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Mysterious image

Clueless

Mysterious images unearthed from the archives

Know what this is?

Drew Bourn, who oversees the archives for the school’s Lane Medical Library, is hoping that a sharp pair of eyes can help identify this half-head and dozens of other photos that have little or no accompanying documentation. And he’s drawing on the power of the Internet to help fill in the blanks.

Back in March, Bourn, collaborating with John Stafford, the new media strategist in the medical school's communications office, posted 10 of the photos from the library's archives on the Flickr photo-sharing Web site. Users of the popular site are invited to add comments to help identify the images. The first set, titled "Medical Mysteries," consists primarily of mid-20th century black-and-white photos. The images are available at http://www.flickr.com/photos/stanfordmedicine/sets/72157614393570286/.

“Other institutions, such as the Library of Congress, the Smithsonian and the New York Public Library, have put their content on Flickr and gotten tremendous feedback,” Bourn says.

He’s encouraged that each of the mystery photos has garnered between 547 and 1,160 views on Flickr, but chagrined that few of the viewers have provided solid leads thus far.

It’s common for libraries and other cultural heritage institutions to have photos and artifacts that aren’t readily identifiable. In decades past, these organizations often didn’t have official procedures for documenting donated materials and photographs. At Lane, Bourn says, there are hundreds of “orphan” photos, meaning that he doesn’t know who the photographer was, who currently holds the copyright or who the people in the photo are. Though some of the images are of unusual artifacts, like the half-head, the majority are of people and events connected in some way to the medical school.

Having more information about the photos would make the archival materials much more valuable to those researching Stanford’s medical school or the history of medicine in general. “That’s what this is all about,” Bourn says.

Bourn is hoping to get some good leads from alert alumni or former faculty members who see the images on Flickr. He’s also planning to post additional “orphan” images on the Web.

In the meantime, the origin of the half-head image remains unknown. Bourn says the model itself isn’t in any of the school’s artifact collections, so he doesn’t know how or why this particular image ended up in the library’s hands.

It’s a real head-scratcher.

— Susan Ipaktchian
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