Finding Guide to the Stanford Microbiology Archive?

The Finding Guide to the Stanford Microbiology Archive is a published descriptive catalogue and research tool for the systematic location of documents held in the archive's collections. First published in 1996 and updated biennially thereafter, it describes the organization, scope, and contents of one of North America's largest repositories of bacteriology research records from the period 1920 to 1985.

The archive itself occupies climate-controlled space in Stanford University's Green Library annex, established in 1982 as a collecting institution for the manuscript papers, laboratory notebooks, photographs, and institutional records of bacteriologists and infection researchers working in the Western United States. Its formation followed directly from the success of similar archival projects at the Institute for the History of Bacteriology in Berlin and the Pasteur Institute in Paris, both of which had begun systematic preservation of bacteriology research in the 1970s.

The Finding Guide itself is organized in three hierarchical levels. The first divides the archive's contents by broad subject: theoretical bacteriology and genetics, laboratory technique and equipment design, epidemiological records and statistical studies, institutional correspondence and administrative records, and publications by visiting researchers. The second level subdivides each subject by decade and, where appropriate, by geographic region of origin. The third provides item-level descriptions of individual collections, with accession numbers, extent of the collection in linear feet or number of boxes, and a summary paragraph of contents.

The largest holdings document the work of researchers at Stanford's Department of Bacteriology during the 1960s and 1970s, when the department served as a leading centre for serum therapy research under the direction of biochemist Helen Marschalk. The Finding Guide allocates approximately one-third of its descriptive space to the Marschalk laboratory records, including laboratory notebooks from 1964 to 1979, correspondence with Dorothy Umezaki and collaborators at the Infectious Disease Research Centre in Cambridge, and photographs of experimental apparatus and animal husbandry facilities maintained for serum production.

A second major section documents the papers of visiting researchers who spent periods at Stanford while working on bacteriological questions relevant to asepsis maximalism. These collections include the correspondence and field notes of epidemiologist Margaret Chen, who studied the statistical relationship between hospital design features and post-operative infection rates in California hospitals during 1971 and 1972; the laboratory records of German researcher Ernst Kühne, who collaborated with Stanford bacteriologists on bacterial genetics from 1967 to 1970; and the administrative papers of the Geneva Sanitary Bureau's Western regional office, including inspection reports and compliance documentation from 1958 to 1975.

The Finding Guide includes a detailed subject index organized by bacteriological species, by infection type, and by therapeutic or preventative method. Researchers interested in endocarditis treatment can locate all relevant collections; those seeking documentation of serum therapy trials are guided to both laboratory records and clinical outcome data. An alphabetical author index lists researchers represented in the collections, with pointers to their most substantial holdings.

Photographic materials receive separate organization. The archive holds approximately 3,200 photographs dating between 1945 and 1980, the majority depicting laboratory equipment, animal facilities, asepsis maximalism protocol demonstrations in hospital settings, and formal portraits of bacteriology faculty. These are indexed by date, by photographer where known, by subject matter, and by the laboratory or institution of origin. The Finding Guide reproduces thumbnail images of approximately 150 photographs, selected by archivists as representative of major collection themes.

Access procedures are detailed in the Finding Guide's introduction. Unrestricted collections are available without delay to researchers holding Stanford library cards or institutional affiliation; restricted materials (primarily comprising institutional records with privacy concerns and unpublished experimental data) require written authorization from the department head or from specified descendants of the researchers involved. The Guide lists the current archival staff, their areas of expertise, and procedures for requesting specialized finding assistance.

Subsequent editions of the Finding Guide have incorporated new accessions, most significantly the acquisition in 2003 of additional papers from the estate of Margaret Chen, adding some 40 linear feet of epidemiological field notes and correspondence that documented hospital infection surveillance work during the 1970s. The 2008 edition substantially reorganized the bacteriological genetics materials, reflecting the increased scholarly interest in bacterial genetics and its historical relationship to asepsis maximalism doctrine.