The National Cataloguing Unit for the Archives of Contemporary Scientists (NCUACS) was established in the University Library at Bath in April 1987 under the auspices of the Royal Society. It is the successor to the Oxford-based Contemporary Scientific Archives Centre (CSAC). The NCUACS's mission is to locate, sort, catalogue and find permanent places of deposit for the manuscript papers of distinguished contemporary British scientists and engineers, and in this way preserve and make accessible the original source materials for the history of science. As a small unit whose work covers the whole range of scientific disciplines, the NCUACS must be highly selective in respect of the scientists in whose papers it takes an interest, and thus has an Advisory Committee with strong Royal Society representation to assist in this important task. The Unit is a processing centre rather than a repository; it does not retain the papers it locates and catalogues.
Since the establishment of the CSAC in 1973 the scientific archives project at Oxford and now Bath has catalogued some 180 collections of scientists' papers for deposit in 45 repositories usually academic libraries and archives throughout Britain. The collections of papers of crystallographers catalogued by the Unit are listed below, with the place of deposit, the catalogue reference number, and the length of the catalogue:
The potential for records of classic crystallographical investigations such as those on penicillin, vitamin B12, insulin, myoglobin and lysozyme is obvious. However, the research activities and scientific careers of scientists are not the only areas of interest that may be documented in their manuscript papers. The papers may very well record other aspects of their lives such as education, family connexions, the development of the profession, the direction of a university department or laboratory, public service and so on. But of course, the content of each collection varies according to pattern of the scientists' careers, their methods of working and according to their own attitudes to the preservation of their papers.
It is important to note that the deposit of a scientist's papers in a library or archive does not necessarily mean that all the papers are available for research. Questions of confidentiality in recent papers are taken very seriously and there may accordingly be restrictions on access. Researchers should always consult the library or archive before planning a visit.
Lists of all the catalogues of scientists papers compiled by the
scientific archives project from 1973 and descriptions of the papers are
available on the NCUACS website:
http://www.bath.ac.uk/Centres/NCUACS/
Accounts of the NCUACS's work on the papers of Herbert Marcus Powell and
Dorothy Hodgkin appeared in the June 1996 issue of 'Crystallography News'
and 'Acta Cryst.' D52 (1996) respectively. The catalogues themselves may be
consulted in the Science Museum Library, London and the Library of the Royal
Society, and are also available for purchase direct from the Unit.
Peter Harper
October 1996
Further details about the Archive can be obtained from:
Peter Harper, Director, National Cataloguing Unit for the Archives of
Contemporary Scientists,(NUARCS) University Library, University of Bath,
Claverton Down, Bath, Somerset BA2 7AY tel: +44 1225 826826 x5241
Click here to return to BCA homepage