The purpose of this policy is to set out Wellcome Collection’s commitment to making our museum and library as accessible as possible for our users, participants and audiences, and to identify the ways in which we achieve this across the organisation.
This Access Policy relates to all collections held by Wellcome Collection as well as our services, activities, facilities, content and programmes onsite, off-site and online.
This policy does not cover access to materials managed by the Science Museum Group as part of Sir Henry Wellcome’s Museum Collection. This collection is a closed collection of mainly three-dimensional objects. The most significant part of this collection, comprising over 117,000 historic items relating to medical history and the history of science more generally, has been on long-term loan to the Science Museum Group since 1976. Access to this material is managed in accordance with the Science Museum Group policy.
The policy also does not cover access to other smaller elements of the collection, including a group of Egyptian stelai and a collection of classical statuary, that are on long-term loan at other institutions.
Wellcome Collection’s Access Policy is guided by relevant ethical codes and legislation:
The Museums Association’s code of ethics guidance provides a useful overview of museums’ responsibilities to maximise access in the broadest sense. The 2025 edition embeds three key principles:
In addition, we work to embed principles of justice and accountability supported by the Museums Association’s guidance: ‘Supporting decolonising in museums’, 2021.
We are also guided by:
As part of foundational learning and development across the organisation, all staff are required to undertake Wellcome Collection’s Social Justice Curriculum which introduces guiding principles of anti-racism and anti-ableism. Key to this learning is the social model of disability which informs this Access Policy. More on the social model of disability can be found here introduced by Scope.
A number of organisations collaborate with Wellcome Collection to challenge and improve our accessible practice. They continue to inform our approach to access, in particular:
We aim to embed accessibility at the heart of our organisation and in everything we do. Responsibility for ensuring that Wellcome Collection meets its obligations under the Equality Act, 2010 is held by the Wellcome Collection Leadership Team. More widely, our strategic commitment to access, diversity, inclusion and equity is owned and driven by every member of staff, championed throughout the entire organisation, and supported by staff skills development and management. Our teams are supported in this work by the Wellcome Collection Access, Diversity and Inclusion team. It is our ambition to embed access and inclusion into all our roles, plans, projects and programmes.
Enquiries about this policy should be directed to the policy owner (see Policy History & Review section).
Wellcome’s vision is a healthier future for everyone. We work to achieve this by supporting science to solve the urgent health challenges facing everyone. Wellcome Collection’s vision is a world where everyone’s experience of health matters. Our mission sets out how we will work to achieve our vision over the next decade and has three main aspects:
Make meaningful connections between different perspectives and stories of health past, present and future, with our collections at the heart.
Underpinning the delivery of this mission are four priorities that overlap and interconnect:
The Wellcome Collection Strategy Guide 2023 sets out the organisation’s ambition for all its work to be audience-focused, to be shaped and informed by a deep understanding of diverse audiences’ needs, preferences and experiences. It reflects our long-standing commitment to access, equity and inclusion for everyone and to prioritising specific intersecting audiences most affected by health inequities and whose experiences have been excluded from conversations about health, including:
Wellcome Collection is part of Wellcome Trust, a global charitable foundation that supports science to build a healthier future for everyone. This vision is underpinned by an equity framework that articulates; that to achieve this vision, we must drive equitable outcomes. And so, to drive equitable health outcomes Wellcome will advance inclusive practices that broaden the range of people leading, participating in and benefiting from science.
The methods of achieving this are to:
We consider access to mean that our audiences, partners and users experience as few barriers as possible and feel welcome to engage with our public spaces, collections, programmes and content, onsite and online, in a range of ways.
We acknowledge that different audiences experience varied and changing barriers that can exclude them from the museum and library or restrict their access. For example, barriers can stem from the physical and sensory environment of the building, economic impacts of travelling to and taking part in activities, or lack of accessible communications about our collections and services. Barriers can also be cultural, stemming from a focus on dominant cultural heritages or interests that exclude marginalised audiences from engaging with and co-creating more diverse interpretations.
