At the end of last July, the Wellcome Library, a MHL partner, announced the creation of the UK MHL project. The project plans to digitize about 15 million pages worth of content from ten partners, including UCL (University College London), the University of Leeds, the University of Glasgow, the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine, King’s College London and the University of Bristol and the libraries of the Royal College of Physicians of London, the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh and the Royal College of Surgeons of England.
Over the summer, the Wellcome worked with the Internet Archive to create a large scanning center on Euston Road, capable of housing over a dozen scanning units and thousands of books in process. Fourteen staffers work at the Euston center and they’re currently working through materials from University College London, London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine, Glasgow University Library, and the Wellcome.
Christy Henshaw, Digitization Programme Manager at the Wellcome, has written a great blog post walking us through the process of selection and digitization:
The work begins with the hard copy books in their home libraries. Partner libraries select the books and check condition, size, and suitability for digitisation. They provide accurate inventories, information on special handling requirements where necessary, and carry out any necessary repairs or preparations such as splitting any pesky uncut pages and marking the start and end of books or pamphlets that are bound together. They carefully pack the books into large crates for shipment – and may prepare anything from 4 – 15 crates in a single shipment.
Read the rest of her post here!
Packing books at the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh to send to the Euston Scan Centre. Image credit: Iain Milne.