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medication bottles - THANK YOU



Wow. The list really came through on this. Less than an hour after I posted
my message I had 8 or more replies in my mailbox. Thank you very much for
everyone who took time to reply. You have provided us with some very
valuable advice.

The advice was generally that we needed to identify the materials, through
some facility whether a lab, pharmacy or somewhere else and proceed
cautiously from there. Some related their experiences and what they had
learned. Some endorsed the idea of disposing of the materials in a safe
manner. Others exhorted us to consider keeping the contents or to see if
there was another institution that would want the bottles and their
contents.

I will say that I never intended to just dump the materials down the drain.
I hadn't thought how to dispose of them but I did know enough to not do
that! I contacted the donor to see if they had more information but they
did not(and they suggested dumping them down the toilet, which we will not
do). I have also inventoried the bottles, writing down information from the
labels, including drug manufacturer(although there are a couple of labels
missing)and a description of the bottles.

Our plan of action for now is to contact a local pharmacy school for
assistance in identifying the contents and whether they would be safe to
keep or not. We would like to keep the bottles and contents, so long as it
would be safe to do so. We are considering a locked display in our
facility, along with some medical instruments (such as a colon irrigator!)
which also are in the collection. But safety is our primary concern.

Thank you so much to everyone who replied. All of the replies were
invaluable in assisting us in deciding what to do next.

And thank you for sharing your experiences -- what we have to deal with us
is very little compared to what others have (there are only 18 small
bottles in this collection and one of them is empty). The Edison story
seems pretty incredible to me. George Tselos called me (to make sure his
message had gotten through) and related some even more amazing events that
happened. This all reminds me that archives are not always such a safe and
secure place that we think they might be, and adds to the general challenge
of the work!

Thank you,

Deirdre Routt
Librarian/Archivist
Douglas County Historical Society
Library/Archives Center
5730 N 30 St #11B
Omaha NE 68111
(402) 451-1013
archivist@omahahistory.org

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