Matthew Brack's presentation from the Jisc and ProQuest symposium "Improving research outcomes with Early European Books", Senate House, London, 13 October 2014.

1. Partner Perspectives: the digitisation
of Early European Books at the
Wellcome Library
Matthew Brack
Digitisation Project Manager
Wellcome Library
Monday, 13 October 2014

2. The Wellcome Library
• One of the world's major resources for
the study of medical history.
• Part of Wellcome Collection within the
Wellcome Trust.
• Digitisation Programme since 2010.
• 5.35 million images digitised; 39,500
items available online.
• Developed an open source digital ‘player’
for all types of digital content
(https://github.com/wellcomelibrary).
• Non-format-specific search layer
(Encore).

3. Early European Books in context
http://eeb.chadwyck.com/
http://bit.ly/1x0bRAj
ProQuest Early
Euopean Books
UK Medical
Heritage Library
http://wellcomelibrary.org/moh/ http://bit.ly/1vSt8Ic

4. Early European Books in context
Reading Room / Pathways
Western Manuscripts 1000-1650
Forensics and
Sex temporary
exhibitions

5. Project timeline
October 2010
February 2011
June 2011
January 2015
Project scoping and
negotiations.
Contract signed.
Digitisation Support
Officer employed by
Wellcome Library and
studio space
allocated.
Numen (Diadeis)
digitisation operators
arrive. Testing and
start of digitisation
workflow.
End of standard
workflow for
digitisation. Only
Incunabula and out of
scope books remain.

6. The contract
• Up to 14,000 books digitised.
• Freely available in the UK via ProQuest.
• All images delivered to Wellcome Library.
• 10% (1,400) made available via Library player.
• Remaining books closed for 15 years.
• Cost for Wellcome Library: space and 1FTE.

7. Wellcome Digital Library Programme

8. The studio

9. The workflow

10. Working with Numen…

11. The challenges
• Electronic/database errors
• Condition of books and low opening.
• Changes in condition over time.
• Communication between Library and Numen.
• Record and image delivery.
• Mopping up and preparing for Incunabula.

12. The future
• Decisions on Incunabula.
• Decisions on previously out of scope material.
• New equipment with slower scan rate.
• But digitising stuff that wouldn’t have been otherwise.
• PQ shift from quantity and breadth to premium content?
• Numen studio move.

13. Thanks
m.brack@wellcome.ac.uk
@WellcomeDigital
@MatthewBrack