Other number

Excluding object and accession numbers which have their own fields in QB, please record other numbers found on objects/labels/housing here.

Other numbers should be recorded during phase 1 of the inventory for catalogued, partially catalogued and uncatalogued material.

These numbers can be an access point for investigating provenance and are sometimes useful as identifiers in their own right.

Other numbers may include negative numbers, conservation numbers, digitisation numbers and even a previous owner's number used to organise their collections. These numbers may be found on accompanying paper documentation, object labels, on housing or even on the objects themselves.

If an item or object has multiple numbers, these should be recorded and separated by the use of a semi colon.

Types of 'other numbers'

Conservation Numbers

Conservation numbers include the year and sequential number if the items have been treated/ conserved i.e. 1989/90.

Former conservation colleagues who audited some of the visual material in the solander store in the early 2000s also prefixed sequential numbers with their initials 'JF1234' and 'AW1234'.

By recording these numbers during inventory we can later reconcile there condition ratings, for collections care colleagues to understand if material is stable or if conditions of material have worsened over time.

JF Numbers: Assigned to many visual materials, largely to portrait prints in the solander store . These were assigned during a survey by conservator Julie FitzGerald in the early 2000s.

AW Numbers: These record a survey conducted by Anna Wise, presumably in the early 2000s. To date these have applied to portrait prints in the drawer store.

Both surveys are available here: Collection-care-surveys

Iconographic Number as Other Number

Procedure adopted in April 2021.

There are some visual collections that are large in extent/ number of items that have been added to a single catalogue record under a single iconographic number. Because a catalogue record exists, we are recording them on Quickbase as partially catalogued material. Under Museum Accreditation however, this is not good practice and the catalogue records only give an estimate as to the size of the collection.

In October 2021, there were over 22 locations and containers on a single iconographic number that required inventory. The boxes all needed replacing and so each new container was assigned an inventory number, with the iconographic number recorded as 'other number' and the box was then listed. A collection level description with the number of items that were in the container was then added to Quickbase.

Contemporary Internal Wellcome Numbers

PIP Numbers:

PIP numbers were assigned as part of a previous inventory project, the dataset contains some useful information in respect of uncatalogued collections.

This data can be found here: PIP numbers dataset

For more information, see: PIP-numbers-further-background

ICV Numbers:

Stands for iconographic video disc number, now mostly superseded by 'i' numbers.

V numbers:

These are digitisation numbers and can be matched up with their 'i' numbers using this spreadsheet: VNumbers

Rec Numbers:

These are simply iconographic numbers without the 'i' at the end.

F Numbers:

Also known as Image Reference numbers, usually included on visual material housing with 'V' numbers and 'Rec/BRN' numbers. Many 'F' numbers can be found in the '028' field on Sierra and can be found via a Sierra 'Word' search using the number only.

Historic Internal Wellcome Numbers

Negative Numbers:

These often appear as "negative number" "neg no" or a combination of the two, however just as often they have no prefix at all.

Many of the objects in the collection were photographed in the past and these have been retained as negatives. These are important to record as they can give context to MIRO images which are online.

HME Numbers:

HME numbers are not entirely understood. An example of their format is “HME c/1018”.

HME likely refers to “Historical Medical Exhibition” and those corresponding documents are referenced below.

William explains that HME meant Wigmore Street and that there was a big gulf between Wigmore Street (the exhibition gallery) and Willesden (the stores, and the place where most of the collections work went on).

There was possibly a HME sequence of glass negatives, started before the M series and stored in a different place. (Wigmore Street itself or Stratford Mews, or possibly at Snow Hill – the building that was destroyed in the Blitz, which would explain why we have no HME negatives today).

As the inventory progresses, we may be able to infer their significance backwards.

Archive materials of possible relevance: c.1903-1909 Reference: WA/HMM/IC/1/33 Part of Wellcome Historical Medical Museum and Library https://wellcomecollection.org/works/xur3yggd/items

Likely related archive material:

https://wellcomecollection.org/works/k2fae5cz

CO/Hme Historical Medical Exhibition 1903-1913 FI/Hme Objects purchased for HME 1904-1910 VI/A HMM/HME 1913-1957

WMMS Numbers

Appear to have the suffix WMMS or PRP or be arranged as ####/###.

WMMS is an acronym for the Wellcome Museum of Medical Science.

