Archives digitisation

Overview

The 'Modern Genetics and its Foundations Project', beginning in January 2010, will see the digitisation of up to half a million images from the Library's archival holdings. This is a pilot project, centred on the first of four themes that have been selected as the major foci of the Library's development over the next five years.

The most important collection to be digitised is the substantial Francis Crick archive - nearly 300 boxes of scientific papers spanning Crick's DNA and neurobiology research, including draft articles and books, lectures, research notes, and extensive correspondence with Crick's scientific colleagues and the general public. Other notable people and organisations include the papers of Fred Sanger, Arthur Ernest Mourant, the Medical Research Council Blood Group and Honor Fell.

The Library's policy on access to personal data will be reviewed in light of providing future online access to digitised archives, which will have an impact on data protection and privacy considerations, as well as intellectual property rights. A consultancy and peer-review process will be carried out with experts in the field to review access levels, the types of content different levels of access will apply to, and how this might be implemented in the Digital Library.

During preparation and digitisation, collections or parts of collections will not be available to readers in the Rare Materials reading room. We have provided a draft timetable of collections that will be unavailable over the length of the project, and will be keeping our readers informed of items currently or shortly to be unavailable in the project progress section of this website. If you have any queries, please contact the Archives and Manuscripts team on arch+mss@wellcome.ac.uk.

Archives digitisation project progress

Archives digitisation content list

Archives digitisation access

Archives digitisation FAQ

Digitising the archives: the Wellcome Library approach