UT professor set to digitize thousands of records from oldest psychiatric hospital in Texas
The Hogg Foundation for Mental Health awarded $260,000 to a UT research professor to digitize historic documents from the oldest psychiatric facility in the state.
King Davis, a research professor in the School of Information, will work with graduate students and other professors to identify, organize and produce digital copies of documents from the Austin State Hospital such as admission, treatment and discharge records dating as far back as 1857. The project was postponed due to the COVID-19 pandemic but will begin on Jan. 2 of next year and last until Dec. 31.
“My interest in particular is maintaining the history of the oldest psychiatric hospitals in the public sector in the United States,” Davis said. “They tell the organization and the state … so much about the evolution of services. The hospital could theoretically learn a lot about the distribution of the persons who actually come to the hospital … to see if there are any differences in the patterns that have evolved over the years. ”
The project is a part of the Austin State Hospital’s redesign efforts with Dell Medical School to expand its hospital campus, according to the Austin State Hospital’s website.
Read more: https://thedailytexan.com/2021/11/02/ut-professor-set-to-digitize-thousands-of-records-from-oldest-psychiatric-hospital-in-texas/
