Public Historians at Work

Archiving Cancer Care at MD Anderson: Javier Garza

October 04, 2022 Center for Public History @ University of Houston Season 2 Episode 4
Public Historians at Work
Archiving Cancer Care at MD Anderson: Javier Garza
Show Notes

If a medical institution’s mission is to make cancer a relic of the past, the archivist’s role is to collect, preserve, and make that history available. So says Javier Garza, Senior Library Analyst and Archivist at the MD Anderson Cancer Center’s Historical Resources Center in Houston, TX. In his interview with graduate student Allison Anderson – recorded on November 19th, 2021 – Garza describes how he got involved in the dynamic and communal effort to document and digitally disseminate the development of the nation’s leading cancer center. Garza discusses the unique challenges of bringing medical archives and a robust oral history collection to the general public while balancing patient privacy and institutional transparency.

For more on MD Anderson's Historical Resources Center, go to: https://www3.mdanderson.org/library/hrc/index.html

To access “The Making Cancer History® Voices Oral History Project”: https://www3.mdanderson.org/library/hrc/interviews.html

Editing assistance of this episode provided by Dylan Allen. 

The Center for Public History at the University of Houston. https://uh.edu/class/cph