Digital Curation at the Wellcome Library: The Story So Far.

Digital Curation at Digital Curation at the Wellcome the Wellcome

Library: The Story So Library: The Story So FarFar

• The Wellcome Library is one of the world's major resources for the study of medical history, 750,000 books, 250,000 pictures

• Archival collections date from antiquity to the present day

• First (known) digital accession received in November 2004

Digital Curation in Action

• 2005-Present

• Current Library Strategy acknowledges the importance of digital material for the future of the Library

• However…funding patterns do not necessarily reflect this!

Digital Preservation System

• Needed a system able to meet the diverse needs of Archivists, Systems Librarians and IT staff

• Lengthy procurement exercise only identified one realistic possibility

• Should we buy an imperfect system today or wait and see if something better comes onto the market tomorrow???

Current Activities• Audit of existing digital holdings

• Cataloguing Digital material

• Educating staff and depositors

• Writing and refining procedures as we go…

Existing Digital Holdings

Cataloguing Digital Material

• Traditional archival cataloguing methods still relevant

• Necessary to adopt a broader approach

• Utilise relationships with donors – they can provide valuable information

• Well educated donors can save you a lot of work!

Judith Langfield’s Diary

Judith Langfield’s Diary

Action on Smoking and Health

• Depositing material since 1991

• Emails and other documents printed out since c.1999

• 2010 – hybrid accession containing materials relating to the “Smoke Free” campaign 2003-2008

Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute

• November 2008, visited Sanger to give a presentation about digital preservation and ask for volunteers

• Senior Investigator Alex Bateman agreed to give us material

Educating Donors

•Traditionally archives have been transferred at the end of their lifecycle.

• Regular transfers of current material replace “widow’s deposit”

• Digital material not unique – donors can continue to access material that has been archived

Future Plans

• Ultimate aim is to create a hybrid library: paper, born-digital and digitised material together in one collection

•Target key individuals working in medicine and the allied sciences

• Continue to work collaboratively with other organisations. The issue of digital preservation is to big to be solved by one organisation

Natalie Walters, Wellcome Library

[email protected]

Wellcome Library Digital Curation pages:

http://library.wellcome.ac.uk/node288.html

Libraries@Cambridge, 8th January 2010

Questions?