All posts in Featured Books

The Smithsonian Field Book Project is showcasing Frederick William True in February!

Today in 1809, Charles Darwin, remembered for his theory of Evolution by means of Natural Selection (which was so eloquently outlined in the 1859 publication On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection) was born. We celebrate this day as Darwin Day. In 2011, BHL released Charles Darwin’s Library, a collection of books found in Charles Darwin’s personal library, with his hand-written annotations marked-up and indexed.

When you think of oceanic dolphins, chances are you don’t think of trash.

William Brewster was a self-educated ornithologist who lived in Cambridge, Massachusetts. From the mid-1800s until his death in 1919, he amassed a tremendous specimen collection and became one of the foremost experts on birds in the northeastern United States. In 1906, the Nuttall Ornithological Club published The Birds of the Cambridge Region of Massachusetts, Brewster’s exhaustive work on the avian fauna of his own backyard.

Every now and then an unusual and exciting opportunity arises to digitize a very unique item. Such an opportunity arrived in the email box of Doug Holland, the director of the Peter H. Raven Library at the Missouri Botanical Garden, one afternoon in January 2014. Anne Hess, daughter of artist Mary Barnas Pomeroy and grand-daughter of artist/teacher Carl Barnas, had decided to donate a collection of artwork and her mother’s unfinished manuscript to the library. It was with great honor that the Raven Library accepted this collection.

Dr. Benjamin Rush, a founding Fellow of the College of Physicians of Philadelphia, first proposed that the College create a medicinal plant garden in 1787. The garden would not only provide medicinals for use by physicians, but would also be used as a pedagogic resource for the training of medical students. Rush’s vision did not come to fruition until the College moved to its current site at 22nd and Ludlow Streets in 1909. An adjoining property was acquired in 1911, and a garden was planted in memory of Wharton Sinkler, a vice-president of the College. This garden contained flowers, trees, and shrubs, typical of small city parks. A medicinal plant garden was cultivated in place of the original garden 150 years after Dr. Rush first proposed its creation.