Wellcome Collection as an organisation takes responsibility for dismantling the barriers to access that can exclude and restrict audiences. We recognise that this is an ongoing process that takes continual commitment and must be done in collaboration with our audiences, partners and users.
Our approach to this work is underpinned by the social model of disability, a way of viewing the world that says that people are disabled by barriers in society, not by their impairment or condition. We also draw on the principles of justice and accountability supported by the Museums Association’s 2021 guidance ‘Supporting Decolonising in Museums’.
We support our staff to understand the impact of societal barriers to access and inclusion through the Social Justice Curriculum that all members of staff must undertake, which unpacks how racism and ableism impact museums, library and archival practices.
Practical examples of how we are working to reduce barriers to access include:
Through our vision and mission, we aim to work with communities most affected by the urgent health challenges facing everyone. Within the museum and library setting, this particularly includes those most affected by the lack of representation and misrepresentation in our collections, and those with connection to the material in our collection.
We use ‘audiences’ to refer to a range of different groups and individuals who engage with Wellcome Collection across varied services and platforms, including the museum and library’s collections and resources onsite and online. We recognise the limitations of the term ‘audiences’ that fails to convey the rich and varied nature of the relationships we want to build with different groups and use it here to also refer to visitors, users, researchers, constituents, publics, participants, and all our communities.
Audiences include those who visit the museum, library and archive, those who request records to consult and those who use our books and library resources. Those who attend programmed events, including conferences and commercial events, those who access our digital content including our digital stories and our collections databases. It includes those in short- and long-term collaborative relationships, individuals and groups who are conducting long term research; sector colleagues who seek and give advice and those we loan our collection items to and those who lend to us. It includes artists and creatives we commission and collaborate with to create new responses to global issues; our international partners who engage with our research through Wellcome’s wider funding and research; it includes those who read our published material including our manuscripts and zines; and those who visit our shop, café and enter to use our toilet and locker provision.
Our collections comprise Core Collections (visual and material culture, printed and published rare materials, and archives and manuscripts) and Support Collections (printed and published reference collection, digital reference collection, auxiliary material such as handling collections, and reserve collection such as contemporary artworks commissioned for display). Further information about our collections can be found in the Collections Development Policy.
In this Access Policy we use an open definition of the terms ‘research’ and ‘researcher’.
Research is defined as a creative, disruptive and purposeful act through which anyone can explore ideas that matter to them and create new knowledge and understanding which goes out into the world in different ways. Everyone experiences the world differently: and we think research should therefore value different types of knowledge, experiences, and ways of thinking across traditional boundaries and borders.
Researchers are defined as anyone who engages with our collections, creates knowledge about them and shares this knowledge. Many definitions of ‘researcher’ are narrow and focus on academic research, with restrictive interpretations of who gets to define research questions, who participates, how research is conducted, and how research findings are interpreted and shared. We acknowledge that the term ‘researcher’ can feel exclusionary for some audiences. We work actively to ensure that all our audiences feel comfortable, respected, and empowered to contribute their knowledge and experiences.
At Wellcome Collection, we envision a world where everyone’s experience of health matters. We want to mean more to more people and to ensure that our collections contribute to a more equitable future. We want to be a place where the complexity of health and peoples’ experiences are explored in ways that are both affirming for those whose experiences have often been overlooked and enriching for all.
We are committed to making our museum and library as accessible as possible for our users, participants and audiences. We recognise that access is a complex issue as different audiences have different needs. We also acknowledge that striving to make our museum and library as accessible as possible is a continual process of learning and taking action as an organisation. We believe that embedding an inclusive approach across the organisation will not only benefit those with specific needs but that everyone benefits from services, processes and programmes designed well and with access in mind.
We are currently developing a new audience development framework that places audiences at the heart of Wellcome Collection. The developing framework centres on three key questions that help to place audiences at the heart of our work:
As part of the framework’s development, we are exploring these key questions through research with Wellcome Collection staff, partners and stakeholders to surface what matters most in our engagements with audiences across our library, museum and archive.
In addition, we follow three key aims in the pursuit developing our audiences and increasing access.
