The Origins Of Human And Medical Genetics: Cataloguing and Digitising The Human Genetics Historical Library (360G-Wellcome-093739_Z_10_Z)

The Human Genetics Historical Library, www.genmedhist.info/HumanHistLib/, forming part of Cardiff University Library's Special Collections and Archives, has grown since its founding in 2003 to just over 3000 volumes covering all aspects of human and medical genetics. The Library is unique world-wide as a collection specifically focused on human and medical genetics and contains the complete working libraries of a number of key early workers in this field. 1500 volumes have already been fully catalogued, thanks to earlier support from Wellcome Trust and Cardiff University; we now request funds for cataloguing of the 1500 remaining volumes, received since the initial award. This will allow the current collection to be completely catalogued; since details are accessible remotely to scholars on the Web based Cardiff University Voyager catalogue http://library.cf.ac.uk/, it will be possible for scholars world wide to analyse the development of human and medical genetics through its books, including those of specific key workers. While most of the library represents the 'working books' of human geneticists over the second part of the twentieth century, the collection also contains older important and scarce volumes; we propose to digitise a small number of those (totalling c. 2,500 pages) that are of particular historical as well as scientific interest.