The Council on Botanical and Horticultural Libraries met for its annual conference in Chaska, Minnesota this year.  The conference, which took place June 5th through June 9th, was attended by three Expanding Access to Biodiversity Literature team members: Susan Fraser, Susan Lynch, and Mariah Lewis.

Tuesday the team hosted a pre-conference workshop titled “Contributing to a National Digital Infrastructure, with Help Every Step of the Way.”  The workshop was attended by both members of CBHL and those outside CBHL who were interested in the Expanding Access project.  The training covered a variety of topics including collection development, the Digital Public Library of America, metadata, imaging standards, BHL related tools and defining articles within BHL. The three-hour session was well attended and some attendees are expected to contribute to BHL in the upcoming months while others have already added content through Expanding Access.  Check out the Lloyd Library and Museum’s contributions here!

Tuesday evening, after a day of committee meetings, the opening reception kicked off the annual CBHL meeting.  A wonderful evening of hors d’oeuvres allowed members to reconnect and meet the ten first time attendees.

The next day was spent at the University of Minnesota Landscape Arboretum, a quick drive past Prince’s Paisley Park.  Kathy Allen, this year’s host and the Librarian at the Andersen Horticultural Library, welcomed CBHL members and introduced the Arboretum Director, Peter C. Moe, who gave a thorough, informative and interesting introduction to the Arboretum.  This was followed by a presentation about the Arboretum’s education programs by the Director of the Education Department, Tim Kenny.

The next presentation of the day followed David Bedford’s experiences with apple breeding at the University of Minnesota.  A Senior Research Fellow at the Horticultural Research Center, Bedford took the audience through a history of apple migration and how exactly we get those delicious apple varieties we see in the grocery store.  Notably, the University of Minnesota has developed such apple varieties as Honeycrisp, Regent, and SweeTango.

Wednesday afternoon was spent touring the garden and the Andersen Horticultural Library. Following this was a tram ride around 3-Mile Drive and a stop in at the newly constructed Tashjian Bee and Pollinator Discovery Center, which has been open less than a year.  The Center was created to be both an educational and outreach project in association with the University of Minnesota’s world-renowned bee research.

Thursday the attendees ventured to the University of Minnesota in the Twin Cities.  The morning kicked off in the Wangensteen Library of Biology & Medicine, where tours of the stacks and a rare book showing were given.  Later, members were able to tour the Weisman Art Museum and spend time in the Dear Darwin exhibit.  The crew then walked across the Mississippi on their way to the Elmer L. Andersen Library.

The early afternoon was spent between two activities.  The first was a presentation on the University of Minnesota’s Children’s Literature Research Collection which included a viewing of original artwork by Anne Ophelia Dowden, Betsy Bowen, and Phyllis Root.  The second activity was a tour through the Minnesota Library Access Center- the cavernous storage facility that can hold up to 1.4 million volumes.  With shelves standing 17 feet tall, items are shelved by size and retrieved by forklift.  Later that afternoon there was a panel discussion of Collection Stewardship.

After the group’s time at the University of Minnesota, they traveled to the Minneapolis Institute of Art, taking advantage of the range of art and artifacts in the wonderfully-curated exhibits.  Also nearby was “Eat Street.”  Covering seventeen blocks, Eat Street incorporates a number of different culinary styles, flavors and atmospheres.

On Friday, the annual meeting returned to the Andersen Arboretum.  After a morning of business meetings, a joint CBHL/Friends of the Andersen Horticultural Library Luncheon was held.  CBHL members were able to enjoy the company of the Friends of the Library, who had graciously helped secure the luncheon speaker, and furniture designer legacy Mira Nakashima.  Reflecting on the life and career of her father, master furniture designer George Nakashima, and the current pieces the company is now working to create, Mira Nakashima’s presentation allowed the audience to travel with her into her memories.  After lunch Mira Nakashima led small group tours of the Andersen Library’s Nakashima furniture collection.

That afternoon, there was an Arboretum Behind-the-Scene bus tour where participants were able to see more than just the main area.  This included seeing the apple orchards referenced in an earlier presentation and the home of the osprey family that stars in the University of Minnesota Osprey Cam.

The conference concluded after the Annual Literature Award Ceremony and Banquet.  Each year, after the presentation of the awards and during the banquet, the members enjoy a final speaker and the book raffle.

