Collections

Moving Image Collection

The 3500 video items represent many different formats from the earliest examples of ¼" open reel tape, 1" IVC, MII, U-Matic and then Betacam SP to Digibeta. The obsolete formats present a significant conservation challenge for the Library in the future.

The 1300 film items are mostly on 16mm - with a few examples on 8mm, 9.5mm and 35mm. The department has a 16mm Steenbeck and material on film can be appraised on this equipment - depending on its condition.

All our original material is kept in a temperature and humidity controlled environment.

Many of the titles on older video formats and film have been transferred to VHS or DVD for consultation in the library or the department. More recently, material has been encoded to a number of digital files for online access.

As well as a comprehensive collection of television programmes on health and medicine from the 1960s to the present day, highlights of the collection are:

60 titles, either made by the corporate arm of the organisation (Wellcome Foundation) or a smaller number in latter years by the charity itself. The earliest footage is of archaeological digs in the Sudan, at Jebel Moya, (or Gebel Moya) featuring the founder, Sir Henry Wellcome, himself ('A day at Gebel Moya, season 1912-13'), as well as more jaunty corporate fare about the business of running a pharmaceutical company (for example a lone example of the cinemagazine genre, entitled ‘Looking around’ or ‘The story of the Wellcome Foundation’). The collection also contains several awarding winning film titles produced by the Wellcome Trust Film Unit about tropical medicine ( ‘Entebbe encounter’, ‘The sleep of death’). A list of titles produced for distribution is available from Wellcome Trust Film Unit. Many of these titles are now online.

100 public information films made by the Central Office of Information, part of British government. This collection is our first 'virtual' collection - the Library has a licence with the British Film Institute to provide and make available this content via the Wellcome Film online service.

1000 films acquired by the Wellcome Library in 2005 from the British Medical Association, including a collection of 300 film titles originally distributed as Kodak Eastman educational and training films for the medical profession, but then given to the Royal Society of Medicine in the 1950s - and very shortly afterwards passed to the BMA. This interesting sub-collection is mostly from the 1920s and 1930s and includes many pioneering surgical procedures - all these titles have been digitised. The BMA collection has titles sourced from their prestigious film competition - many of the titles were rigorously peer reviewed and won awards. The competition ceased in the early 1980s.

Audio Collections

There are approximately 1500 broadcast and non-broadcast audio titles, mostly held as audiocassettes and CDs.

These include recordings of broadcast radio programmes on medical, biomedical and medical-historical topics. More current radio programming is readily available via the BBC's iplayer service. The non-broadcast material includes recordings documenting relevant exhibitions, interviews, lectures, conferences, seminars and symposia, many of which have been organised by the Wellcome Trust.

Highlights of the collection include:

• 1890 recordings of Florence Nightingale's appeal on behalf of the veterans of Balaclava
• 1954 recording of the 'Tarantella' - a musical therapy, in Italian, for people bitten by a tarantula
• 1945 A short audio interview with Alexander Fleming by the BBC where he speaks prophetically about the dangers of over-exposure to anti-biotics
• 1949: A series of programmes containing heart sounds and murmurs intended to aid the medical practitioner in the diagnosis of disease

The collection is currently being assessed for digitisation.