museums victoria – Page 2 – Biodiversity Heritage Library

Blog Reel, Featured Books

A Basic Guide to Rare Book Research

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.

Having conducted numerous talks and tours on rare books in my career, I am now familiar with the questions people ask and prepare by trying to cover as much as possible of the following:

Bibliographical information: publication date and the dates of any parts if applicable, edition statement, number of volumes, parts and plates
Production details: method of printing and illustrating, method of colouring
Print run (edition)
Remaining (extant) copies
Biographical information of authors/illustrators/contributors
Provenance
Significance

Here are my top tips for finding that information.

1. Look at the book!

Much information can be gleaned from the item itself. The title page is normally the go-to for bibliographical details and may also provide information about illustrations. For instance, title pages frequently advertise methods of printing and colouring plates.

Image: This title page informs us that the book contains hand-coloured and monochrome plates. Source: Mathews, Gregory. The birds of Norfolk & Lord Howe Islands and the Australasian South Polar quadrant. 1928. Contributed in BHL from Museums Victoria.

The illustrations themselves often bear further information, such as the names of contributors or the method of printing.

Plate 33. Gould, John. Birds of Australia. Volume 1 (1848). Contributed in BHL from Smithsonian Libraries.

You may need to do some detective work to decipher abbreviations. In the example above “J. Gould & H. C. Richter” appears on the left with the abbreviation del et lith and “Hullmandel & Walton” appears on the right with the abbreviation Imp. There are a number of references that you can consult to illuminate these terms (see further reading). Princeton University Library’s post on Printmaker’s abbreviations provides the following information:

del = drawn by
lith = lithographed by
imp = printed by

Therefore, this illustration indicates that it was transferred to (drawn on) the lithographic stone by J. Gould and H. C. Richter and printed by the firm Hullmandel & Walton.

The preface and introduction may also contain acknowledgements of contributors and details on production methods.

Preface. Gould, John. Birds of Australia. Volume 1 (1848). Contributed in BHL from Smithsonian Libraries.

For instance, John Gould’s preface to Birds of Australia provides greater detail than the acknowledgements on individual plates. He laments the loss of his wife Elizabeth part-way through the production of the work, and we learn that she drew the preliminary sketches that Richter used to develop the final prints. Gould also mentions that the illustrations were hand-coloured by a Mr. Bayfield.

Rare books may also contain traces of their previous owners, or provenance. Provenance information is commonly found in the first few pages of a book, such as the inside front cover, flyleaves or title page. Hints as to previous owners can include inscriptions, bookplates or library stamps (more on stamps in my library here).

Image: This inscription on the title page indicates that this book belonged to author George Lyell. Source: Waterhouse, G. A & Lyell, G.. Butterflies of Australia. 1914. Contributed in BHL from Museums Victoria.

Image: Bookplate of naturalist Frederick Ducane Godman, co-author of Biologia Centrali-Americana with Osbert Salvin. Source: Salvin, Osbert. [Collected articles from The Ibis on the ornithology of Central America]. 1859-1864. Contributed in BHL from Museums Victoria.

Image: These library stamps demonstrate the transfer of this item between institutions. The Museums Victoria Library has received two significant donations of material from the Parliamentary Library of Victoria in its history. Source: Elisha Kent Kane. Arctic explorations : the second Grinnell Expedition in search of Sir John Franklin, 1853, ’54, ’55. Volume 1. 1856. Contributed in BHL from Museums Victoria.

Institutional or library markings may direct you to relevant archival materials.

Image: Pencil notes in the top right-hand corner of this page indicate that this book was for sale by D. A. Horn Antiquarian Books for $50. The top left-hand numbers are an acquisition number that would allow us to trace the purchase in our archives. Source: Wild, John James. At anchor : a narrative of experiences afloat and ashore during the voyage of H.M.S. Challenger, from 1872 to 1876. 1878. Contributed in BHL from Museums Victoria.

Be particularly attentive to any dates as these should help narrow the date range for further archival research.

2. Consult catalogue records

If you are working with a library book, the catalogue record will be an indispensable resource for bibliographic details, and may contain additional contributor, production or provenance information. Comparing your local catalogue record to other library records will allow you to compare basic details of your copy with others to verify the completeness of your item. Trove and Worldcat are useful for locating library catalogue records and identifying how many copies remain in public collections in Australia or worldwide. It is often difficult to establish the number of extant copies with any certainty unless a census has been conducted (such as this one of the Aurora Australis.)

Auction catalogue records are useful as they normally provide a physical description, brief biography of the author, list any known contributors, and highlight points of significance. The price estimate can be helpful too! Some auction houses make their catalogue records freely available online, so you will be able to find them through an internet search. Otherwise, try consulting your public or institutional library to see if they can help you locate relevant resources.