The WMMS was run completely separately from the WHMM and WHML. It did not use the same series of ledgers or cards. It also had a different purpose and ethos: its purpose was up-to-date teaching, not the preservation of the historical record, so historical accessions lists did not have the same priority. Its principles are set out in a book by its sometime director, Dr SH Daukes (https://wellcomecollection.org/works/tktsr5p4 ). The entrance to the WMMS was on the ground floor of 183, where the public cloakroom is today, and it stretched round eastwards.

There may have been an original numbering system used when the items were acquired. That is suggested by the typed label attached to the hydrocephalic skull. There certainly was a numbering system that was used (introduced?) when the WMMS was closed down in 1989 and absorbed into the Wellcome Tropical Institute (WTI): one of the members of staff (Sheila Aspinall) drew up large lists of items, and circulated copies to the WIHM staffers for preservation. Her lists may be somewhere in the Wellcome archives, either for the WMMS or for its successor the WTI. (There is an appendix at the end of Robert Rhodes James's biography of HS Wellcome that sets out the various institutions named after Wellcome, their dates and interrelations, up to 1993).

Sheila Aspinall was not on the staff when the collections of the WMMS were being built up. Her numbers may have been a second numbering system (if there was an original one). A further numbering system may have been introduced by the new archivist of the Wellcome Tropical Institute, Sue Bramley, when she took over ca. 1987.

William Schubach recognized the handwriting on the other label attached to the hydrocephalic skull as that of Dr A.J. (Tony) Duggan, the last director of the WMMS.

For further investigation: https://wellcomecollection.org/works/xczaqfm2

External Catalogue Numbers

Some numbers refer to external catalogues compiled by other cultural institutions. This will be useful for cataloguing and allow researchers to cross reference with other examples of these works in other institutions.

Adams Numbers:

When used in the context of London prints, Adams refers to the invaluable work by Bernard Adams FLA, London illustrated, 1604-185 : a survey and index of topographical books and their plates, London 1983, which is in the Reading Room Gallery:

https://wellcomecollection.org/works/se275qrx

In the Wellcome catalogue, there are 653 references linking individual prints to Adams. The catalogue always spells out the title of the book, in order to avoid the confusion caused when abbreviated references are used (see any catalogue entry for incunabula!). However in the PIP database, only the name Adams is used, as the database was intended for internal use in the first instance.

It's possible that, in the context of European publications, the database compiler may have been referring to H.M. Adams, Catalogue of books printed on the continent of Europe, 1501-1600, in Cambridge libraries, another very useful publication, which is on the RMR shelves at

https://wellcomecollection.org/works/rrcfe94n

BMC Numbers:

This stands for British Museum Catalogue and refers to the “Catalogue of engraved British portraits”. According to William “these volumes, bound in green leather, and now on the open shelves on the second floor, have proved invaluable to your predecessors for about a century.”

These are not unique numbers but can be used to cross reference with similar works in the British Museum. https://wellcomecollection.org/works/vtanxcu7

HSM Numbers:

This very likely refers to History of Scottish Medicine, a book by J.D. Comrie and published for the Wellcome Historical Medical Museum by Baillière, Tindall & Cox in 1927. We have a one-volume edition in the library https://wellcomecollection.org/works/pyu2m33u but there was also a (presumably later and expanded) two volume edition. Both editions were beautifully produced. Many of the prints we have for the book have re-touchings that are interesting for book-illustration history.

Drug Numbers:

In the hand of C.A. Earnshaw, these look like "Duy" or "Day" who would have written them in the workroom in the Wellcome Building.

These refer to one of the catalogues of portraits by Wilhelm Eduard Drugulin (1822-1879): probably his Verzeichniss von sechstausend Portraits von Aerzten, Naturforschern, Mathematikern, Reisenden und Entdeckern (Leipzig 1863), which is available online at https://wellcomecollection.org/works/jwgt2uqf . Renate Burgess cites it as one of her sources on p. xviii of her catalogue.

Drugulin also produced a more comprehensive catalogue: Allgemeiner Portrait-Katalog, i.e. general portrait catalogue, not limited to just doctors, scientists etc., unlike the 1863 work mentioned above. His catalogues record the prints that passed through his hands as a print dealer in Leipzig, though he did many other things as well besides selling prints.