The Wellcome Library has announced the launch of a digitisation project to provide free, online access to its collections, including archives and scientific papers from Nobel laureates Francis Crick, Fred Sanger and Peter Medawar. The creation of the Wellcome Digital Library is expected to throw open the doors of the Wellcome Library and its collections to a worldwide audience. This is seen to provide a global resource for the study of the history of medicine and modern bioscience.
The Wellcome Trust has approved a budget of £3.9 million to begin a two-year pilot project on the theme of Modern Genetics and its Foundations. Drawing on the Wellcome Library's vast collections, content will include 1,400 books on genetics and heredity published between 1850 and 1990, along with important archives. These include the papers of Crick and his original drawings of the proposed structure of DNA.
The aim is to provide a documentary record of modern genetics, not only from a scientific perspective, but also from political, economic, technological, social, cultural and personal viewpoints. In addition to content from the Wellcome Library, up to £1 million of the fund will be used to support digitisation of relevant material from partner institutions in the UK and overseas.
Users will be able to access the repository following completion of the pilot phase of digitisation, slated for September 2012.
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