the Center, is Assistant Professor at La Salle University School of Nursing where she teaches public health nursing to BSN, RN-BSN, and MSN students. She is also Coordinator of the Public Health Nursing Track Graduate Program.

Dr. Dieckmann plans to submit several articles for publication and will continue study and research in the areas of her dissertation: long term care, aging, and poverty.

New Exhibit

A new exhibit has been installed in the Center’s display cases in the Nursing Education Building which examines different viewpoints of nursing’s history. This exhibit has been constructed by students as a project for Nursing 518, the History of Nursing course taught by Dr. Patricia D’Antonio here at the University of Pennsylvania. The students wrote the text and selected the objects for display from the Center’s holdings. The exhibit will remain in place until December 1998.

Records Saved

This past summer, the School of Nursing here at Penn implemented a cogent records management program. Guided by Curator Margo Szabunia, School staff and faculty have begun identifying inactive records deemed historically significant and transferring them to the University Archives. Already the program has doubled the volume of historically significant records housed at the University Archives which document the school. Active and semi-active records have been prioritized and a retention schedule has been drawn up. This project is realizing two goals: preservation of the school’s historical record and the systematic removal of bulky records that are nearing the end of their active life cycle.

Toast of the Town

On February 17th, Dr. Julie A. Fairman, Assistant Professor of Nursing at the University of Pennsylvania, gave a talk entitled "Professional Concern and Patient Care: The Origin of the Intensive Care Unit in Philadelphia" at the College of Physicians. The event, offered by the Section on Medical History, was well attended and the audience was engaged in a lively discussion.

New Server

The School of Nursing and the Center have had websites loaded on the internet for nearly two years. Due to the high volume of user traffic and the need to coordinate the many school-related websites, a full-time webmaster has been hired and the websites have been transferred to a new server. All nursing school pages are now accessible through http://www.nursing.upenn.edu. The Center’s new website address is http://www.nursing.upenn.edu/history. In addition to a new server, the Center’s homepage has been modified and updated with new sections. Visitors to the Center’s website will find a new education section called "Links to Learning" (which contains a nursing history syllabus, among other things), a "Spotlight" section which is a virtual exhibit focusing on JoAnn Ashley, and a "Membership" section with information about becoming a Center member/supporter. More links to finding aids have been added under the Collection section.