This year’s banquet speaker was Dr. David Zlesak.  An Associate Professor of Horticulture at the University of Wisconsin, the presentation focused on the plant introduction pipeline.  This follows the life of new varieties from planning and breeding to marketing and selling.

The Expanding Access to Biodiversity Literature (EABL) collection has grown rapidly over the last year, with the addition of born digital material and in-copyright titles scanned by various BHL member libraries. It wasn’t until recently, however, that the collection included titles contributed directly by non-BHL members. This process—a significant departure from usual BHL workflows—is part of EABL’s effort to digitize valuable content from organizations outside the consortium. Contributors ship their material to the closest Internet Archive (IA) scanning center, where it is scanned and added to the BHL and EABL IA collections. From there, the metadata is ingested into BHL by the usual process. EABL then reimburses the scanning cost.

The first organization to digitize in this way through EABL was the Cherokee Garden Library, Kenan Research Center at the Atlanta History Center. They contributed seed catalogs published by H.G. Hastings & Co., a major commercial agricultural company in Atlanta, Georgia, in the early 20th century.

Hastings’ Seeds, No.55 (1918). http://www.biodiversitylibrary.org/page/53015794. Digitized by Cherokee Garden Library, Kenan Research Center at the Atlanta History Center.

The Cherokee Garden Library also contributed a number of volumes (v.1-4, 1843-1846; v.13-15, 1855-1857; v.17, 1859) of The Southern Cultivator, another Atlanta-based publication that historian Michael T. Bernath called “the Confederacy’s oldest, strongest, and intellectually most impressive agricultural journal.” The journal is important not only as a source of information about the agriculture industry of the antebellum South, but also for its stark depiction of American slavery and the unconscionable role it played in the rise of that industry. It was published from 1843 to 1872.

Southern Cultivator. v. 17 (1859). http://www.biodiversitylibrary.org/page/53013665. Digitized by Cherokee Garden Library, Kenan Research Center at the Atlanta History Center.

The editors of The Southern Cultivator minced no words in promoting the practice of slavery; in fact, they saw it as a crucial component in their plan to elevate southern agriculture. In v.1 (1843), they printed an address given by John Belton O’Neall to the Agricultural Society of South Carolina in December of the previous year. In it, Judge O’Neall states that there is one obstacle to realizing the full industrial potential of the state — the “carelessness of her operatives,” i.e., slaves. He continues, “Still, our slaves are capable of more, much more, than we have hitherto had credit for. It is only necessary that they should be taught habits of regularity, economy and thrift, to make them the most effective laborers in the world. This is what we are attempting.” (p.109).

Difficult as it is to read these words—and they are hardly the most racist to appear in the journal’s pages—they provide an unvarnished glimpse into a period of American history in which slavery was a cornerstone of agriculture throughout much of the country. Indeed, The Southern Cultivator shows that it was not southerners alone who believed slavery was vital to the economy. In v.17 (1859), as the tensions that would lead to civil war were quickly rising, the editors reprinted an editorial from the Providence [Rhode Island] Post arguing that the North would suffer equally, if not more, if the South were to secede from the Union or if slavery were abolished. They preface the editorial by saying, completely without irony, that they “seldom dabble in anything that even resembles the ‘dirty water of politics’.” The editorial itself is frank in putting material concerns over principle:

Slavery may be a great outrage against humanity. We look upon it in this light, and have no defence to offer for it. But we remind Northern men, not only that the North clung to while it promised to be profitable…but that Northern merchants and Northern mechanics and Northern manufacturers are dependent on it to-day for their stately ships, their immense store-houses, their splendid dwellings, their paying railroads and their reputation for thrift. (p.107)

Sample of the index to v.17 (1859), showing the topical breadth of the journal. http://www.biodiversitylibrary.org/page/53013673. Digitized by Cherokee Garden Library, Kenan Research Center at the Atlanta History Center.

As the United States continues to grapple with the legacy of the Confederacy, slavery, and the aftermath of the American Civil War, the digitization of these volumes is particularly timely. We are grateful to the Cherokee Garden Library, Kenan Research Center at the Atlanta History Center for contributing them through EABL, and we hope that they will be useful to researchers across many disciplines.

To learn more about the Cherokee Garden Library and its work with EABL, see this post from earlier this year.

