Author: Chris Hilton

A good catalogue is transparent: if a library user becomes aware in more than a passing fashion of the technicalities of the catalogue, it is usually a sign that it is not doing its job smoothly.  Nonetheless, from time to… Continue reading

As regular readers will know, the Wellcome Library is engaged in an ambitious programme of mass digitisation, covering both our own holdings and associated material in other repositories. Codebreakers, the first fruits of this programme, made available large amounts of… Continue reading

Nowadays technology makes travel to most corners of the globe, for all but those phobic about air travel, swift and relatively cheap. As we enter the twenty-first century, too, ideology is on the side of the traveller: the end of… Continue reading

Following the launch of Codebreakers: the makers of modern genetics online resource, we will be posting a series of blogs about the 20 digitised archive collections at its core. To get started, Dr. Chris Hilton, senior archivist at the Library… Continue reading

When we talk about our archives and manuscripts, our focus is usually on their content.  People order archive items in order to read them, by and large, and our catalogues tend to focus upon the words on the page, and… Continue reading

Archives are the raw material of history: where a published source will typically give you an overview, archives plunge you into the day-to-day detail of the past.  It is from this detail that history synthesises its grand pictures: there is no… Continue reading

Stating the obvious: when you write someone a letter, you don’t keep it.  These days, e-mail or word-processing give us the chance to keep a complete record of the correspondence we send out, but for much of human history a… Continue reading

On Saturday 10th January 1863, a few yards from where the Wellcome Library now stands, a short stretch of railway line was opened to the public.  Only a few miles long, running from the Great Western Railway’s Paddington terminus to… Continue reading

Forty-five years ago, a New York rock band under Andy Warhol’s patronage released their debut LP. The Velvet Underground and Nico crept out under the radar compared to some of 1967’s other releases – The Beatles’ Sergeant Pepper’s Lonely Hearts… Continue reading

“In the midst of life, we are in death” – in the midst of the Library, right now, even more so.  Downstairs the Wellcome Collection’s exhibition “Death: a Self-Portrait” runs until 24th February, showing 300 objects from the Richard Harris… Continue reading