3. Locate digitised versions

Sometimes it can be useful to consult a digitised version of the book, such as may be found in online repositories like the Biodiversity Heritage Library. This level of detailed research may be needed if you suspect the copy is incomplete, or to compare variations in hand-colouring or binding.

Image: By comparing our copy of Albertus Seba’s Thesaurus with a Smithsonian copy, I was able to establish that our copy is bound differently; two volumes of plates and two volumes of text, rather than the usual four volumes with plates interleaved throughout. Source: Seba, Albertus. Locupletissimi rerum naturalium thesauri accurata descriptio. Volume 1. 1734-1765. Contributed in BHL from Smithsonian Libraries.

4. Consult secondary references

Verify the information you have compiled by consulting relevant secondary sources. Rare books are described using specific terminology that you may not be familiar with, so it can be helpful to utilise a glossary such as this one from the International League of Antiquarian Booksellers.

Become familiar with standard references in your subject area and region. For instance, in Australia biographical information is readily accessible through the Australian Dictionary of Biography. The Bibliography of Australia by John Alexander Ferguson provides a list of Australian publications, and similar titles document publications in other regions.

Subject-specific bibliographies may also be of use. For instance, in my library I have consulted Antarctica, 1772-1922 : freestanding publications through 1999, Natural science books in English, 1600-1900 and Bibliography of Australian entomology, 1775-1930 : with bibliographical notes on authors and collectors when undertaking rare book research. These types of references can help outline significance and sometimes provide additional information on contributors, editions, or production methods.

If the book or author you are researching is well-known, there will be an array of books, journal articles and websites that provide biographical and contributor information, methods of production, and significance. For instance, recent secondary material on John Gould tends to emphasise the important role of his wife Elizabeth in more detail than is readily apparent from acknowledgements on the works themselves. Secondary sources also suggest that while John Gould certainly had input into the illustrations that adorn his publications, he would not have been the one to transfer the drawing to the lithographic stone.

However, if the book or author is more obscure, this can present a greater challenge. This is a good opportunity to utilise the reference services offered by your local or institutional library!

5. Remember the wider context

In my role as a librarian, I undertake rare book research on items in our collection as required, and therefore my research tends to be object-oriented. While this guide aims to assist this type of research, it is important to be aware of the broader social and historical context that a book was produced in and to consider how this might affect your interpretation (a much bigger topic than I can cover here!).

This guide outlines a basic approach to rare book research and is based on my professional experience. It is most applicable to rare printed materials such as you will find in BHL. If a more detailed approach appeals, the study of bibliography offers techniques for analysing and describing rare books at a more technical level.

Origins of Australian Ornithology : The Evolution of Australia’s Bird Reference Books

Welcome to Bird Week!

It is bird week from the 21st -27th of October. During this week, we would like to share with you some of the wonderful rare reference books on Australian birds and the stories behind them. These books have been digitised by the Biodiversity Heritage Library and are freely available in open access. The scientific reference works showcased this week include books from 1781 through to 1931. Ornithologists used these books to describe new species found within Australia and added to the growing number of previously undescribed birds during this time.

Title page. Latham, John. A General Synopsis of Birds. (1781-1785). Digitised in BHL by Smithsonian Libraries.

A General Synopsis of Birds consists of three volumes each with two parts, published from 1781 to 1785, with supplements in 1787 and 1801. Latham worked from descriptions by explorer William Dampier and Sir Joseph Banks, who sailed on the first voyage to Australia as the naturalist aboard Captain James Cook’s Endeavour from 1768 -1771. All volumes have been digitised by Smithsonian Libraries and can be viewed in BHL.

Plate XX. North, Alfred John. Descriptive Catalogue of the Nests and Eggs of Birds found in Australia and Tasmania. (1889). Digitised in BHL by Museums Victoria.

A Descriptive Catalogue of the Nests and Eggs of Birds found in Australia and Tasmania (1889) was published by Alfred John North, who described a number of birds for the first time. This publication contains a detailed description of the eggs of each species that were accessible to North, supplemented with descriptions of such other distinct varieties as occasionally occur. The history of the details of the eggs is often described as unknown, with a few exceptions taken from Gould’s Handbook to the Birds of Australia. The full book is available on BHL thanks to Museums Victoria.

Plate XXIII. Lewin, John. A Natural History of the Birds of New South Wales. 3rd edition (1822). Digitised in the BHL by Museums Victoria.

John Lewin relocated to Australia from England in 1800, keen to visit the colony of New South Wales. His first book on birds, Birds of New Holland, was published in London in 1808. Unfortunately, as the books were shipped back to Australia from London for distribution, they were lost, possibly at sea. Only six copies are known to exist. Lewin decided to begin a second edition. However, his copper illustration plates were still in England, hence he needed to start again from scratch. The second edition was renamed The Birds of New South Wales with their Natural History and was published in 1813. It is recognised as the first illustrated book published in Australia. The third and fourth editions, published under the title A Natural History of the Birds of New South Wales, were published in 1822 and 1838 respectively and have been digitized in BHL by Museums Victoria.

