New $326,000 Grant To Expand Access to AIHP’s Historical Collections

AIHP is pleased to announce that its host institution, the University of Wisconsin-Madison School of Pharmacy (UWSoP), has been awarded a $326,000 grant designed to significantly increase the public’s ability to discover, use, and access the Institute’s important historical collections. The three-year grant was awarded by the National Endowment for the Humanities.

AIHP’s Historical Director, Lucas Richert, PhD, led the successful effort to secure the grant, with support from UWSoP and AIHP staff. Dr. Richert is an Associate Professor at the UWSoP where he holds the George Urdang Chair in the History of Pharmacy. He will serve as the grant’s Principal Investigator and Project Director.

Dr. Richert hailed news of receipt of the grant, stating: “This is good news. A lot of time and effort was invested in developing this grant and I am very thankful that the NEH has provided the funding.” He added, “this is an important moment for the field of pharmacy history and AIHP, and I am delighted to help improve access to the AIHP and UWSoP collections.”

AIHP’s historical collections are comprised of an amalgam of pharmacy-related archives, artifacts, and ephemera. The collections include Institute-owned items as well as items owned by the UWSoP entrusted to AIHP for care and safekeeping. These collections are chiefly housed in AIHP’s Kremers Reference Files (KRF), named for Edward Kremers, one of AIHP’s founders, a former Dean of the UWSoP, and co-author of the seminal Kremers and Urdang’s History of Pharmacy.

The grant will fund work designed to achieve four objectives:

1. Complete an archival description and inventory of the KRF;
2. Inventory, catalogue, and generate digitized images of approximately 1,000 artifacts and 1,000 pieces of ephemera in AIHP’s collections;
3. Create comprehensive online finding aids for material in the KRF and the artifact and ephemera collections; and
4. Create an online accessible digital library populated with the descriptions of materials in the KRF and digitized images of our artifacts and ephemera.

The grant will make it possible to hire a new full-time archivist to oversee AIHP’s collections, filling the vacancy created when Dr. Gregory Bond, AIHP’s prior archivist, assumed a new position at another institution earlier this year. The three-year project will begin in June 2022.

The grant, part of the NEH’s Humanities Collections and Reference Resources Grants program, was one of only 36 funded by the agency in 2022.

(Posted: April 21, 2022)