Catherine Draycott
Head, Wellcome images,

'Wellcome Images: The Story behind the Scenes'

Monday 8 November 2010
The Royal College of Surgeons, London, WC2A 3PE

6.30pm - 9.00pm

Catherine Draycott has been Head of Wellcome Images since 1992.  She managed the digitisation of its content to create an online resource of over 175,000 images spanning centuries of human culture worldwide and depicting a range of material from palm leaf manuscripts to scanning electron micrographs; http://images.wellcome.ac.uk .  She has been a Director of the British Association of Picture Libraries and Agencies (BAPLA) since 1997 and was it’s Chairman from 2000 to 2007 when she was given the BAPLA Award for outstanding contribution to the picture library industry.  Wellcome Images is a supporting member of the Institute of Medical Illustrators and hosts the judging of its annual IMI Awards, presenting the Wellcome Clinical Photography Award each year.  Catherine was given The Royal Photographic Society’s Combined Royal Colleges Medal in 2009.

Catherine’s talk will tell the story of how this extraordinary resource was created, the people without whom it would not have been possible and its growth and development over the last 18 years.  As well as charting the successes such as the Wellcome Image Awards, it will reveal some of the challenges of working with highly sensitive material and starting a biomedical science collection from scratch and of keeping pace with technological changes not just in scientific and medical imaging but right across publishing and academia.

The Combined Royal Colleges Medal was originally established by The Society in 1958 in collaboration with the Royal College of Physicians of London, the Royal College of Surgeons of England and the Royal College of Obstetricians & Gynaecologists.  It is awarded for an outstanding contribution to photography and/or its application in the service of medicine and surgery.  Nominations are now being invited for 2011.   For more information, please contact Jo Macdonald, Awards Manager, The Royal Photographic Society - 01225 325721 or jo@rps.org.   

Entry to the lecture by ticket only.  For tickets, please contact Jo Macdonald, Awards Manager, as above.  Tickets are free