[Plate VI]. Gould, John. A Synopsis of the Birds of Australia, and the Adjacent Islands. (1837-38). Art by Elizabeth Gould. Digitised in the BHL by Museums Victoria.

Acclaimed ornithologist Gould received bird specimens in London from his brothers-in-law in Australia, which he used to publish his Synopsis of the Birds of Australia (1837-38). The illustrations are predominantly of bird heads, all hand-painted by Gould’s wife, Elizabeth. Only basic descriptions of Australian birds were used, as Gould intended to publish this work in order to get to Australia to research and illustrate birds in the wild with his wife. Gould noted that on his return from Australia, these pages would be removed and further knowledge of Australian species and their habitats would be recorded.

Photograph of the cover of one of the volumes of Gould’s Birds of Australia, from the library collections of the Melbourne Museum of Museums Victoria. The Birds of Australia (1840-1848) has also been digitised in BHL by Smithsonian Libraries

In a letter dated 15th February 1839, while in Australia, Elizabeth Gould wrote “[John] has already done more in obtaining nests and eggs, making skeletons of the various forms of birds, etc., and in getting information of their habits, than has been hitherto done, and will, I hope, be enabled to produce an interesting work on our return.”

On arrival back to England, John Gould published The Birds of Australia between 1840 and 1848. The book encompasses 600 species of birds, of which 200 were first described by Gould. Elizabeth produced 84 of the illustration plates for The Birds of Australia, but sadly, she died in 1841, before the book was completed and only one year after the Goulds’ return from Australia. The remainder of the plates were primarily created by painter Henry Constantine Richter, which were made after sketches by Elizabeth. While in Australia, Elizabeth also created many botanical illustrations and wrote that these helped to “render the work on ‘Birds of Australia’ more interesting…I trust we shall be enabled to make our contemplated work of sufficient interest to ensure it a good sale.”

A good sale it was. The Birds of Australia was bound in seven volumes, costing subscribers £115 — the equivalent to around 18K AUD or 12K USD in today’s money. But the significant contribution this book made to the science of ornithology far exceeds its monetary value.

Plate I. Cayley, W, Neville. What Bird is that? (1931). Digitised in BHL by Museums Victoria.

What Bird is that? A Guide to the Birds of Australia (1931) was the first comprehensive field guide that was intended as a bird identification book in Australia. During the early 20th century, there was a growing interest in amateur ornithology, and Cayley had hoped that his book would encourage nature lovers to extend their knowledge and appreciation of Australian birdlife. In addition to being an ornithologist, Cayley was also a prolific artist and produced the 36 plates contained in the book. Subsequent editions were published up until the 1990s and it became a classic ornithological work in Australia.

October 21, 2019 by Joel Richard

Blog Reel, Featured Books

Our Experience Digitising a Rare Book for the Biodiversity Heritage Library

Plate 18. Mathews, Gregory M. (Gregory Macalister). The birds of Norfolk & Lord Howe Islands and the Australasian South Polar quadrant. 1928. Art by Henrik Grönvold. Contributed in BHL from Museums Victoria.

Recently, we spent three weeks on student placement at Museums Victoria Library and were fortunate enough to be involved with the digitisation of the beautiful title The birds of Norfolk & Lord Howe Islands and the Australasian South Polar quadrant by Gregory M. Mathews. It was an eye-opening experience, making us aware of the patience and attention to detail that is a necessity for book digitisation.

In order to get suitably high resolution scans, a Zeutschel OS 16000 scanner is primarily used for Biodiversity Heritage Library (BHL) digitisations at Museums Victoria. The Australian branch of the project, BHL Australia, digitises the collections of 25 organisations across the country. It is hosted by Museums Victoria and funded by the Atlas of Living Australia.

As this title was rare, it was essential to handle it gently, and to protect the spine from excessive pressure. To ensure minimal impact, we wore gloves when in contact with the book, and scanned one page at a time. We scanned all right-hand pages first, before turning the book around and repeating the process for the left-hand pages. The glass pane normally used to pin pages down on ordinary books can’t be used on rare books, so getting pages to lie flat was a challenge in itself! This digitisation project has given us a chance to see a lot of this beautiful title, with its multitude of breathtaking illustrations.

Marina Hunt scanning The birds of Norfolk & Lord Howe Island for the Biodiversity Heritage Library.

