The Berlin Museum of Medical History (BMM) at Charité has a historical card index that provides access to its collection of wet specimens. By centrally bundling information on the specimens, the index facilitates research into them. The Digital Network for Collections helped the BMM to digitize the index cards.
The card index is stored in a wooden structure consisting of eight boxes, each with two drawers. It is organized by organ. Within this order, the index is subdivided according to the conditions that affect the corresponding organ—for example, brain aneurysms.
All index cards refer to an organ specimen. They are clearly numbered and provide information about the age and gender of the deceased person whose body was examined to expand our knowledge of diseases. Some of the specimens date from the time of Rudolf Virchow.
The museum’s collection is of great medical historical value, and the card index is still used as a scientific research tool today.
Objective
The project had two main objectives: to protect and preserve the historical card index and to improve its usability and accessibility.
First, elements potentially damaging to conservation, such as paper clips and sticky notes, were removed from the card index, and the cards were consecutively numbered. The cards were then handed over to an external digitization service provider, who scanned them. Using the image files instead of the analogue originals protects and preserves the latter.
Digitizing the index cards has laid the foundations for the creation of a database that will make the information recorded in the card index more accessible.