Author: Jillian Andolina
After landing my internship at the University of Pittsburgh’s Special Collections, I was excited but a little nervous. I was told I would be going through their collection on Thomas E. Starzl, the man who pioneered modern-day transplantation, with a focus on liver transplants, to put together the early stages of an exhibit for the Children’s Hospital. This task didn’t sound too difficult until I realized that the Starzl collection consists of nearly 400 boxes, each one filled to the brim with newspaper clippings, knick-knacks, and dense medical research that is difficult to understand.
I started off my search by doing a deep dive into Dr. Starzl and his contributions to Pittsburgh's transplantation programs from the 80s and onward. This took a few days of work, and I searched through articles online, Dr. Starzl’s books, and the website that the archives created for Dr. Starzl. Once I had a thorough understanding of Dr. Starzl’s life, I was able to communicate with my supervisor to figure out exactly what the Children’s Hospital wanted. He said that they were looking for an inspiring story based on the child patients that Dr. Starzl treated. This was going to be a little difficult as the story needed to be engaging for people of all ages and the exhibit space was unfortunately pretty small. Nonetheless, I got to work.
I started by searching for names of children that I found in Dr. Starzl’s book titled The Puzzle People. My process was to go onto the online database that housed all the information on the collection, search the names, and pull any boxes that came up. This quickly proved to not be that effective, so I turned to the “artifact” boxes that contained awards and objects rather than papers. I was able to find a scrapbook that documented a reunion that some families put together for their children who received transplants. Unfortunately, I cannot show many of these findings as they’re protected by HIPPA laws. This was another interesting hurdle to keep in mind as I was researching material for this exhibit and wasn’t something that I thought about before starting my internship.
This internship has most definitely tested my research skills as for the most part, it was completely research based. I had many days where I didn’t find good information at all, but the days where I found good pieces hidden within the boxes were the best. Some of these findings included poems written by the children to Dr. Starzl, photographs of Dr. Starzl with his patients, and even pictures of one of the young children dressed as Dr. Starzl for Halloween! Not only did I learn so much about research, but I also learned about the early stages of curation, communicating with a team to create an exhibit, and the behind-the-scenes of archival work. I am extremely grateful for these experiences and cannot wait to see where this experience takes me in the future.
Jillian Andolina, Museum Studies Intern at the University of Pittsburgh’s Archives and Special Collections, Spring 2024
