'M' Series

Background to 'M' Series

Wellcome Collection is renowned for the eclectic nature of its collections, and this is especially true for the M (Museum) Series. A series of approximately 20,000 glass plate negatives, created by the Wellcome Historical Medical Museum (c.1898-1968) it includes reproductions of museum objects still held by Wellcome Collection (mostly library items), Wellcome-commissioned corporate photography (like the Jebel Moya archaeological excavation) and reproductions of museum objects not held by Wellcome Collection, including lots of images relating to the Wellcome Historical Medical Museum (WHMM) exhibitions.

The glass plate negatives were digitised in the early 2000s and available online through Wellcome Images, but problems with the transition of the images from the Wellcome Images to Wellcome Collection resulted in several significant technical challenges: the metadata attached to each image could not be edited; and the images were now spread across three locations – only one of which was accessible to the public. This situation is far from ideal with any collection, but is of critical importance given the sensitive nature of many of the images, which covers three main areas:

[from Stacks article https://wellcomecloud.sharepoint.com/:w:/r/sites/wc2/cr/cm/Collections%20Files/Archives/WT%20Wellcome%20Trust%20Archive/Cataloguing/Wellcome%20Images/M%20Series/Comms/Stacks%20article.docx?d=waa981e95a2384aa894ae4d9dd94b7014&csf=1&web=1&e=1Nf2Nb - can't find it on stacks but can find it on sharepoint].