More than 100 hours of the Wellcome Library's medical historical films will be digitised and made freely available on the internet.

The Wellcome Library and JISC (Joint Information Systems Committee) Collections have partnered to digitise moving images from the Library's unique historical collection of medical films. The films will be made freely available via the Library's website and JISC Collections' Film and Sound Online service, and will start to become available online from autumn 2008.

Featuring in the archive are films exploring global health issues and how they have been tackled, films that illustrate advances in public healthcare (looking in particular at immunisation and the introduction of the NHS), and some of the medical greats of the 19th and 20th centuries, such as Ivan Pavlov.

The project helps to reinforce the position of the Wellcome Library as the leading international resource for the study of the history of medicine. The inclusion of this content in the Film & Sound Online portal will help to ensure that staff and students at colleges, universities and Research Councils in the UK can access an expanding selection of high-quality film material that is relevant to their educational and research needs.

See also

• Historical medical films to be made freely available on the web (press release: 8 August 2007)