All posts by Hayley Webster

Feathers have been used in fashion throughout history, but the trend became more widespread from the late 18^th century when the Industrial Revolution made luxuries more available to the masses. In the 19^th century, new technology improved the speed of production and the millinery industry boomed. Hats with feathers became a status symbol coveted by a new mass market and were produced on an industrial scale.

Birds were hunted around the world to supply plumes to centres of fashion such as London and New York. In 1886, American Museum of Natural History’s ornithologist, Frank Chapman, infamously observed on a walk in New York some 40 native bird species on women’s hats, some with an entire stuffed bird attached. Indeed, women were oft blamed for the trend: in The Ibis in 1887, women were pointed to as “the indirect, but real, instigators of this slaughter”. The author continues: “all that can be hoped for is that the freaks of feminine vanity may take some other and less harmful direction.”

Published in 1914, Butterflies of Australia by Gustavus Athol Waterhouse and George Lyell was the first comprehensive work on Australian butterflies to appear in Western scientific literature. It is a thick and rather chunky volume, with descriptions of 332 butterfly species, and was the product of many years of research. The copy held in Museums Victoria’s Rare Book Collection is even thicker than a standard issue, as it is bound with lined pages interleaved throughout. It is an author’s copy, owned and annotated by George Lyell.

In my job as the manager of the Library at Museums Victoria (Australia), I am frequently required to conduct rare book research for programs, displays, online projects, or to establish the provenance of a book. I remember being a little daunted by this task at first, not knowing quite what to cover or what the relevant references were in this field. I have put together this quick guide as a reference for newcomers, using digitised books in BHL to demonstrate how to “read” a book for rare book research. I’ve also included some useful links and further reading if you’d like to delve deeper.

On the BHL blog, we often focus on the extensive biodiversity information made available through BHL and the innovative ways scientists are using the vast quantities of historical biodiversity data in BHL to conduct contemporary research. BHL is also useful for a range of non-scientific research, however, and is used by researchers in the arts and humanities as well as the sciences. Artists draw on the illustrations for inspiration, while humanities scholars use the digitised collections for historical research.

For librarians and book historians, BHL contains a wealth of provenance information, as well as the material to conduct comparative research. As a librarian in charge of a rare book collection specialising in natural history, I often use BHL to check if our copy of an item is complete, bound in the usual manner, or coloured in the same way as other copies.