Aim 1: Improve accessibility to our programmes, content and collections (digital, audience, interpretation and physical)
We will work to reduce barriers to accessing our collections. We are working to build upon knowledge and processes that create enhanced access for Deaf, disabled and neurodivergent people, and people with long term health conditions (including mental health conditions). For example, all exhibitions now build on insights from the social model of disability approach at the heart of our long term gallery, Being Human. In addition we incorporate learning gained during ‘In plain sight’ an exhibition that prioritised Blind and partially blind visitors, and ‘1880 THAT!’ exhibitions that prioritise deaf visitors. Our digital provision continues to build on research with learning disabled collaborators where Easy Read icons and Easy Read language are applied as widely as possible.
Aim 2: Create outstanding user-centric experiences that increase use of our content and services
We will create experiences that are as accessible as possible, encouraging a broad and diverse audience to critically engage with health. This includes using more of our collection items in our temporary displays and testing collaborative approaches to developing our new collections gallery through a collaborative ‘chapter’ approach that highlights key collections items and endeavours to make these as accessible as possible. Our events and programming embed participatory approaches and will often be delivered in partnership with key stakeholders.
Aim 3: Extend our impact and reach through digital, broadcast, publishing and touring
Extending our reach will diversify the audience exploring ideas about health through our collections, programmes and content. We develop and deliver an audience-focused schedule of editorial content on the Wellcome Collection website to challenge, inspire and engage with the world about the world, to share ideas and reach both the academic and public with different thoughts, arguments and perspectives about health.
Through touring, lending, publishing and broadcasts, we will ensure our collections and ideas reach audiences nationally and internationally.
Wellcome Collection is committed to providing access in ways which treats all users with respect, courtesy and care. Our Visitor Care Statement can be found here.
Wellcome Collection provides access to its collections, themes and services in a variety of ways across a range of platforms:
And online access to:
Our existing and developmental visitors, users, communities and stakeholders are defined in our Strategy Guidebook (2023).
Wellcome Collection is committed to understanding who its visitors/users and non-visitors/users are, so that we meet their needs and provide access to our collections and services. We do this through on-going programmes of consultation, evaluation and analysis, and listening to feedback so that we are constantly improving accessibility to our collections and the services we offer. Ongoing surveying of visitors is provided by DJS who offer comparative analysis across the museum and library sector; in addition we interpret our visitor information against the MAGIC consortium. Our visitor feedback, including comments, compliments and complaints, is analysed by sentiment and shared by our visitor and library experience and engagement teams and our data and insights function.
To succeed in Equity work, more research is being conducted to understand communities most affected by urgent health challenges facing us all, which will be used to understand how we can deliver against Wellcome’s equity framework.
Wellcome Collection’s approach to marketing and communications draws on Wellcome's principles for inclusive communications. These help us to create inclusive communications from planning and creation all the way through to evaluation. They are a guide for everyone at Wellcome, and the partners, agencies and collaborators we work with.
The principles are:
Through these principles we commit to developing accessible means of communication about Wellcome Collection’s collections, activities and events. We strive to:
We are committed to making our collections as accessible as possible through our library services. We offer dedicated onsite study facilities for group and individual researchers and online access to selected collections via our large-scale digitisation programme and e-resource subscriptions.
We offer study spaces with a range of assistive technologies and we work with communities and accessibility experts to develop and test ways to make our study facilities more inclusive and accessible (for example regular non-quiet days in our rare materials room).
We strive to provide clear, up-to-date and inclusive catalogue entries (collections information) to assist researchers. Wherever possible, we apply permissive Creative Commons licences to the information we create and make it available online. We do not seek to apply fresh copyright to our digitisations of previously out-of-copyright works and encourage copyright owners also to share their content and intellectual property via Creative Commons licences.
Research access to our collections is provided free of charge and in accordance with our published terms and conditions of use. Day passes are available for library visitors who wish to consult materials on open shelves. For other collections (such as rare materials) we require library visitors and some online researchers to register for security and operational purposes, and in order to comply with licensing agreements, copyright and information legislation such as the Data Protection Act.
