Treasures from the Archives

3/31/2017

Amanda Nelson, Archivist

American Association of Physicists in Medicine (AAPM) display in foreground with the rest of the display in the background.

On Friday, March 24, the AIP Niels Bohr Library & Archives put together a small exhibit for the AIP Member Society Representatives and Proxies who attended the 2017 Annual Meeting of the AIP Corporation at our headquarters in College Park, MD. The library and archives staff pulled examples of photographs and archival materials from each Member Society and put them on display in our reading room. These examples included member directories of the Acoustical Society of America (ASA);

Two tables of Member Society “Treasures from the Archives” display in reading room.

a handwritten meeting minute book from the American Astronomical Society (AAS); original constitutions of the American Crystallographic Association (ACA) and Society of Rheology (SOR); oral histories and a book from the American Meteorological Society (AMS); movies of early American Physical Society (APS) meetings from the 1930s; and other brochures, organizational histories, etc.

 

Close-up of American Astronomical Society (AAS) portion of exhibit with handwritten meeting notebook, “crank mail” file, pamphlets, and photograph of 1922 annual meeting at Yerkes Observatory.

Our reading room was full of the Member Society representatives asking staff questions and getting to see some of their society’s history.

Member Society representatives and staff looking at their society’s historical documents.

The staff enjoyed showing off our collections and giving people a glimpse into the types of collections we hold in the library and archives that are available for their use. We hope the representatives enjoyed their preview into our work and saw something they might not know we had!