In Pasteur’s own hand: The creation of a digital repository

Abstract

The Moody Medical Library’s Truman G. Blocker, Jr History of Medicine Collections (Blocker Collections) at the University of Texas Medical Branch, Galveston, Texas, created a digital repository of carefully selected material from the private library of Louis Pasteur (1822–1895). This project was completed in an effort to dramatically improve user awareness and access to the personal and academic thoughts of one of the world’s most celebrated scientists. The Pasteur Collection held at the Blocker Collections contains books, offprints, prints, manuscripts and unpublished handwritten letters by Pasteur, which he maintained in his personal library. The digitised images feature the original document, the French transcription of the handwritten documents and notes, as well as the English translation of the letters and are available for viewing, downloading, and printing from both the Moody Medical Library and the Texas Digital Library websites. This project was funded in whole or part with Federal funds from the National Library of Medicine, National Institutes of Health, under Contract No. HHSN-276-2011-00007-C with the Houston Academy of Medicine-Texas Medical Center Library. This paper will focus on the award application process, in-house workflows, outsourcing of translation and transcription and digital repository creation.