Both of us are currently working towards the Master of Information Management qualification at RMIT University. Being involved with the BHL project has been invaluable to our understanding of the challenges and importance of digitisation. As digital technology continues to develop and evolve, digitisation provides exceptional opportunities for further access and research. As such, digitisation is likely to play a significant role in our careers in information management into the future, and we are highly grateful to have had the opportunity to be involved in such a project.

Brendan with Chris Healey, Technical Support Officer BHL.jpg

Brendan Bachman with BHL-AU’s Technical Support Officer Chris Healey.

The birds of Norfolk & Lord Howe Islands and the Australasian South Polar quadrant is a remarkable guide to the birds of some of Australia’s more outlying territories, specifically Norfolk and Lord Howe Islands and areas of the Antarctic. Published in 1928, the title contains detailed description and distribution information for a number of species, as well as beautiful illustrations of each bird. Many of the species covered in the book were extinct when the book was published, while others became extinct in the decades afterwards. This adds to the unique nature of this title. Only 225 copies of this work were produced, and around 57 are currently held in library collections worldwide.

Plate 43. Mathews, Gregory M. (Gregory Macalister). The birds of Norfolk & Lord Howe Islands and the Australasian South Polar quadrant. 1928. Art by Henrik Grönvold. Contributed in BHL from Museums Victoria.

The book was written by noted ornithologist Gregory Macalister Mathews. Born in 1876, Mathews grew up in Australia before moving to England, where his interest in birds became an obsession. Over his life Mathews contributed to a significant number of ornithological works, but none drew more attention than his Birds of Australia (which is also available on the BHL website, the final volumes of which were digitised by the BHL Australia project at Museums Victoria). During the creation of Birds of Australia, he regularly worked 16 hour days, and through the course of this work he acquired 30,000 skins and around 5,000 books.

Despite dedicating much of his life to their study, Mathews “was not really interested in the living bird”, and was “essentially a bibliophile” (Kloot, 1986). Mathews stressed that The birds of Norfolk & Lord Howe Islands was not a supplement to his far more famous Birds of Australia, but he did believe that the birds discussed should be considered part of any list of Australian birds. Certainly, it follows the same format, has the same publisher and should be considered a related work.

Plate 32. Mathews, Gregory M. (Gregory Macalister). The birds of Norfolk & Lord Howe Islands and the Australasian South Polar quadrant. 1928. Art by Henrik Grönvold. Contributed in BHL from Museums Victoria.

The birds of Norfolk & Lord Howe Islands includes 45 hand-coloured lithographs and monochrome plates, with this work being one of the last publications worldwide to include hand-coloured plates (Pasquier & Farrand 1991). These were the work of two illustrators — Henrik Grönvold and Frederick William Frohawk.

Grönvold was a well-known Danish naturalist and lithographer who predominately illustrated birds and their eggs. Born in 1858, he worked on a wide range of ornithological works, including Birds of Africa and The British Warblers, and he created a remarkable 600 plates for Mathew’s Birds of Australia.

Frederick William Frohawk was born in 1861 and had an interest in illustration and natural history from an early age, catching a rare pale clouded yellow butterfly at the age of seven. Despite losing virtually all sight in one eye during his school years, he went on to become a noted illustrator of butterflies and birds. Among his notable works is The complete book of British butterflies, which he both wrote and illustrated.

References

Kloot, T 1986, ‘Mathews, Gregory Macalister (1876–1949)’, Australian Dictionary of Biography, http://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/mathews-gregory-macalister-7517

Pasquier, R. F., & Farrand, J., Jr 1991, Masterpieces of Bird Art: 700 Years of Ornithological Illustration. Abbeville Press. pp. 180–181.

October 10, 2019 by Joel Richard

Blog Reel, Featured Books, User Stories

Provenance and Library Stamps at Museums Victoria and on BHL

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.

A good example of this is Museums Victoria’s copy of Albertus Seba’s Locupletissimi rerum naturalium thesauri accurata descriptio (commonly referred to in English as his Thesaurus). Museums Victoria holds the only copies of Seba’s Thesaurus in Australian libraries; however, using the Biodiversity Heritage Library I have been able to compare our copy with copies around the world in libraries that I would be unlikely to visit. I have been able to identify that our copy is bound differently to the norm, with plates and text in separate volumes — presumably at the request of a previous owner. I was also able to deduce that the unusual teal nails on the opossum are intentional — we had thought it a quirk of hand-colouring! However, all coloured copies on BHL show the opossum sporting a teal mani pedi (fig. 1).

Fig. 1. Tab XXXIX. Seba, Albertus. Locupletissimi rerum naturalium thesauri accurata descriptio. Plates to Volumes 1 & 2. 1734-1765. Digitized in BHL by Museums Victoria.

