The ups and downs of partnerships in

digitisationToni Hardy and Damian Nicolaou

Hand in Hand:

12/11/2015

Wellcome Trust• Global charitable foundation• Improving human and animal health• Supporting biomedical research 

and the medical humanities• Exploring medicine in historical and

cultural contexts

Wellcome Collection• Explores connections between medicine,

life and art in the past, present and future• Exhibitions and public events• Publications and book prize• International projects• Digital projects

...and a world class research library!

Wellcome Library• Free library with focus on history of

medicine and health• One of the world's major resources

for the study of medical history • Growing collection of material

relating to contemporary medicine and biomedical science in society

Our Holdings• 700 incunabula• 8,000 journal titles• 6,300 recordings• 9,000 Western manuscripts• 16,000 Asian Manuscripts• 150,000 rare books; 800,000 modern books• 100,000 paintings, prints and photographs• 700 archives, containing 1.5m items

Transformation Strategy• To provide global access to, and expert

interpretation of, a world class collection that explores medicine in its cultural contexts:

• Targeted collecting – putting challenges in context

• Expert interpretation – engaging (new) audiences

• Strategic digitisation – online access to our collections

Digitisation Programme• Target: 50m images. 20m images

so far:• Archives 1,995,000 Rare books

4,100,000 • 19th century/UK-MHL/MHL 13,160,000• MOH 470,000 Chemist & Druggist

535,000 • Arabic Mss 69,440 Western Mss

31,109 • 990 audio-visual titles (30,000,000

images!)• Paintings, prints & photos 3,000

How we do things• We have a very sophisticated and

complex set of systems in place to ingest, store, manage and deliver our digital assets

Lots of partners

From lots of places

Chemist & Druggist• Over a year to sign contract with

publisher once agreed due to takeover• Publisher donated their set to us for

destructive scanning• Internet Archive have rigid workflow• Needed to gap fill with scans from NLW• IA content discoverable on Google• Can make freely available

London’s Pulse (Medical Officer of Health reports)• Partial JISC funding equals hoop jumping• Shipped to and digitised in Holland• LMA volumes digitised at Wellcome

Library• Work to enhance text and tables in India• Packing and shipping resource intensive• Issues with quality and accuracy of

digitisation• Zooniverse collaboration

Ancestry• Significant amount of time and effort went

into set up of project which is very small in scale for both WL and Ancestry

• Dealing with project managers in UK and USA

• Images available via Ancestry and Wellcome Library with conditions

• Contract detailed but still had unforeseen issues

• Timescales

Early European Books• ProQuest sub contracted digitisation out to

Numen• Communication difficult as ProQuest, not

Wellcome were Numen’s customer• Staff changes at ProQuest caused work to

slow then rapidly accelerate• Difficulty getting images back from

ProQuest• Restriction on availability of images for 15

years

UK MHL• Digitised by Internet Archive using

workflow established during C&D project• Jointly funded by JISC (62%) and

Wellcome (38%)• Partner libraries – 6 HE and 4 non HE

libraries• If partner libraries fail to/under deliver we

have to pick up slack or pay difference• Strict end date

External archives digitisation

• 9 archive partners• Set specific requirements for

metadata, images and sensitivity• Imported their metadata into our

systems• Importance of communication• Collaborative effort for publicising

collections• No exclusivity

Common Themes• Priorities – higher priority for one partner

over the other. Do they want what you want?• Who do they work for?• Communication and managing relationships

and expectations is key to success• Consider use cases present and future• Broader reach. Content hosted in UK, Europe

and USA• Standards and responsibilities

Things to consider• Things change over time! People, goals,

priorities• Agree everything in writing – even then

interpretation may be different• Don’t neglect internal partners• Can you live with conditions imposed by

funders or commercial partners in the long term?

• Are you prepared to do things their way? • Could you do it on your own?• Even ‘free’ things have costs

Final thoughts• Partnerships can have long lasting

impact• Allow us to reach goals more quickly

and leverages our own available funding

• Partners may have different priorities but they still want the project to succeed

• Open access on multiple platforms for multiple audiences equals more opportunities for engagement and data reuse