The rise of science as a profession during the British Empire is now available as a digital resource to Jisc members following the publication on May 19, 2022, of 930,000 pages of scientific archive material in a Jisc, British Science Association and Wiley Digital Archives, collaboration.
The global publishing company, Jisc, a provider of cloud computing, infrastructure, cyber security and content resources to academia, and the British Science Association, a charity that champions engagement with science for underrepresented groups, led the project. Ninety per cent of the British Association for the Advancement of Science - Collections on the History of Science (1830s - 1970s) has been digitised and made available to students, teachers and researchers as a result.
Documents, maps, photographs and slides are available, all of which demonstrate the development and establishment of the scientific community within the British Empire. The collection includes the works of Charles Darwin and Sir William Ramsay; the latter discovered inert gaseous elements of air. Amongst the archives are the Charles Wheatstone Collection at King's College London, Julian Huxley's materials held by the University of Birmingham and the Oliver Lodge collection at the University of Liverpool.
Digitisation of the collection began in 2020, and much of the archive has never been published. Paola Marchionni, Jisc's head of product, said in a statement: "The digitisation of archive material is more important than ever if we are to support new models of scholarship and research-led teaching.
Marchionni adds: "This is a major resource for the academic community and, importantly, puts it within reach of students, who wouldn't otherwise be able to easily access this material."
Jisc described the project as one of the first times that university libraries have influenced a commercial publisher's digitisation decisions. The archive is freely available to Jisc members and affiliates.
