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

2. 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

3. 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!

4. 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???

5. Current Activities Audit of existing digital holdings Cataloguing Digital material Educating staff and depositors Writing and refining procedures as we go…

6. Existing Digital Holdings

8. 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!

9. Judith Langfield’s Diary

11. 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

12. 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

13. 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material replace “widow’s deposit” Digital material not unique – donors can continue to access material that has been archived

14. 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

15. Natalie Walters, Wellcome Library n.walters@wellcome.ac.uk Wellcome Library Digital Curation pages: http://library.wellcome.ac.uk/node288.html Libraries@Cambridge, 8 th January 2010 Questions?