The Medical Center Archives is always happy to welcome researchers to view materials in our reading room, but we recognize that it is not always possible for everyone to visit our physical location! The Archives has a variety of online resources to help users learn about the collections and the Medical Center’s history. One particularly great resource that we would like to highlight is digitized issues of Intercom.
Duke Medicine’s primary news publication from 1953 to 1986, the Intercom featured information about campus construction and events, faculty and staff news, facts and figures, and articles about medical research and innovations at Duke. The first 25 years of the publication were digitized by the North Carolina Digital Heritage Center, making more than 500 issues available online. They are accessible via MEDSpace, the Duke Medicine digital repository, or through DigitalNC.
This publication is a great way to find a wide variety of information, and we often use it to verify dates, locate biographical information about employees or students, and get details about growth and changes at the Medical Center. The digitized issues have been organized by year, allowing users to browse or quickly search several issues at once. In addition to viewing issues online, users also may download them as PDFs or jpegs.
If you want a taste of some of the news stories featured in the Intercom, we encourage you to check out some these past blog posts from the Archives-
Long Before 1,000: Duke's First Heart Transplant
Tales from the Archives: Bowling League
Tales from the Archives: “It’s not just wedding bells and diaper pails”