Wellcome Library

The Wellcome Library at 183, Euston Road, London NW1 2BE preserves one of the major collections of Asian manuscripts, printed books and illustrative material in the West. The core of the collection is devoted to medical history and related topics although there are few areas of human endeavour not represented reflecting the integral position occupied by medicine in Asian cultures. The collection is particularly strong in South Asian material with over 6,000 Sanskrit manuscripts and the largest Hindi and Panjabi manuscript collections outside the subcontinent. The Near and Middle East, South East Asia and the Far East are also well represented with outstanding manuscript and block-printed material along with modern secondary literature in oriental as well as western languages. The library also preserves signifcant western manuscript collections relevant to Asia. The Oriental Collections have been described as part of the Mapping Asia project which includes almost all oriental collections in the United Kingdom, web site www.asiamap.ac.uk .

The Wellcome Oriental Collection website, at

http://library.wellcome.ac.uk/collections/sp_orient.shtml

contains further details including published and on-line catalogues of the collections.