This symposium will seek to develop momentum in the preservation, access and dissemination of scientific heritage by engaging the key players in this mission through collaborative working. Preservation and dissemination of scientific heritage is vital for present and continued study of ‘scientists at work’. Collaborative working is the key to placing preservation and dissemination of scientific heritage on a sure footing.

Archivists/information specialists and historians of science and technology share a common investment and interest in the sources that document this field. We can capitalise on this by optimizing opportunities for creating an agenda of joint working between archivists/information specialists and historians to identify, preserve and make accessible papers of scientists on a global scale; streamlining catalogue access via an online web hub and use of Linked Data to enrich the content, and display connections not previously obvious, and by collaborating with current projects such as AIM25 and WHSO. Thereby raising the profile of scientific heritage and facilitating historians work by the enhanced online union catalogue approach.

Colleagues in the United States, Europe and Australia are keen to develop this dialogue via their symposium papers, to demonstrate how their expertise can be integrated in the common cause.

Case studies will serve to demonstrate the scientific heritage and how it can be used creatively. They will show the different ways scientists, live, work and preserve records of their activities, how their records can be used for different purposes than those originally created for, their relationship between work and science, insights into the engagement and influence of scientists with government, industry and the public.

International approaches to the preservation of scientists papers, to scientific heritage as an important part of history as a global whole, attitudes to funding and support, and importantly the place of a union catalogue website, will be explored as essential elements in the mission of preserving and disseminating scientific heritage, all contributing to knowledge at work.