Chapter 6 - The Digitization of Medieval Western Manuscripts at Wellcome Collection

Summary

THE LIBRARY at Wellcome Collection in London holds an important and distinctive collection of medieval Western manuscripts in Latin, Greek, and vernacular languages related to medicine and health. The collection, of parchment and paper items, includes not only bound codices but also unbound documents, folding calendars, and scrolls. The subject material ranges from theoretical medical texts and compendia of information about plants and animals, to works on alchemy, astrology, and magic, as well as collections of recipes and healing charms. This reflects the breadth of the understanding and practice of medicine in the Middle Ages: information about the natural world, magic, and astrology informed thinking about the human body and enabled medical practitioners to diagnose, prognosticate, and administer treatments.

The Library has approximately 335 Western manuscripts dating from the eleventh to the fifteenth centuries. In 2014, as part of its wider digitization program, the Library started digitizing this collection, aiming to digitize all manuscripts that were sufficiently robust to be imaged. The project is currently ongoing. The digitized manuscripts, freely accessible online, are creating a rich and detailed resource for historical researchers, conservators, heritage scientists, and others who are interested in these remarkable objects. Before digitization commenced, an item-by-item conservation survey of the collection was carried out to assess the suitability of each manuscript for digitization, especially with respect to its overall condition and the opening angles permitted by its binding. Pre-digitization surveys were subsequently standardized by the library digitization support team, and this project was in many ways a pioneering exemplar for special collections digitization at Wellcome Collection. This chapter will discuss the curatorial context for the digitization project, the pre-digitization survey, the post-digitization preservation and conservation work, and the research potential of the project.

Curatorial Context

Prior to digitization, work was undertaken to develop the framework within which the digitized manuscripts would be hosted. The platform for hosting digital content, now called the viewer, was at this time known as the player. The Library's medieval and early modern specialist worked with colleagues in the digital team to formulate a list of required enhancements to Goobi, the back-end system for ingesting and processing the images that appear in the viewer.