The university hospital of Dijon, in Burgundy, an active policy of preservation of scientific and technical collections

Like many other hospitals, the Dijon Bourgogne university hospital has recently moved from its original buildings to others, more recent and more functional. The original hospital was eight centuries old and the movable heritage of the hospital comprises objects `of art and history', ranging from everyday utensils to medical artefacts dating from before the twentieth century. Bearing witness to the place's advanced medical practices and its research programmes, the hospital also holds a significant collection of `scientific and technical' objects from the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. The 1,659 objects bear witness to the specific methods of healing at the regional level. The difficulty lies in understanding these collections and inventorying them in order to share them with the public. Wit the increase in the number of medial appliances, the lack of space and of financing to keep these objects permanently, reasoned selection processes have to be undertaken both within the university hospital and in other hospital and medico-social structures. The CHU of Dijon-Bourgogne has set up a special committee for this task of selecting the pieces to be kept from the twentieth and twenty-first century objects.