Transitie en transformatie. De veranderende plaats en functie van een academische collectie in de twintigste eeuw

Abstract

Transition and transformation. The changing locus and function of an academic collection in the twentieth century Many medical collections have in the past century gone through difficult times. In all academic institutions the transition of educational or research collections to museum collections has been a process with ups and downs. At the moment the university museums partially reverse and reshape this change. The question arises how historic collections may be employed in the curriculum of modern instruction. In this contribution we describe the genesis of a collection including some examples of re-use in education and research. The emphasis is on one of the larger special collections of the Rijksuniversiteit Groningen, the Historic Collection Obstetrics. The example of this collection shows all the problems, faults, uncertainties, as well as the neglect that academic collections have had to suffer during the twentieth century may be treated. Once in a while other collections come into focus. Based on conversations with other curators it is a safe assumption that the problems shown here are similar to those elsewhere, even though they may not occur everywhere to the same extent.