Wellcome Library funds a new partnership to digitise 800,000 pages of mental health archives

"Over 800,000 pages of archival material from psychiatric hospitals in the UK from the 18th to the 20th centuries will be digitised and made freely available online as part of the Wellcome Library’s ambitious digitisation programme. The Wellcome Library will partner with the Borthwick Institute for Archives, London Metropolitan Archives, Dumfries and Galloway Council Archives, NHS Greater Glasgow and Clyde Archives, and the Royal College of Psychiatrists for the project, which will bring together documents from the York Retreat, St Luke’s Hospital Woodside, Crichton Royal Hospital, Gartnavel Royal Hospital and Camberwell House Asylum. These collections will be added to the Wellcome Library’s own collection of archives from public and private mental health institutions, including the records of Ticehurst House Hospital in Sussex, which provide a rare insight into the running of a privately run asylum. The project will mostly focus on records dating from the 19th and 20th centuries, and will touch on the movement away from institutional care as the 20th century progressed. Patient records and case notes, photographs, administrative documents and registers will be digitised, creating an extensive online archive that will be a valuable resource for historical research. The documents will be available via the Wellcome Library’s website, where users will be able to search the archives using the catalogue and view documents on the media player.In line with the Library’s commitment to open access, the documents will be under an open licence (CC-BY or CC-BY-NC), allowing users to view, download, reproduce and distribute the material. As well as official documents, the archives contain artwork and publications produced by patients and staff. These include copies of ‘The New Moon’, a monthly publication produced at the Crichton Royal Hospital, and ‘The Gartnavel Minstrel’, the earliest example of a publication written and edited by hospital patients ..."