Lately, I have used our digitised items in conjunction with our Rare Book Collection to look at provenance and acquisition information in our collection. This was inspired by a fantastic course in “Provenance in Books” as part of London Rare Book School last year. Our instructor, David Pearson, took us through various aspects of provenance information in books, including bookplates, bindings, inscriptions, and annotations. Working in an institutional library, one of the things I was most interested in was different forms of library acquisition and provenance information. David told us of a project at the British Library to develop a research guide detailing the different stamps used across the institution’s history to assist in identifying when items had been acquired. I set out to develop something similar for our institution, and here is a sample of the work I have done so far, focusing primarily on one of our predecessor institutions, the National Museum of Victoria.

The National Museum of Victoria was established in the 1850s, and the library collection has been developed since its foundation. Accessioning practices have changed over the 160-plus year history of the library. The most consistent practice appears to have been to mark or apply stamps to the title page, or first few flyleaves, of a book. The stamps that appear on these pages are therefore usually the most reliable for dating an acquisition or to assist in narrowing a date range for archival research.

The information available in each library book varies. A book may include all or none of the following: accession number, date of acquisition, library stamp, inscription or bookplate of a previous owner. Books purchased between 1854 and the end of the nineteenth century are the least likely to carry acquisition information; many only bear a stamp, as shown below (fig. 2).

Fig. 2. Title page of Museums Victoria’s copy of Histoire naturelle : generale et particuliere des cephalopodes acetabuliferes vivants et fossils by Ferussac and d’Orbigny (Volume 2. 1835-1848) with National Museum Victoria stamp.

The practice from around 1900 seems to have been to write the accession date on the top left corner of the title page or the abbreviations ‘Entd.’ Or ‘E’ (fig. 3).

Fig. 3. Title page of Museums Victoria’s copy of A natural history of the birds of New South Wales (3rd ed. 1822) by John Lewin. Unfortunately, Museums Victoria doesn’t hold a first edition of this work, however we have digitised the 3rd (1822) and 4th editions (1838) for everyone to enjoy!

The National Museum Melbourne stamp appears to have been used from around 1900 to 1930 (fig. 4).

Fig. 4. Title page of Museums Victoria’s copy of Monographia Aranearum (or Monographie der Spinnen in German) (1820-1836) by Carl Wilhelm Hahn with National Museum Melbourne stamp. This title is very rare, with only 13 complete copies recorded in Peter Sacher’s census in 1988.[1]

From the 1930s to late 1970s, dated stamps such as the examples below were in use, making purchases in this period very easy to date (figs. 5 & 6).

Fig. 5. Museums Victoria’s copy of A popular sketch of the natural history of Queensland (1886) by Price Fletcher with dated stamp. With a specific date available, this acquisition would be easy to trace in our archives.

Fig. 6. Title page of Museums Victoria’s copy of William Turton’s A conchological dictionary of the British Islands (1819) with dated stamp. The acquisition number in the top right-hand corner makes this title even easier than the last example to trace in our archives. Keep looking through this item and you will spy some lovely additional illustrations added in the margins by a former owner.

While dated stamps continued to be used after the 1970s, a blind stamp was used for items that were being directly entered into the Rare Book Collection between the late 1970s and early 2000s (fig. 7).

Example of a blind stamp from Museums Victoria

Fig. 7. This blind stamp would have been considered less intrusive, while still clearly indicating ownership.

This is representative of a shift in library practice towards the designation and separate management of rare book collections. By the late 1970s, the Museums Victoria Library was housing its rare books separately from the general collection.

Fig. 8. A recent example of a dated stamp from 2017. National Museum of Victoria. List of meteorite specimens in the collection of the National Museum of Victoria, September 1972. 1972. Digitized in BHL by Museums Victoria.

Archival research is usually needed to confirm the date of acquisition. Items frequently bear multiple stamps, which may have been applied after accessioning. It appears that stamps were applied to the verso of plates retrospectively, while items may also have been routinely stamped if they were rebound.

While the stamps can be a bit confusing at times, having a general understating of them can help refine a date range for archival research. It also allows me to give a quick answer to a question often asked by tour groups — how long has this item been in your collection?

References

[1] Sacher, Peter 1988 ‘Commentary’ in Hahn, Carl Wilhelm, Monographie der spinnen (1820-1836), Leipzig, Zentralantiquariat der DDR.

A Day for Worms on BHL

The Biodiversity Heritage Library (BHL) is replete with publications which have had a seminal influence on their field. A highly-credentialed member of this category is John H. Day’s A Monograph on the Polychaeta of Southern Africa, published in 1967 in two volumes by the (then) British Museum (Natural History) in London. It is timely to celebrate this book now: on 25 August 2019 the author John Day would have had his 110^th birthday. And, as of this month, the author’s own copy of the book has been digitised for the BHL.

