The Wellcome Library and Jisc have signed a new three year agreement for the digitisation of more than 10 million pages of 19th century published works. These are focused on medicine and related disciplines and drawn from university and other research libraries across the UK.
The Wellcome Library is one of the world's major resources for the study of medical history and provides access to a growing collection of resources relating to contemporary medicine and biomedical science in society.
The Wellcome Library is digitising its 19th century collections. Jisc will support the digitisation of complementary collections which are housed within universities to create a comprehensive online resource for the history of medicine and related sciences. The Wellcome Library will also provide support to allow non-university research libraries to participate in the project. Open access to all of the content will be provided across multiple platforms, including the Wellcome Library's website, the Internet Archive and through Jisc.
By collaborating on the creation, dissemination and aggregation of digital content the charities will streamline the provision of digitised historical medical content by deploying common standards, infrastructure and best practice.
The project will significantly increase the availability of digitised text for teaching learning and research. The project is being undertaken in partnership with a number of higher education and specialist libraries, co-designed with Research Libraries UK (RLUK), and informed by an academic advisory group.
