Digital Manuscripts Program: National Library of Medicine, History of Medicine Division

History Associates provides archival support to the National Library of Medicine (NLM) for its Digital Manuscripts Program. The project, undertaken by the NLM's History of Medicine Division, makes archival collections containing lab notes, correspondence, photographs, and other papers of pioneering biomedical scientists available on the Profiles in Science website, an on-line network of digital collections, their associated finding aids, and bibliographic records at http://profiles.nlm.nih.gov.

At the onset of the project, HAI worked with NLM computer programmers and manuscripts staff to conduct a feasibility study and digitize selected manuscripts. HAI also helped NLM devise guidelines for practices and procedures and define technical standards that comply with established conventions of quality and practice.

HAI staff conducts processing, preservation, arrangement, and description of collections prior to scanning. Together with NLM staff, HAI archivists create finding aids and templates using the SGML format; identify and tag images for digitization; identify and create the necessary metadata; conduct quality checks on scanned images; evaluate web site layout; and solicit the necessary copyright permissions.