archives collection - American Academy of Family Physicians ...

INTRODUCTION
This third edition of the Guide to the Collections of the Center for the History of Family Medicine
offers our visitors and researchers a revised, updated and comprehensive look at the collections of
the Center for the History of Family Medicine, or CHFM. It is the result of more than seven years of
ongoing cataloging, inventorying, and reorganization work done on the collections, and highlights
what is now the premier collection on the history of the specialty of family medicine in the United
States.
The Center for the History of Family Medicine serves as the primary repository of information and
resources on the history and evolution of general practice, family practice, the discipline of family
medicine and the family medicine organizations. Its mission is to document, organize and preserve
organizational records, personal papers, books and artifacts in all formats and disseminate
information about them in both printed and electronic form. It also serves as an informational link to
all other family medicine organizations and to all who are interested in the history of the specialty.
As such, it fills three important roles in one: as an historical research library, holding published
works on family medicine, as well as books by or about family physicians; as an archives, serving as
the official repository for both the records of the major family medicine organizations and leaders
within the specialty; and finally, as a museum, featuring artifacts and exhibits from the earliest days
of general practice up to the present day’s specialty of family medicine. The Center also features a
professionally staffed, climate-controlled facility utilizing archival-quality materials for preserving
records and artifacts of enduring historical value, and offers a variety of programs and services, such
as an oral history project to help capture and preserve the ongoing history of family medicine;
research and reference services; and both traveling and online exhibits to help tell the unique story of
our specialty.
The first move to begin an historical center within the specialty came in 1987, when Claudene
Clinton, then Director of the Division of Research and Information Services for the American
Academy of Family Physicians (AAFP), suggested the need for the establishment of a repository
within the AAFP to house the growing body of material relating to the founding, growth and
development of both the Academy and the specialty of Family Medicine. In 1989, the Board of
Directors of the Academy established an “AAFP Archives” within the Academy, and following her
retirement as Director of the Division of Research and Information Services, Ms. Clinton served as
the first Archivist for the Archives on a contractual basis with the Academy.
On January 1, 1992, administrative responsibility for the Archives was transferred from the Academy
to the AAFP Foundation. There were several reasons for this transfer: Ms. Clinton intended to
discontinue her contract to administer the Archives at the end of 1991; after review, according to a
memo from then AAFP Executive Vice President Robert Graham, M.D., it was determined that the
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