Why Have A Collection?

Museums collect and preserve objects to be explored today and in the future.

They give visitors the chance to discover learn and enjoy. Medical collections and archives are valuable research resources for academic historians and health professionals trying to understand the context of their practice and what has gone before. Without a grounding in past advances, we sometimes repeat the mistakes of our forebears. 

What are Collections and Archives?

Collections first became popular in the 17th century and were called “cabinets of curiosities”, or “wonder rooms”. Filled with unusual objects

from the natural world together with man-made items, wealthy people competed to have the most unusual cabinet with the rarest and strangest objects inside. These early collections are thought to have been attempts to organise and understand the world in an age where formal science was just taking off. They became the museums of today.

An archive also preserves material from the past, but consists more commonly of records and images. These are also available for research. Confusingly, archives are collections of records. But these are usually unique, one off, and of potential historical importance, rather than being libraries, where books more widely published and disseminated are held. 

Why Does BAPRAS have a Collection?

Antony Wallace developed the BAPS Archive, donating much material that he had personally collected and preserved, and becoming its first

Honorary Archivist in the 1980s. The Archive became known as the BAPS Antony Wallace Archive following his death. By the early 2020s it was recognised that the accumulated material, a large number of instruments and objects, artworks, archival papers documenting the history of the Association and books was better described as “a collection”. It was thus renamed “The BAPRAS Collection” in 2021.