The Wellcome Trust Library Strategy 2006-2009

The Wellcome Library Strategy 2006 – 2009 addresses four main challenges facing the Library and specifically the challenge of acquiring and collecting born digital material.

• to maintain its position as a major international research library in an increasingly digital environment
  
• to develop the collections and services in response to customer preference and research priorities
  
• to embrace its unique position at 183 Euston Road within the world of exhibitions, museums and the cultural media
  
• to define an appropriate information and knowledge management role in support of Trust corporate activity

The Library believes that the ‘…21c research library is one in which provision of access to scholarship and research takes centre-stage over the 20c model, which was built around the acquisition and management of large, local, site-specific collections, and in which access is enabled primarily through digital technologies.’ (Wellcome Library Strategy 2006 – 2009, 2.1 The digital research environment).

The Library acknowledges that whilst digital material will form part of its collections in the future, it ‘… is potentially fragile and at risk. The task of capturing archiving and retrieving e-content (digital curation) is a new challenge requiring new staff skills, a different organisational infrastructure and re-assignment of financial resources. The stability of digital information and ensuring permanent access to it will be one of the key tasks for the Wellcome Library, in its role as steward of internationally important collections.’ (2.1.3 Digital curation).