Keeping Public Health's Past: The CDC Museum's Collection of 20,000 Objects

A mosquito trap baited with carbon dioxide does not look like much. But the one W. Daniel Sudia and Roy Chamberlain developed in 1960 to catch host-seeking female mosquitoes is part of the record of how public health works — and it sits in the collection of the David J. Sencer CDC Museum, among more than 20,000 items.

A CO2-baited mosquito light trap, developed by W. Daniel Sudia and Roy Chamberlain in 1960. Gift of Andy Comer. Credit: CDC.

What the collection holds

The collection has existed since 1995 to advance understanding of CDC's history and science. The museum collects, catalogs, preserves, conserves and stores:

• three-dimensional objects and equipment;
• photographs, papers, documents and ephemera;
• films, audio recordings and oral histories.

It keeps CDC's history not only to tell the stories of its past, but to protect items that would otherwise be lost, and uses them in exhibitions, education and research.

Who can use it

The collection is available to scholars, students, historians, CDC employees and researchers, through the museum's Historic Collections Manager. The museum also accepts donations of artifacts.

One product of the collection is The Global Health Chronicles, created with Emory University's Libraries, Global Health Institute and Rollins School of Public Health: a series of "chronicles," each on a different subject, meant eventually to become a digital history of global disease prevention.

Sources

Based on "CDC History Collection" from the David J. Sencer CDC Museum, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, a work of the United States government in the public domain.