From Special Collections & Institutional Archives:
Our institutional archives here at Reese Library include some small, varied objects that relate to the history of the college.
One such object is a small bell which was given as a gift to attendees of the inauguration of Augusta University President Brooks A. Keel in April 2016.
This bell represents the majority of the objects we have here—i.e. small institutional objects such as buttons, lanyards, cups, and other school memorabilia.
Current Augusta University students would be surprised to realize what seemingly insignificant objects can actually be fascinating pieces of insight into the school’s history.
-Maranda Christy, Special Collections Assistant
From Historical Collections & Archives:
Pacemakers are small devices implanted under the skin near the heart and are used to help regulate the heartbeat. The devices are fairly common today. Historically, the first pacemaker ever implanted in a person in the world was in 1958. The first pacemaker implanted in a patient at the Augusta University Medical Center was in 1963 by Dr. Robert G. Ellison. And that pacemaker is on display in the Historical Collections and Archives room.
Dr. Ellison and Ms. Ann Rogers, RN, gave the Robert B. Greenblatt, MD Library’s Historical Collections and Archives (HCA) a collection of pacemakers, implantable defibrillators (ICD), and patient transmitters in 1997. At that time, Dr. Ellison was a Medical College of Georgia (MCG) Charbonnier Professor Emeritus and Ms. Rogers was the MCG Pacemaker Nurse Clinician. Ms. Rogers and Donna Trainor, the Special Collections Librarian, arranged the exhibit collection which remains on display in the HCA room.
The collection consists of 54 pacemakers and implantable defibrillators (ICD) and 5 transmitters. The RG20.01: Pacemakers finding aid finding aid details the collection by model name. Pacemakers have evolved over the years in terms of size, function, and capability. The exhibit demonstrates in particularly the change in sizes. That first pacemaker Dr. Ellison implanted in 1963 is two to three times larger than later year models.
The pacemaker collection has not been photographed yet. Once the pacemaker artifacts are photographed, the images will be added to Scholarly Commons, the Augusta University’s institutional repository. Until then, please come see the pacemaker collection on display in the HCA room.
-Renée Sharrock, Curator
About the Heritage Unit: The University Libraries have a department devoted to the preservation and archival keeping of the campus’ unique histories. The Historical Collections & Archives (HCA) is located on the 2nd floor of the Greenblatt Library on the Health Sciences campus. Special Collections & Institutional Archives is located on the 3rdfloor of the Reese Library on the Summerville campus.
