Appendix G

PIP Numbers

PIP numbers are the identifiers in what it is now an Excel spreadsheet but was originally a database. It was created in a proprietary database system called Cardbox. Then, when the Wellcome Trust wanted to get rid of proprietary database systems, the data was migrated to Microsoft Access, from which I exported it several times to Microsoft Excel (mainly to back-up the data). The database was one of the outputs of the Prints Integration Project (PIP), which aimed to integrate the prints kept in an external store with those kept at Euston Road.

The records in the database are mostly collection-level records but sometimes item-level. There are about 8,000 records. They were intended as a halfway house between no information at all (the situation in 1989) and library catalogue records available to the public (i.e. in MARC format), most of which have yet to be created. Their purpose was to enable us to answer questions about this uncatalogued collection and to find the material requested until the records could be transferred to some kind of public platform. They served that purpose well for twenty years: for example an architect who was working on the restoration of the Tivoli waterfalls in Italy asked us if we had any prints or drawings of them, and the PIP database enabled us to find and produce some prints of those waterfalls as they were around 1795-1810 by an artist called Gmelin. It was always possible to find the items requested: the shelfmarks given in the spreadsheet are the Bentley House ones (from when the collection was in Bentley House, 200 Euston Road), but there is a conversion table to the Wellcome Building shelfmarks. The exact correspondence was disrupted when conservators carried out a reboxing programme ca. 2005-2007, but it's normally possible to find something, usually about two shelves after the one given in the table. The labels on the solanders also help to find a particular PIP number.

Members of the public did have some idea as to what was in this collection because we published a number of leaflets about it, placed the leaflets in other libraries and museums, gave them away at conferences, etc. e.g. on Italy, India, Scotland, Paris, Turkey, costume, London, Rome, decoration & design, and so on (see attachments).

For a number of years we were asked to fill out a form suggesting items for retrospective cataloguing or retrospective conversion of existing hard copy catalogues, and I repeatedly put forward the PIP database for migration into the catalogue (see attached). I was embarrassed by the fact that only I had access to the data (there were no shared drives at the time). However this proposal was never accepted. The proposal suggested that the artists' names should be migrated to free text fields in MARC, e.g. 508, but the librarian in charge believed that I was proposing to put the names in the controlled language fields in MARC, which would of course have messed them up. There was also the requirement to do some clean-up on the spreadsheet before migration, particularly on the diacritics that had been corrupted on the long and bumpy road between Cardbox and Excel.

When it became clear that the requested migration would never happen, William started to create individual records in the catalogue where they were needed for public activities, public information, exhibitions, photography, enquiries and so on. For example the prints of the waterfalls mentioned above: https://wellcomecollection.org/works?contributors.agent.label=%22Gmelin%2C+Wilhelm+Friedrich%2C+1760-1820.%22 and the prints assembled by Robert von Spalart https://catalogue.wellcomelibrary.org/record=b1185766~S5 So now it would not be desirable to export the data to the catalogue, as there would be duplication. The data, though basic, is fairly good. However, the diacritics are still corrupt.

The spreadsheet is supplemented by a number of hard-copy documents which are in ring folders. They contain additional information that would not fit well in the spreadsheet; for instance about the Hawes Craven albums (https://wellcomecollection.org/works/hn6gmcra: prepare to be amazed by these if you have not seen them already!).

The project started in 1990 and finished on 18 April 1996, though it was paused for a couple of years in the middle while the project staff were seconded to the job of preparing an exhibition of ca. 450 prints over seven floors of the Wellcome Building. Preparing this exhibition was, from the funder's point of view, the main purpose of the project. Most if not all of the records were created by Fiona James (now a freelance art lecturer) and Nat Foreman (now with Phaidon Press). Both had completed a course at Camberwell (now University of the Arts) on the history of prints and drawings. They took the items from the library's store on a trading estate in Enfield, where they were stored without folders in large crates, brought them to the office (then in Tavistock House, Tavistock Square, where the library was temporarily based while the Wellcome Building was being rebuilt), and subsequently to shelving at Bentley House (200 Euston Road, the home of the library at that time), and subsequently to the Wellcome Building.

In addition to the PIP database, the outputs of the project included hard-copy lists of portraits, numismatics, animals, and other classes. These lists were also used in replies to enquiries, as one of the commonest requests was for portraits of named individuals. I imagine some of these lists have now been superseded by your own lists of the portrait classes (literary, ecclesiastic, military etc,), while others have been superseded by the catalogue, but much has not yet been superseded by anything.

Of course all this documentation was first-draft stuff, as no previous information about most of the collection was available. Some fine reference books were acquired for the project, and some of these are still in the collection (such as the invaluable Abbey catalogues https://catalogue.wellcomelibrary.org/search~S4?/aabbey+j/aabbey+j/1%2C2%2C6%2CB/exact&FF=aabbey+j+r+john+roland+++++1896+++++1969&1%2C5%2C ), though others, such as the magnificent Blackmer catalogues of Greece and Turkey, were later thrown out as being "out of scope" (I mention these because there will be references to them in the database or on folders). The shelfmarks peter out at the end, because the compilers did not know where the items would be housed.