Years ago, this copy was loaned to me by John Day’s son, Professor Rob Day (also a marine biologist) from the The University of Melbourne — just down the road from my office and from the Australian node of BHL, both at Museums Victoria in Melbourne. When my librarian colleagues discovered I had the copy, annotated in pencil by the author with a 2^nd edition in mind, they were keen to digitise it, even though BHL had previously digitised another copy. (A new version of Day’s monograph was later prepared but never published, perhaps due to lack of funding.)

Polychaetes are important to marine biologists due to their weight of numbers: in nearly all seafloor environments anywhere in the world, polychaetes are just about the most numerous and the most species-rich invertebrate. Therefore, many marine ecologists spend a lot of time identifying polychaetes — usually a difficult task. Which is why John Day’s monograph was so influential. For decades before, and for decades after, there was nothing like it, and so the two volume work, known to most researchers simply as Day, was indispensable.

Day was a comprehensive synthesis of descriptions, diagnoses and drawings of this rich and diverse component of the marine fauna (currently there are about 12,000 described species of polychaetes). And because most polychaete families and genera occur worldwide, and because there was no other equivalent publication anywhere, Day was a vital reference for anybody anywhere who needed to identify their local marine fauna.

Day is still a model for anyone who sets out to write such a monograph, because of the simplicity and clarity of both text and illustrations. In particular, the introductory pages provide a visual overview and key to the numerous families.

Page 23. Day, John H. A Monograph on the Polychaeta of Southern Africa. Volume 1, 1967. Author-annotated copy. Digitized in BHL by Museums Victoria.

These handful of pages encapsulate what would otherwise be an overwhelming variety; even beginners can begin to think that they may one day be able to interpret the myriad forms and structures of polychaetes. Thus, although the documentation of polychaete diversity has marched on, well-thumbed 50 year old copies of Day are still in regular use in marine laboratories world-wide.

It seems to me that John Day must have honed and improved his diagrams over many years of teaching (he was Professor of Zoology at The University of Cape Town) and that he must have given a lot of thought to the layout and presentation. Day had begun annotation of his own copy with species to be added, but he didn’t touch these introductory pages, suggesting that he too was satisfied with the published version. Even today, for me and many of my colleagues, there is nothing quite like it for introducing novices to the mysterious world of polychaetes — there have been numerous revisions and name changes in intervening decades, but the worms themselves still look the same.

John H. Day (third from right) showing students a tray of specimens collected from an estuary mudflat. Durban Bay, South Africa, 1951. Photograph supplied by Rob Day, 2019.

John Day was ahead of his time in other respects too. Our understanding of evolutionary relationships of polychaetes, and how they should be classified within the phylum Annelida, has long seemed an intractable task. Many alternative classifications having been offered up in publications both before and since the publication of Day. The author himself took a purely pragmatic approach and followed earlier workers, arranging the families in two major groups, one per volume: Errantia (mostly mobile worms with similar segments and often with jaws) and Sedentaria (mostly tube dwellers often with a crown of feeding tentacules and modified body regions).

Even though Day only ever claimed this as an arbitrary arrangement, he would have surely been pleased to know that this practical solution has a lot in common with the most recent phylogenetic analyses based on DNA sequence data, which recognise many elements of the old Errantia / Sedentaria scheme and even retain the names! Nor, I think, would he have been dismayed by another discovery confirmed by DNA data: there is no such thing as “Polychaeta”, which is now known to comprise a variety of forms which do not all belong on a single branch of the annelid phylogeny. Furthermore, several other kinds of worms previously known as separate Phyla are now known to belong within the Annelida — a possibility also canvassed by John Day in the introduction to his monograph. (I’ll nevertheless keep using polychaetes as an informal term.)

I never met John Day, but his no-nonsense attitude was evident in other ways. He had lost a leg when hit by flak on a bombing raid while flying as a navigator for the RAF during the Second World War (he was still able to provide a course before passing out and the tail gunner saved his life by limiting loss of blood until they returned to base). There are unconfirmed stories that after the war, on trips between Cape Town and London, he would bring preserved polychaete specimens for study through customs in his prosthetic leg.

Taxonomists nowadays are wont to criticise Day, and other publications of the era, for accepting as valid many “cosmopolitan species”.

Page 146. Phyllodoce malmgreni and related taxa in the family Phyllodocidae. Page 146 from Day, John H. A Monograph on the Polychaeta of Southern Africa. Volume 1, 1967. Author-annotated copy. Digitized in BHL by Museums Victoria.

Phyllodoce_cf_malmgreni_F135127_dorsal_pharynx_400px.jpg

Phyllodoce malmgreni was described from the Red Sea, but has been much more widely recorded throughout the Indo-Pacific. This museum specimen of Phyllodoce cf. malmgreni is from Australia. Photograph Robin Wilson.

Typically, these were originally described from European localities but subsequently recorded (or rather very similar forms were found) from more widespread regions. If they could not be distinguished, specimens from widespread localities were assigned to a single species.

