My experiences as an Intern in the Wellcome Library...

8 weeks, 80 train journeys and countless cups of tea later, my internship is coming to an end. My experience in the Library has certainly been full of surprises! Even on the first day, I was simply amazed that I had so many appointments planned on my Outlook Calendar. Having never used Outlook before, the prospect of a calendar which would send you reminders of your daily tasks was perfect for me - someone who can’t remember anything unless it’s written down. Even having my own computer and phone in an office was so unexpected (I’m not quite sure where I thought I would be working, but I definitely did not envisage having my own desk!). This excitement has certainly continued throughout my time in the Wellcome Library as a Library Liaison Exhibition Intern as I have been involved in a huge variety of work.



In the first week I observed the packing of items for a loan ready to be couriered to Dresden. I travelled in a lorry across London to transport this material going on loan to a warehouse (I hasten to add, I was merely a passenger) but it was certainly exciting all the same! I have also travelled to Leicester, to observe an exhibition of AIDS reproduction posters being installed at the New Walk Gallery. This was certainly one of my favourite days of the internship, as it was a great insight into the amount of work that is involved in collating and installing an exhibition. I travelled in a lorry for a second time, to pick up two paintings which had been sent to two external conservators for repair. I had a peek into a world of conservation and studios which was quite incredible. (I think that everybody who I’ve spoken to thinks that I’ve spent most of my time getting to know lorry drivers!) Aside from this, I have been able to observe the work of conservation and received disaster training and basic collection care training, certainly enhancing my knowledge of the paramount importance of conservation. The tour of the library was great and I will certainly be coming back to use it for my dissertation work.







Of course, I have also spent some time sitting at my desk, carrying out a range of administrative tasks; these have taught me a lot about the collection housed by the Wellcome Library. I have been developing new policy documents in order to help with the loans process; including new courier guidelines, a revised loans contract, a crate and packing specification and an exhibition display document. I have also familiarised myself with the Medicine Man gallery and have done some research into alternative ways to display the material in the gallery's planchest.



Rather than list everything that I have done in the past 8 weeks, which I’m not sure would make a terribly interesting read, I thought I would mention some of the things which I found most enjoyable since starting here. I have met some great people and have learned so much. I guess all I can say now, is a HUGE thank you to everybody at the Wellcome Trust, in particular in the Wellcome Library and Conservation for making my internship such a brilliant experience.



Author: Alice Calloway



Alice was a Summer Intern at the Wellcome Trust

Population Investigation Committee Podcasts now available

In February, the Wellcome Collection Conference Centre hosted an afternoon symposium, to celebrate the launch of the historical archives of the Population Investigation Committee (PIC), held in the Wellcome Library.



Podcasts of all the presentations from the symposium are now available from the PIC website. Speakers included Dr Edmund Ramsden (University of Exeter) on the early history of the PIC, Dr Lesley Hall (Wellcome Library), on the PIC archive and other similar collections held by the Wellcome Library, Prof Michael Wadsworth (MRC Unit for Life Long Health and Ageing) on setting up the 1946 National Birth Cohort study, and Prof Ian Deary (University of Edinburgh) on the Scottish Mental Surveys of 1932 and 1947.



Prof Deary's presentation is particularly timely, given that the surveys he describes are the inspiration for a play, Still Life Dreaming, which is co-produced by the Wellcome Trust and premieres this week at the Edinburgh Fringe.

Open House London 2010

Open House London has established itself in recent years as one of the capital's most popular events. A celebration of the diversity of the London's architecture, the event allows free access to many buildings normally closed to the public.

Open House London 2010 takes this place later this month on Saturday 18th and Sunday 19th September, with over 700 buildings participating. A good number of these sites have a link to the collections of the Wellcome Library or to the History of Science and Medicine in general, but we’ll take this opportunity to flag up fellow members of the London Museums of Health and Medicine network which are taking part (details of which are available from their website), the Pioneer Health Centre in Peckham (who we have discussed on this Blog before) and the Royal Society (celebrating its 350th anniversary this year).

And last but by no means least, the Gibbs Building, the headquarters of the Wellcome Trust (shown above) will also be accessible on the Saturday of Open House London weekend.

For more details, see the Open House London website.

Human Genome Project and the Wellcome Library

The first draft of the human genome, announced jointly by Tony Blair and Bill Clinton on 26 June 2000, was heralded by the press as a massive scientific breakthrough, the applications of which would improve health and extend life. Scientists have indeed come far from Crick and Watson’s discovery of the structure of DNA in 1953, and although some applications, like the targeted treatment of cancer, are beginning to appear, progress has been much slower than expected and such fruits are yet to be fully enjoyed.