Reference
Michael T. Bernath, Confederate Minds: The Struggle for Intellectual Independence in the Civil War South, Chapel Hill, North Carolina: University of North Carolina Press, 2010, p. 86.

This is Mariah Lewis, Metadata Specialist for the Expanding Access to Biodiversity Literature Grant Project, reporting in! Well, we didn’t get that biodiversity literature television show we had been hoping for, but the Expanding Access grant team was on the move again in February conducting training sessions. This time it was a cross-country adventure to California. Happy to escape the New York winter, I began my adventure in San Diego.

Balboa Park is the home to the renowned San Diego Zoo, child of San Diego Zoo Global. However, northeast of the more traditional zoo, nestled among bright green mountains in the San Pasqual Valley is the San Diego Zoo Safari Park. The expansive wildlife sanctuary covers 1,800 acres and is occupied by over 3,000 animal residents. Over the weekend I was able to visit this oasis, go on a safari on the Africa tram, and even catch a cheetah cub feeding.

As the weekend ended it was time to get to work! Also found at the Safari Park is the Institute for Conservation Research, the Harter Veterinary Medical Center, and the San Diego Zoo Global Library. The Library is committed to providing materials, research, and project assistance to the San Diego Zoo Global crew and houses most of the zoo’s collection of over 12,000 books and journals.

The Expanding Access training was hosted and attended by the Library staff. The two-day training cast a broad net including an overview of BHL, instruction on BHL systems and workflows, and hands on training of those BHL systems. We look forward to working with the team at the San Diego Zoo Global Library to include Bulletins of the Zoological Society of San Diego and other titles in the Biodiversity Heritage Library!

Photograph by: Jeanne Nelson Pictured: Beth Autin, Mariah Lewis, and Kathy Elliott at the San Diego Zoo

The next stop on my California adventure was Lost Angeles after getting a (non-literal) crash course in California rush hour. The second training session was hosted at the Los Angeles County Arboretum & Botanic Garden and included staff from the LA Arboretum Library and the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County, both now Affiliates of BHL.

The history of the Los Angeles County Arboretum is rich and well documented on the Arboretum’s website. A year after its founding in 1947, Dr. Frans Verdoorn- the first director- obtained the Library’s first 1,000 books. With such a storied history it is no surprise that the Arboretum goes beyond being a botanical garden and also represents a historical site. The Library is a great example of how the LA Arboretum respects and exceed its mission to, “cultivate our natural, horticultural and historic resources for learning, enjoyment and inspiration.” The current structure that houses the Library was originally built in 1959 with the addition of an annex built in 1986. The library is open to the public and its materials can be used on site. The Library holds a truly extensive collection of seed catalogs from companies across California- from Los Angeles to San Francisco. These seed catalogs will be added to BHL as part of the Expanding Access project.

The Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County is one of three in a family of natural history museums. The other two are the La Brea Tar Pits and Museum and the William S. Hart Park and Museum. Located southwest of downtown Lost Angeles, the Museum has a collection of over 35 million objects placing it among the top collectors of natural and cultural history collections in terms of both the vastness and value of the items. It holds the title of being the largest of its kind within its collection since its inception in 1913. The Library has over 200,000 items and over 30 Special Collections in a number of fields related to natural history. The Library is accessible to Natural History Museum staff and researchers who make appointments. They have a strong focus on Southern California with content dating back to the 16th century. As one of their first additions to the Expanding Access project, they will be contributing a very rare and significant book about the birds of Ceylon.

This training was more focused on the hands-on aspects of BHL- getting images and information into BHL and making sure it is in the best possible condition for our users. The day was beautiful and we were able to enjoy lunch with the Arboretum’s many peacock residents. The namesake for their face, there is also an event in March celebrating the friendly fowl whose lineage dates back to the late 1800s. The interactions between these two institutions and their staff was a wonderful reminder of the collaborative nature of the Biodiversity Heritage Library and its ability to help institutions transcend silos.

Photograph by: Bill Vogt Pictured: Marissa Kings, Susan Eubank, Mariah Lewis, Patty Johnson, Lauren Noonan, Richard Hulser

References:

“About San Diego Zoo Global.” San Diego Zoo Safari Park, December 16, 2014. http://sdzsafaripark.org/visitor-info/about-san-diego-zoo-global.

Photographs: All photographs, unless otherwise noted, were taken by Mariah Lewis.