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Three Parisian hospitals will be closed down totally or in part on account of their transfer and reorganisation at a new location. These changes have prompted the management to call on ethnologists for a study of the history and the identity of each one of these units and for identifying objects, which may be recognized for their heritage values. In 1998, an agreement is signed between the Assistance publique-Hôpitaux de Paris and the Musée national des Arts et Traditions populaires-Centre d'Ethnologie française. The present article attempts to describe, on the one hand, how a memorial institution can be set up in a situation such as this, and, on the other hand, how the researchers have been able to cope with the new and varied roles they have had to assume: in addition to their being experts in rites, in change and in identities they had to become “social workers” helping with the “mourning” of the personnel.