Wellcome Library has a range of items relating to the Human Genome Project, an international collaborative effort to which Wellcome Trust contributed a third of the sequence through The Sanger Institute. The Library holds several publications supposing what we might learn from the Human Genome Project, including a 1993 book by Tom Wilkie entitled “Perilous knowledge: the human genome project and its implications” looks at the potential social consequences of knowing the code of life. A videorecording held in our Moving Image and Sound Collection asks “The human genome project: can we now play god?”.

The video features Sir John Sulston, who was head of the Sanger Institute until 2002. Wellcome Images has recently acquired some new portraits of Sulston, taken at Sanger, which is set in an award-winning Wetlands site at Hinxton. Wellcome Images has a further record of the sequencing work carried out at Sanger, some photos of which have recently been used in Nature’s Human Genome Project iPad app.

On the theme of genetics, Wellcome Library is beginning to digitise and make available online the Crick and Sir Fred Sanger archives, plus 1400 books as part of a larger project called ‘Modern Genetics and its Foundations’.

While we continue to debate what the deciphering of the human genome means for medicine and society, the Wellcome Library will carry on collecting a wealth of information on this important topic for many anniversaries to come.

Image shown: DNA sequencing for the Human Genome Project at the Sanger Centre.

Authors: Louise Crane and Julia Nurse

Big Picture: Addiction

The latest edition of Big Picture, the Wellcome Trust resource for teachers and students, has just been published. It looks at the topic of 'Addiction': analysing the different forms addiction can take and the science used to understand it.

There's more to Big Picture than the magazine, however: extra online resources for 'Addiction' include teaching plans, video interviews and also an image gallery of material drawn from the Library's collections, exploring drug and alcohol use across time.

More information on Big Picture - including downloadable copies of previous issues - is available from the Wellcome Trust's website.

Polish posters at the London School of Hygiene

The Wellcome Library has a large collection of posters including a small but distinctive sample of Polish items. Frequently ironic with a grim humour, they are unusual in using solely graphic means without any slogans, as in this example showing opium poppies turning into grave-markers. The appreciation of posters in Poland goes back at least to the first ever international poster exhibition, which was held in Cracow in 1898.

An opportunity to learn more about the history of these works was provided on 16 February 2009 at a workshop on Polish and British posters at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine (LSHTM), under the auspices of its Centre for History in Public Health. The workshop arose from an international collaborative project currently underway between the LSHTM Centre and the Medical University of Silesia, funded through a Wellcome Trust History of Medicine grant. This aims to document and analyse public health posters in Poland during the course of the twentieth century.

The first half of the workshop concentrated on the Polish poster, with talks by Krzysztof Krajewski-Siuda of the Medical University of Silesia, Katowice; Martin Gorsky of the LSHTM; and James Aulich from Manchester Metropolitan University. Among the key points were the use of star artists such as Maciej Urbaniec (1925-2004) and Andrzej Pągowski (b. 1953) as the designers of public health posters; the ambivalent position of the state as both responsible for reducing alcoholism and (qua monopoly manufacturers) as a beneficiary from the sales of alcoholic drinks; the questionable efficiency of the poster campaigns and the existence of the posters as symptoms of a crisis rather than as the solution to it.

Emerging incidentally from the presentations was the existence of splendid collections of posters in Poland, especially the Jagiellonian Library in Cracow, the Central Medical Library in Warsaw, and the Wilanów Poster Museum, established in a suburb of Warsaw in 1968. However, it was pointed out that the most collected posters are not necessarily those with the most active street-life: those posters which survive may be the unrepresentative, artistically outstanding ones.

The second half offered for comparison two talks based on the British experience. Catherine Moriarty from Brighton University introduced some posters in the collection of the International Council of Graphic Design Associations. The Council contributed representatives of their respective national outputs of posters and packaging to a central collection now in Brighton. There it joins other relevant posters in the archives of Frederick Henri Kay Henrion (1914-1990) and others. Poland and Cuba were mentioned as the two countries in which poster designers could become celebrities. Finally, Virginia Berridge of the London School of Hygiene described the ever-changing political context in which British health posters were produced from Attlee to Blair: policy swung to and fro between national and local production, leading to the present situation in which health campaigns were either run by government through the Central Office of Information or (for some topics such as alcohol) funded by industry, for example through the Drinkaware Trust. On past form, neither in Poland nor in the UK is the story likely to end with the current status quo.

Above: poster by Andrzej Pągowski (b. 1953) for the TZN (Towarzystwo Zapobiegania Narkomanii), 1987. Wellcome Library no. 646388i

Wellcome Trust research papers - now available as an RSS feed

An RSS feed has been setup to facilitate easy access to the latest research findings published by Wellcome Trust-funded authors.

All papers listed are freely available in full-text format from the UK PubMed Central repository.

View recent articles.

Open access and the Wellcome Trust

Presentation given on 29th October 2008 at UKSG conference on open access.

Mandating Open Access - Wellcome Trust

View SlideShare presentation or Upload your own. (tags: open access)