EPB Crawford

The Inventory team have been working on a range of large-scale EPB projects, but there are various small EPB collections across the stacks which require wider research and planning prior to the Inventory process. The Collection Assistants thought the Crawford Collection would be a good introduction to working independently on the smaller EPB collections, particularly as it is a small and well-organised ‘complete’ collection.

Dirom Grey Crawford

The Crawford Collection is comprised of the library of Dirom Grey Crawford (1857-1942) who was an Indian-born British physician and officer of the Indian Medical Service (IMS). He wrote a history of the IMS as well as the roll of its members, which included biographical details of over 6,000 officers, including himself.

Provenance

The Crawford Collection was recorded in the Wellcome Library accessions book 11 (https://wellcomecollection.org/works/cdxch58r/items?canvas=256). It was accessioned on 27 February 1975, with the accession number 323840. It is listed as “Crawford Collection of printed books relating to the Indian Med. Service c.230” and was a “Gift (R.S. Tropical Med.) from 1973.”

Contents of the collection

The collection includes published books, boundwiths/tracts, pamphlets and serials/journals. The contents and subjects of the collection include Crawford’s own published works, including articles for the Indian Medical Gazette, as well as a range of books reflecting his medical and military background in India. This includes public health/sanitation in India, diseases of tropical climates and military and personal accounts of British and European expats in India. There are also various books on diseases of the eye and the practice of medicine in Scotland – likely due to his academic background of studying medicine at the University of Edinburgh.

Inventory planning

United collection

Based on its provenance information, it was decided that the Crawford collection would remain a united collection, as likely intended at the time of acquisition. To maintain the integrity of the collection, it was decided that the entire collection would be inventoried. This included items not usually included in the remit of the Inventory of the Early Printed Books, including post-1851 material and serials. These items were inventoried in the same manner as pre-1851 material.

Number of items

The Crawford Collection was recorded as having 197 catalogued items on Sierra.

Publication date

Publication dates for the collection spans across pre- and post-1851. Looking at data for the catalogued items on Sierra, only 14% of the collection (28 out of 197 items) were pre-1851 material. The majority of the material in the collection was published in the late 19^th century and early 20^th century.

Organisation

The Crawford Collection was well-organised on the shelves, running alphabetically by the surname of the author. Two large bound books of tracts were originally at the beginning of the sequence, and serials and pamphlets were located at the end of the sequence.

Prior to inventory, the Collections Assistants decided to slightly alter the physical organisation of the collection, so it was ordered:

1. Published books, organised alphabetically by the author’s surname

2. Bound-with tracts

3. Serials/Journals

4. Pamphlets (individually placed in polyester sleeves, and lying flat in a file holder)

Shelf-marks

The former shelf-marks of the collection generally referred to the first three letters of the author’s surname, e.g. /BIS ; pam/ROS. It was decided to give the collection the shelfmark, EPB/CRAW and to create a new numbering sequence starting from 1.

The Collections Assistants opted to use EPB/B flags, as the Crawford Collection were similar size/format to the EPB/B collection. As the pamphlets were held in polyester sleeves with sticker labels, the shelf-marks were written directly on the labels with pencil.

Prior to inventory, the Librarian completed a global update for the Crawford collection where she moved existing shelf-marks to the ‘Former location’ field for each item and gave an updated shelf-mark of EPB/CRAW/ to all items. The former shelf-marks were maintained in order to preserve the cataloguing / location history of the collection.

As all items were now listed with the same generic shelf-mark of EPB/CRAW, the Collections Assistants chose to follow the physical organisation of the collection on the shelves and updated shelf-marks accordingly during inventory, starting with 1. This coincided with physically checking and updating a printed spreadsheet of the catalogued items in the collection with their new shelf-marks. This additional step to the inventory process was to ensure that items were in the correct order on the shelves and each had their own unique shelf-marks.

Inventory findings

In addition to the 197 catalogued items, we found an additional 143 uncatalogued items, with the total number in the collection to 340 items.

During inventory, 5 items were recorded as missing on Sierra. Each item was assigned a unique shelf-mark, in case the items were found in future.

One item was missed out of the shelf-mark sequence during the inventory. In order to maintain the order of the collection, it was assigned the shelf-mark EPB/CRAW/144a.

165 items were recorded as having ‘No number found’ (48%) and 164 items (48%) were recorded as having the accession number, 332840. As mentioned in the ‘Provenance’ section, this is the accession number recorded for Crawford’s collection at time of acquisition.

The remaining items had different accession numbers and were likely merged into the Crawford collection after ascertaining that it was previously owned by Crawford.

Many of the items had Crawford’s inscription, with some including dates. These could be dates that he acquired the items.

Bibliographic issues

Several of the items listed on the EPB uncatalogued spreadsheet were due to three records on Sierra (EPB/CRAW/35, EPB/CRAW/36 and EPB/CRAW/177) having holding records but no item records, accounting for 46 items. These have been listed as having ‘Bibliographic issues’ on the uncatalogued spreadsheet.

Serials/Journals

The Collections Assistants encountered some serials/journals in the collection, which was a new encounter as serials/journals are so far not within the remit of the EPB inventory. Because of this, there has been no official decision around how serials should be inventoried, including how shelf-marks should be recorded for them.

After discussing a number of catalogued and uncatalogued serials in the collection with the Librarian, it was determined for this collection that serials/journals should be recorded as having their own unique shelf-marks and the Volume field should be used where necessary. We also made notes in the EPB uncatalogued spreadsheet querying, “How should the shelfmarks of serials be set out?”

If the EPB inventory eventually expands in future to include serials, then this is an aspect of the collection that we can return to once decisions around the inventory of serials has been confirmed.