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As Chair of BHL, I had the privilege of attending the 25th Meeting of the GBIF Global Governing Board convened in Kilkenny, Ireland, 15-18 October 2018. I represent BHL in its capacity as an Associate Participant in GBIF at the governing board meeting. BHL has been a participant since 2014.

The Global Biodiversity Information Facility (GBIF) operates through a network of global nodes to develop and maintain an open data infrastructure for sharing digital biodiversity data.

The Biodiversity Heritage Library is pleased to welcome the Auckland War Memorial Museum Tāmaki Paenga Hira as a new Affiliate. Auckland Museum is BHL’s first partner in Aotearoa New Zealand.

Tracing its roots back to 1852, Auckland Museum was one of New Zealand’s first museums and is regarded as one of the finest in the Southern Hemisphere. Renowned for its collection of Māori and Pacific treasures along with significant natural history resources, the Museum tells the story of New Zealand, its place in the Pacific and its people. It is also a war memorial for the province of Auckland.

The Museum is home to one of New Zealand’s finest heritage research libraries. Serving the Museum since 1867, the Library’s key focus is caring for and providing access to the Museum’s Documentary Heritage collections, including manuscripts, photographs and artwork, ephemera, oral histories, rare books, and serials. The Library’s collections have an overarching focus on the Auckland province and te ao Māori (the Māori world), and its natural history collection strengths include botany, and academic and general-interest works related to the natural sciences.

On September 12, 1967 Ralph Axtell, of the Biology Department of Southern Illinois University, called the Smithsonian Institution using the teletype connected to his time-shared computer and asked for a [computer] program for the calculation of standard deviations. The Smithsonian then sent him two computer programs. This demonstrated that, using data communications equipment and telephone lines, “it is fast, practical, and feasible to exchange programs in the BASIC language, written for use by biosystematists, between institutions in the United States.” A revolution had begun that would transform museums, research, systematics and science.

The following day Dr. James A. Peters produced the inaugural issue of the MUDPIE (Museum and University Data Program and Information Exchange) Newsletter.

MUDPIE newsletter documents many early events in the adoption of computers and timesharing computing in museums and universities, and was founded and produced by Dr. Peters, the only editor in the newsletter’s publication history. Twenty-six issues of MUDPIE were produced and distributed over a five-year period, between September 1967 and September 1972. All issues are now digitally available at the Biodiversity Heritage Library thanks to the Smithsonian Libraries.

In the archives of the Farlow Reference Library of Cryptogamic Botany at Harvard University, there is a curious volume of 249 original watercolors of fungi species bearing the title Icones fungorum Niskiensium.

Devoid of any creator identification, the provenance and historical significance of the volume seems shrouded in mystery. A cursory examination of the work reveals a collection of charming, but often incomplete, figures and a myriad of annotations in pencil and ink, some struck through, others revealing uncertainty over species identifications or recording observations on specimen quality or coloration.

In 1805, the “Father of North American mycology”, Lewis David von Schweinitz (1780-1834), published an account of the fungi in Niesky, Germany with his friend and mentor, Johannes Baptista von Albertini (1769-1831). Documenting over 1,000 species, including 100 published as new-to-science, Conspectus fungorum in Lusatiae Superioris agro Niskiensi crescentium, e methodo Persooniana is still referenced to this day as a classic mycological text and ecological record.

The Conspectus is illustrated with 12 hand-colored plates based on drawings by Schweinitz, each featuring 6-10 figures of new species described. Whenever possible, Schweinitz based his drawings on fresh specimens, but when this was not an option, he referred to fungarium specimens or to a collection of earlier watercolors he’d created of representative specimens.

Today, these watercolor volumes are dispersed between several American institutions and offer a wealth of insight into the history and development of the Conspectus. The earliest volume of original watercolors related to the Conspectus is the Icones Fungorum Niskiensium, created (ca.) 1798-1802 and held in the archives of the Farlow Reference Library of Cryptogamic Botany at Harvard University. This volume served Schweinitz as a sketchbook of sorts, which he used to inform the final paintings in the Conspectus itself.

Natural history illustrations often aim to show life-like flora and fauna. Depictions of birds poised to take flight, fish swimming upstream, and mammals mid-stride are common in 18th and 19th century zoology and botany publications. What is lost in these often lavish illustrations is a certain truth about the way many naturalists interacted with their objects of study: many species of plant or animal were first encountered not in the wild, but in the display case, in the form of carefully prepared specimens.

One British naturalist, Captain Thomas Brown (1785-1862), made the practical observation that mounted animal specimens allowed naturalists to “contemplate, without dread, the most destructive and furious quadrupeds, and the most noxious reptiles.”

This post originally appeared on the Smithsonian Libraries blog and has been republished at the permission of the author, Julia Blakely.

As a commemoration of the Imperial collection of shells in Vienna, the printed folio of Testacea Musei Caesarei Vindobonensis of 1780, is splendid. The eighteen engraved plates, carefully colored by hand, render individual specimens in the Habsburgs’ K.K. Hof-naturalien-Cabinet as if pieces of jewelry, casting shadows on a plain background of the thick, hand-made paper. Dedicated to the Empress of Austria, Maria Theresa (1717-1780), this production was also a work of science, as the task of arranging the shells in the Cabinet and describing them for publication was given to one of the leading scientists of the day, Ignaz Edler von Born (1742-1791).