Our collections access framework enables us to open our collections and collections information as widely as possible, whilst also ensuring that we behave lawfully, ethically and responsibly:
Open – available at the library to visitors on request and, to the extent permitted by copyright, can be copied for non-commercial use and private study. Digitised surrogates and collections information can be viewed online without the need to register and may be downloaded for use according to the licence terms.
Some open material online is additionally classed as:
Open with Advisory – can be viewed following a click-through advisory warning. Copying and download may be restricted for material which has the potential to cause offence, damage or distress.
All of our Core and Support Collections, and associated collections information, are open or open with advisory by default unless they are:
Restricted – available at the library to registered researchers, subject to an approved application for access. Restricted material cannot be copied and personal information must be anonymised in any notes made. In limited circumstances, restricted material may be made available online to authenticated users. Access may be restricted by:
By appointment – available at the library to registered researchers, subject to a pre-arranged appointment. Material may be copied, subject to a sensitivity review and condition assessment. An appointment may be necessary:
Temporarily unavailable – unavailable to registered researchers on a temporary basis whilst a specific action is undertaken. Material may be made temporarily unavailable:
Safeguarded – unavailable except by prior approval where researchers can demonstrate that access is essential to their research. Applications to view safeguarded material are reviewed internally to assess the legal, ethical and safeguarding implications of granting access. Safeguarded material cannot be copied, and the results of any research must be in a form that does not identify any individuals featured in the material
Closed – not available for research, except where researchers can demonstrate that access is in the public interest and would not infringe the rights of any individuals mentioned in the material or for medical research under regulation from the Secretary of State pursuant to s251 of the National Health Service Act 2006.
Further details on how we manage research access to our collections can be found in our published access procedures [PDF 1.1MB]. Restrictions on access are applied for defined periods; special provisions may be made for depositors and community members consulting their own records.
In addition to our Core and Support Collections, we also provide access to:
Licensed Resources – these are subscription databases, electronic journals and e-books made available under a licence from the publisher. Licensed resources are available to all library visitors. Selected resources are also available online to registered researchers.
Collections requiring permission from the donor – under legacy terms of deposit for certain collections, we are obliged to ask researchers to obtain permission from the donor before consulting the material. Once permission has been granted, the material is available to consult at the library to registered researchers and copies are permitted, providing the material is classed as open.
Loans from our collections increase access to items not readily accessible or not on display and help widen our audience beyond the physical site. Wellcome Collection regularly lends items for exhibitions both in the UK and worldwide and such loans form a key component of Wellcome Collection’s strategy. Our Loans Out Policy can be found here.
Sir Henry Wellcome’s Museum Collection is on long-term loan to the Science Museum. The Science Museum provides access to this collection through its own activities including exhibitions, displays, its website, loans out and research. Other smaller elements of the collection, including a group of Egyptian stelai and a collection of classical statuary, are on long-term loan at other institutions.
Our users have a variety of needs and use a range of technologies to access our collections. We will continue to design and develop our site to ensure it works on all devices and with assistive technologies. We aim to provide digital access to all our audiences through digitisation, accessible user interfaces, open APIs and liberal licensing policies. We have, to date, digitised over 340,000 items (55 million images). This programme of work continues to add approximately 230,000 images each month. We will continue to provide free global access to our unique collections and key modern printed material at a rate of up to 2.5 million pages per year. We will work to make born digital content, published and unpublished, readily accessible.
Written By: Inclusive Collections Adviser
Functional Lead: Head of Wellcome Collection Access, Diversity and Inclusion
Policy sponsor: Director, Wellcome Collection
Distribution: Workday internal policies and wellcomecollection.org policy documents page
Requirement: Museum Accreditation, Archive Service Accreditation, Internal Audit
Responsibility for preparation: Head of Wellcome Collection Access, Diversity and Inclusion
Responsibility for review: Strategy and Impact Committee
Review schedule: 5 years
Next review date: August 2030
Sign up to our newsletter to find out what’s on, read our latest stories and get involved.