Volunteer News: May 2021 : Change in ownership: September 2020 : GOSH database updated to 1921 : Volunteers needed for projects : Royal Hospital for Sick Children, Glasgow added to HHARP website
Volunteer News: May 2021
Currently we have no volunteer projects running, and are unlikely to have in the immediate future due to lack of funding. If you are looking volunteer work on an historical project, it is worth looking here from time to time in case our situation changes. Otherwise, you could try your local record office or local history groups in your area. Also worth checking is The National Archives which runs several online volunteering projects. https://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/about/get-involved/volunteering/
HHARP: Change in ownership: September 2020
After nearly 20 years, Kingston University has recently withdrawn from the HHARP project, and the HHARP resource has been transferred into the hands of Dr Sue Hawkins and Dr Andrea Tanner, two of the original team who developed it.
As the new guardians of HHARP, we pledge to maintain its founding ethos – to make this invaluable resource available FREE OF CHARGE to academic researchers, family historians and anyone else who is interested in the history of child health and children’s hospitals in Victorian and Edwardian Britain. We believe resources such as this, built on the hard labour of volunteers, should belong to the community, so we welcome you to the site. If you are already familiar with HHARP you will notice nothing (or very little) has changed. If you are new to HHARP welcome, please come in and browse and enjoy. If you like what you see, it would be worthwhile registering as a user – which gives you increased access to the resources available.
With the relaunch of the site under new management, and in order to comply with GDPR regulations, it has been necessary to delete all the details relating to HHARP’s existing registered users. If you were a registered user therefore, when you try to log in for the first time, you will be asked to re-register for the site. To simplify the registration process we only require your email address.
We hope in the future to be able to bring you new content and new developments, but for now we simply welcome you back to HHARP.
GOSH database updated to 1921
The team at the Centre for the Historical Record are pleased to announce the launch of a new batch of patient records relating to the Hospital for Sick Children at Great Ormond Street. The GOSH database now provides a continuous record of admissions from 1852, the year of opening to 1921. This extension has made an additional 20,200 records available to people interested in tracing family members and researchers interested in the history of children’s hospitals. As before we have applied the standard 100 year rule for preservation of confidentiality to these records, and while the records up to 1921 have been loaded, records younger than 100 years have been anonymised. Names of individual patients are released automatically as the record passes its 100 year mark, so the database is constantly being refreshed. The format and structure of the 1915-1921 records remains the same and they can be searched alongside existing records.
One interesting development is immediately obvious. The beginnings of the new science of bacteriology can be seen in the number of records which contain information on bacterial origins of some infections. In the ten years prior to 1914 only 35 records contain this information but in the new batch of records covering a seven year period there are 100 such records: including diseases associated with staphylococcal, meningococcal, pneumococcal and streptococcal infections. This is still a very small percentage of records, but does provide evidence of the growing influence of this new science on diagnosis.
As usual this update (and the whole suite of databases) is provided to all researchers free of charge. If you have any queries or suggestions do not hesitate to contact us.
Volunteers needed for a range of projects
We are regularly looking for volunteers to help us with transcribing projects. At present our HHARP related projects are all complete, but we are about to embark on a new project with the British Red Cross to transcribe records of VADs working during the First World War.
We need additional volunteers to transcribe and proof read the records using a specially designed online interface. Transcription and proof reading can be done at any time, via the internet, and no special experience is required - we will provide training and support.
Ideally, we ask if volunteers can commit to 2 hours per week, but we are flexible if you prefer to do more or less hours. If you are interested we'd like to hear from you. Please contact:
Juliet Warren
Researcher and Project Manager
Centre for the Historical Record
School of Economics, History and Politics
Faculty of Arts & Social Sciences
Kingston University
Penrhyn Road
Kingston upon Thames
Surrey
KT1 2EE
Tel (direct): 020 8417 2359
Email: j.warren@kingston.ac.uk
Volunteers needed for new project: Medical Case Notes of Dr Archibald Garrod
Kingston University has received further funding from the Wellcome Trust to enhance the HHARP resource by digitising and transcribing the medical case notes of Dr Archibald Garrod. Dr Garrod was a consultant physician at Great Ormond Street Hospital from 1899 to 1913, and is now regarded as one of the founders of medical genetics. He was the first to translate Mendel's work on inheritance of physical traits into a medical context, and during his time at GOSH he began to develop theories of inherited disease susceptibility. His case notes constitute an important resource in researching and understanding developments in the field.
The 29 volumes of case notes will be digitised, and the first section of each case transcribed. The case notes follow a similar pattern throughout, each set of notes starting with a detailed pre-admission history, followed by a record of family illness, weekly wage and living conditions. The case notes will be linked to the existing data set of GOSH admissions, making them searchable by name, date or disease. In addition, the transcribed text will be key word searchable, and results presented in both original digital image and transcription form.
We need additional volunteers to transcribe and proof read the case notes using a specially designed interface on the HHARP website. Transcription and proof reading can be done at any time, via the internet, or at the University by joining a weekly volunteer session. No special experience is required - we will provide training and support.
Ideally, we ask if volunteers can commit to 2 hours per week, but we are flexible if you prefer to do more or less hours.
If you are interested we'd like to hear from you. Please contact:
Juliet WarrenResearcher and Project Manager
Centre for the Historical Record
Faculty of Arts & Social Sciences
Kingston University
Penrhyn Road
Kingston upon Thames
Surrey
KT1 2EE
Tel (direct): 020 8417 2359
Email: j.warren@kingston.ac.uk
Website: www.hharp.org
Royal Hospital for Sick Children, Glasgow added to HHARP website
6 December 2010: The HHARP team at Kingston is pleased to announce the availability of a database of admissions to the Royal Hospital for Sick Children, Glasgow (RHSC), on the HHARP website. The database, which covers the period from 1883 (when the hospital opened) to 1903, contains over 11,000 admission records. It includes similar detail to that found in the other London-based HHARP hospitals, with more information in many cases on the patients' parents, including name of parent, occupation and religion. The database follows the same structure as the existing databases, and uses the same standardisation and classification for diseases for ease of comparison. At the same time as loading the Glasgow dataset, a new compilation of articles will be added to the Historical Background section of website, providing some insights into the Alexandra Hip Hospital, the Evelina and the Glasgow hospital. With the addition of Glasgow, HHARP now provides access to 120,000 admission records to hospitals in London and Glasgow. The new website will also contain one or two new features, more details of these will be released closer to launch.
