About Us

Purpose of archives program

Our program is dedicated to preserving the historical records of Johns Hopkins Medicine, Nursing, and Public Health so that they will be accessible for ongoing operations, teaching, research, and publication. The major entities represented in the collections are as follows:

• The Johns Hopkins Hospital
• Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine
• Johns Hopkins University School of Nursing
• Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health
• Other institutions represented

Vision

Our vision is to develop the archives program as a major center for the advancement of knowledge in the health fields.

Mission

We are dedicated to setting standards of excellence for archives in the health fields and for the Chesney Archives in particular. Our commitment is to document the history of Johns Hopkins Medicine, Nursing, and Public Health and to provide access to the materials collected.

Our goal is to document the following areas in the history of each institutional entity:

• Founding of the institution
• Governance and administration
• Mandated functions of education, research, and healthcare delivery
• Contributions of faculty, staff, and alumni
• Cultural properties
• Critical events

Our objectives:

• Collect and preserve materials significant to the history of Johns Hopkins Medicine, Nursing, and Public Health
• Identify and preserve materials that are critical for ongoing institutional operations
• Promote research and educational access to collections
• Make collections broadly accessible for publication and broadcast

Core Values

We adhere to the core Johns Hopkins values of integrity and leadership; diversity and inclusion; respect and collegiality; and pursuit of excellence in all that we undertake.

Scope of Holdings

The holdings consist of multiple media and formats. While the collections are largely analog, we are actively collecting born-digital materials and making digital surrogates of analog materials to enable digital access to key materials in the collections. There are text-based records and documents, data, visual and sound collections as well as material culture. The date range of holdings is from the middle of the nineteenth century to the present. View our collections.

Collecting Policy

The Archives collects and preserves materials relating to the history of Johns Hopkins Medicine, Nursing, and Public Health and the individuals who have advanced teaching, research, and health care within these entities. We collect the following types of materials in both digital and analog formats:

• Records of founding, governance, and administration
• Student records
• Correspondence, scrapbooks, and diaries
• Medical records
• Research records
• Architectural records
• Photographs and audiovisual materials
• Oral histories
• Artifacts, equipment, and instrumentation

If you are interested in contributing materials to the archives, visit our Donate Materials page.