In recent decades, taxonomists have split many “cosmopolitan species” into a number of new species, each from a different ocean or region. At first, this seemed an almost routine tidy up task. The advent of molecular systematics has shown that the situation is far more complex and interesting. DNA sequence data has repeatedly demonstrated that even within a region (for example northern Europe), what was thought to represent a single species is often discovered to comprise many species. Usually, these newly recognised species can barely, or not at all, be distinguished morphologically, yet they show very deep genetic divergences. Understanding of how these taxa have evolved and dispersed (for example, is each instance a single global, monophyletic radiation?) is arguably among the most interesting questions in marine diversity studies today.

Whatever the answers turn out to be, it seems clear that many of these cryptic species will only be distinguishable through genetic analysis. Until such time as rapid genetic diagnoses become routine, ecologists and other non-taxonomists are likely to have to resort to some kind of species-complex definition to cope with messy nature. It seems that such species-complexes might look a lot like the often-maligned “cosmopolitan species” accepted by the pragmatic (and prescient?) John Day.

September 26, 2019 by Joel Richard

BHL News, Blog Reel, Tech Updates

BHL Adds Functionality Allowing Partners to Upload Crowdsourced Transcriptions of Digitized Archival Materials

Screenshot of a digital library book viewer with readable OCR.

The Biodiversity Heritage Library (BHL) has added functionality to allow BHL Partners to upload transcriptions in place of the automatically-generated OCR (Optical Character Recognition) for archival materials digitized in BHL. This functionality supports transcriptions generated as part of Partner crowdsourcing projects on Smithsonian Transcription Center, DigiVol, and From the Page.

Optical Character Recognition (OCR), also called text recognition, translates text characters in scanned documents into code that can be used for data processing and enables searching of document text. Handwritten archival materials like correspondence and field notes are notoriously problematic for OCR software. Full-text searching of these materials is significantly hampered by poor OCR output.

Screenshot of a digital library book viewer with gibberish for OCR.

Example of the poor automatically-generated OCR output for handwritten correspondence. Spencer Fullerton Baird and John Torrey correspondence, 1851-1860. Contributed in BHL from the LuEsther T. Mertz Library of The New York Botanical Garden.

Crowdsourcing the transcription of archival materials has become a popular way to generate machine-readable text that enables searching and discoverability. Several BHL Partners are using crowdsourcing platforms (e.g. Smithsonian Transcription Center, DigiVol, and From the Page) to transcribe field notes, correspondence, and other archival materials that they have digitized in BHL.

Screenshot of a project in the Smithsonian Transcription Center.

Example of a field notebook being transcribed in the Smithsonian Transcription Center. This notebook, Brasil 1979, Amazonia #3, from Cleofé Calderón is also available in BHL from the Smithsonian Institution Archives.

With this new functionality, these transcriptions can now be uploaded in place of the automatically-generated OCR for these items, allowing them to be full-text searchable and enabling our taxonomic name recognition software to index scientific names within their pages. Since the transcribed text can be viewed alongside the digitized page image, users can also more easily read materials with difficult-to-decipher handwriting. Thus, this new functionality makes it easier for researchers and the public to explore these valuable primary source materials and access specific information from their pages.

Above example with the OCR replaced with a crowdsourced transcription generated as part of The John Torrey Papers project from The New York Botanical Garden on From the Page. Spencer Fullerton Baird and John Torrey correspondence, 1851-1860. Contributed in BHL from the LuEsther T. Mertz Library of The New York Botanical Garden.

Screenshot of the BHL book viewer with a digitized field book and the transcribed text shown alongside the page in place of the OCR.

Since the transcribed text can be viewed alongside the digitized page image in the BHL book viewer, users can also more easily read archival materials. William Healey Dall’s Field Notes, 1871. Transcription generated on the Smithsonian Transcription Center. Contributed in BHL from the Smithsonian Institution Archives.

Screenshot of a book viewer with digitized archival materials and full-text search for "Yellow Palm Warbler".

Crowdsourced transcriptions allow digitized archival materials in BHL to be full-text searchable, as shown in this example searching for “Yellow Palm Warbler” within William Brewster’s 1903 journal. Transcription generated as part of the Ernst Mayr Library of Harvard University project on DigiVol. Contributed in BHL from the Ernst Mayr Library of the Museum of Comparative Zoology at Harvard University.

Screenshot of a book viewer with scientific name indexed on the page of an archival notebook.

Crowdsourced transcriptions allow BHL’s taxonomic name recognition software to index scientific names within the pages of digitized archival materials, as seen in this example in which Catharacta antarctica is indexed on a page within the first volume of the Ornithological Field Diaries of A. Graham Brown. Transcription generated as part of a project from BHL Australia and Museums Victoria on DigiVol. Contributed in BHL from Museums Victoria.

