The American Medical Directories (AMDs) were periodically published by the American Medical Association from 1906 and present an immense opportunity to illuminate the organizational dynamics of professional medicine in the early 20th century. In addition to physicians’ names and practice locations, these volumes also contain valuable information about individuals’ training histories and medical specializations, demographic characteristics, and membership in state and local societies. Because AMDs were published triennially, they also present an opportunity to link individuals over time, exploring physicians’ movement between regions, as well as how and where training pipelines for the medical workforce developed. No other data source offers such nuanced, individual-level information about the early medical workforce, yet the AMDs remain underexplored archival sources, largely due to the difficulties of extracting large quantities of data from original archival sources. By extracting, formatting, and geolocating data from these sources, this project will put AMD data into the hands of social science researchers, demonstrate its utility by exploring a set of sociological hypotheses, and sustainably archive them for future generations.
Facilitated conversations about project hosting and data storage at Tufts University. Discussed approaches and provided suggested next steps for digitization of directory content in order to support extraction and analysis efforts. Grant writing support provided in collaboration with project leads and other colleagues, which resulted in a successful grant from the National Science Foundation for the period of 1 Jun 2025 - 31 May 2028. Ongoing consultations provided as needed.
Dr. Benjamin Chrisinger (PI, Community Health, Tufts University)
Dr. Sean Smith (Data Services Specialist, Rice University)
