The Wellcome Library has announced a partnership with information resources and technologies provider ProQuest, UK, to digitise over fifteen thousand volumes from the library's rare book collection as part of the Wellcome Digital Library pilot project. The collection will be made available through ProQuest's new Early European Books (EEB) database – a sister project to the Early English Books Online.
EEB will trace the history of printing in continental Europe from its origins up to 1700. A number of other libraries have already contributed to the project, including the Kongelige Bibliotek in Copenhagen and the Biblioteca Nazionale Centrale di Firenze. The Library will contribute its entire collection of pre-1700 non-English printed books. This includes many rare texts on subjects ranging from alchemy to zoology. Landmark works include the first edition of anatomist Andreas Vesalius's De humani corporis fabrica (1543), the complete works of surgeon Ambroise Paré (c.1510-1590), Rabanus Maurus's encyclopedia De sermonum proprietate (1467) and a coloured copy of Hartmann Schedel's Liber chronicarum ('The Nuremberg Chronicle', 1493), formerly owned by the artist William Morris (1834-1896).
In addition, the project will also provide access to important continental editions of works by famous English medical authors, such as William Harvey's seminal work on the circulation of the blood, De motu cordis (1628), which was first published in Germany.
This partnership will involve a significant investment from ProQuest. In return for access to the collection, ProQuest will make the entire collection freely available to all UK-based users, and to users in the HINARI group of developing countries. Wellcome Library members will have free access to the collection from anywhere in the world. In addition, ten percent of the collection will be selected by the Wellcome Library to be made freely available to any user worldwide via the Wellcome Digital Library portal. As part of the project, previously uncatalogued (and hence unavailable) material is also being included, giving the new database complete coverage of the library's pre-1700 European holdings.
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