All posts in Featured Books

Today’s book is truly filled with Page Frights! Sea and Land: An Illustrated History of the Wonderful and Curious Things of Nature Existing Before and Since the Deluge, by James W. Buel (1849-1920), highlights some truly horrific creatures and plants, with colorful tales and an abundance of amazing illustrations. You can read about, and see images of, giant prehistoric and contemporary land, air and sea creatures, sometimes in battle with one another and sometimes battling humans–including early man.

Welcome to Page Frights, a month-long social media celebration of Halloween! All this month (1-31 October), libraries and archives around the world will be sharing spooky, creepy, frightening, and otherwise Halloween-related books and images from their collections on social media with the hashtag #PageFrights.

This year is the National Park Service’s Centennial anniversary. In recognition, we thought we would take a look at one of the geological surveys that inspired the founding of Yellowstone National Park. In recent months, researchers in increasing numbers have looked for specimens and field documentation relating to Yellowstone, specifically from the Hayden Geological Survey of 1871. This survey is important for a number of reasons. It was the first federally funded survey, and was instrumental in introducing the American public to Yellowstone’s natural wonders. It inspired Congress to establish Yellowstone as the first national park in 1872. Smithsonian is a repository for specimens and documentation from the Hayden Geological Survey and numerous others relating to the U.S.