Book of the Week: The Illustrations of The Ibis
In our last post, our featured user Mathew Louis named The Ibis as his favorite title in BHL. Thus, we decided to feature this entire series as our “book of the week” this week. Not only is The Ibis full of valuable information on birds, it’s also loaded with beautiful illustrations, many of which are featured in Mathew Louis’ website: http://sites.google.com/site/mmslouisb/theibis.
The website also gives some interesting background on the publication, and on one of the artists involved in the work:
The Ibis is the organ of publication of the British Ornithologists’ Union. It was long issued as a small, octavo edition, but more recently, it has appeared in a larger format. Originally the volumes were numerated as a series, each of which being completed by six volumes for that many years, but this method was later abandoned in favor of numbering the volumes according to each consecutive year.Keulemans contributed to The Ibis every year from 1869–1909. In the 1869 edition (Second Series–Volume V) his name appeared as the lithographer, not as the colorist, on a number of plates.”
Slightly abandoning our usual book of the week structure, we’re spending the rest of this post featuring many of the beautiful illustrations in this work. Enjoy!
Grace Costantino served as the Outreach and Communication Manager for the Biodiversity Heritage Library from 2014 to 2021. In this capacity, she developed and managed BHL's communication strategy, oversaw social media initiatives, and engaged with the public to excite audiences about the wealth of biodiversity heritage available in BHL. Prior to her role as Outreach and Communication Manager, Grace served as the Digital Collections Librarian for Smithsonian Libraries and as the Program Manager for BHL.
Your website is truly an incredible resource, making it possible to easily access illustrations from the works in our collection. Thank you for providing this important service, and please let us know if you have any more requests for scanning that we can add to our queue!
The website link provided above includes a directory to illustrations by John Gerrard Keulemans having appeared in "The Ibis." Thus far, all but 12 of the 41 volumes to which Keulemans contributed have been completed; most recently, the pages for the year 1892 have been updated. In addition, the following links, provided below, include examples of other illustrators who had contributed to "The Ibis."
Link 1–
https://picasaweb.google.com/109346894814732066704/IbisJosephSmit#
Link 2–
https://picasaweb.google.com/109346894814732066704/IbisJosephWolfEtAl#
The Biodiversity Heritage Library's catalog has been exceptionally and critically helpful in my work and how I am able to find quality examples of plates to include on my website.
Mathew Louis