This chapter uses the Wellcome Library's archive collecting around the treatment and experience of ‘mad people’ as a case study for exploring the opportunities and challenges that arise from mainstream attempts to introduce counter-narratives into the archive.1 The argument laid out in this chapter is based on observations at the Wellcome Library undertaken as part of my PhD (Sexton, 2016), where I was embedded within the Wellcome Library and used an auto-ethnographic approach, combined with in-depth interviews with Special Collections staff, to seek to understand perceptions and practice around collection development.

The ethos of collecting at the Wellcome Library can be traced back to the life and outlook of its founder, Sir Henry Wellcome (1853–1936). Henry Wellcome co-founded a successful multinational pharmaceutical company from which he accumulated his personal wealth. He used this increasing wealth during his own lifetime to fund medical research and to fulfil his growing passion as a collector of books and historical objects. His collecting interest lay in his fascination with wanting to understand the art and science of healing across history and cultures. At the time of his death, his personal collection was larger than that of many of Europe's most famous museums (Gould and Faulks, 2007). Although the museum objects collected by Wellcome were transferred to the Science Museum in the 1970s and early 1980s, his book collections were the founding part of the Wellcome Library. Over the years, the Library has been housed in a variety of physical spaces with a sequence of name changes. However, its history during the later decades of the 20th century was one of continuing growth and development, with an ongoing acquisitions programme and a focus on expanding use. In 2007, it became part of the newly conceived Wellcome Collection, which acts as a free destination that ‘seeks to explore the connections between medicine, life and art in the past, present and future; at its heart lies the curiosity that drove Henry Wellcome to amass his diverse collection’ (Wellcome Library, 2013a).

In the course of the Wellcome Library's history, expanding the archives and manuscripts collections has been, and continues to be, a central concern.