Participating Partners have begun uploading transcriptions to BHL. To date, transcriptions have been uploaded from Partner crowdsourcing projects with BHL Australia, Ernst Mayr Library of Harvard University, The New York Botanical Garden, and Smithsonian Institution Archives. This is an ongoing process, and more transcriptions will be uploaded to the Library over time.

Interested in transcribing archival materials? Several BHL Partners have active transcription projects on various crowdsourcing platforms. Follow the links below to explore the opportunities and get involved:

Ernst Mayr Library of Harvard University on DigiVol
The John Torrey Papers from The New York Botanical Garden on From the Page
Smithsonian Institution Archives on the Smithsonian Transcription Center

July 17, 2019 by michelle.underhill

Blog Reel, Featured Books

“If it Lives, We Want It.” Exploring the Acclimatisation Society of Victoria’s Role in Australia’s Ecological History

The Acclimatisation Society of Victoria played a fascinating, yet devastating, role in Australia’s ecological history. Founded in 1861 and existing as an independent entity until 1872, the Society recorded its objectives and activities in annual reports. These reports have been digitized by Museums Victoria and are now available on the Biodiversity Heritage Library.

The First Annual report of the Acclimatisation Society of Victoria, 1862. Contributed to BHL by Museums Victoria. http://s.si.edu/2BpCcfK.

The Acclimatisation Society was established in Victoria’s capital of Melbourne at a time when the city was experiencing great economic and population growth. Gold had been discovered in the colony in 1851 and over the next 10 years the population grew from 76,000 to 540,000. The wealthy and educated flocked to Melbourne, and the 1850s saw the establishment of The University of Melbourne, the National Museum of Victoria, the State Library of Victoria and many learned societies.

The Acclimatisation Society was governed by the colony’s most eminent scientists who believed that Australia’s plants and animals were greatly inferior to those in Europe. The Society’s first president Edward Wilson argued that animals indigenous to Australia were practically useless, providing only ‘a little sport and an occasional meal’ (Gillbank, 1984).

At the Society’s inaugural annual meeting, members were roused with talk of “wharves laden with the fleeces of the alpaca…, rivers teeming with all sorts of fish, forests abounding with every variety of game, and our tables groaning with all the delicacies which can be procured in the markets of London and Paris” (Acclimatisation Society of Victoria, 1862b).

There was great nostalgia amongst the colony for the “delightful reminders of [their] early home”. Frederick McCoy, foundation Professor of Natural Science at The University of Melbourne and first director of the National Museum, proclaimed that “English thrushes, blackbirds, larks, starlings, and canaries” when “liberated” would enliven the “savage silence, or worse” with their “varied, touching, joyous, strains of Heaven-taught melody” (McCoy 1862).

Birds liberated, from The First Annual report of the Acclimatisation Society of Victoria, 1862. Contributed to BHL by Museums Victoria. http://s.si.edu/2DEkbzh.

The Society’s objectives were twofold: to introduce to Victoria and acclimatise “all innoxious animals, birds, fishes, insects, and vegetables, whether useful or ornamental” and to spread indigenous plants and animals from the colony to other parts of the world. President Wilson’s motto was “if it lives, we want it” (Tout-Smith, 2018).

Theirs was an enormous undertaking: “to establish a system of co-operation and exchange, with persons residing at different points in the far quarters of the globe, and to arrange for the reception, multiplication, and distribution of birds and other animals, which must first of all bear a tedious sea voyage, and then receive the vigilant attention necessary to preserve them in a new climate” (Acclimatisation Society of Victoria, 1862a).

The Annual Reports outline some significant successes (not all of which were their own doing): “the hare and rabbit have been introduced, and the latter so thoroughly acclimatised, that it swarms in hundreds in some localities” (Acclimatisation Society of Victoria, 1862c).

The Reports not only provide a timeline of species released in Victoria; they also list the species sent elsewhere: echidnas to London, wombats to Paris, kangaroos to Mauritius and possums to New Zealand (an acclimatisation “success” that New Zealand may never forgive).

Quadrupeds and birds sent away, from The First Annual report of the Acclimatisation Society of Victoria, 1862. Contributed to BHL by Museums Victoria. http://s.si.edu/2n4u9kb.

However, most of their expensive acclimatisation experiments failed. In the early 1870s, The Acclimatisation Society began to focus on the importation of exotic animals for display purposes and in 1872 it was renamed The Zoological and Acclimatisation Society of Victoria. Their Annual Reports (also available on BHL) provide an equally fascinating history of what would become The Melbourne Zoo, but that’s another story.

Crustacea, from The First Annual report of the Acclimatisation Society of Victoria, 1862. Contributed to BHL by Museums Victoria. http://s.si.edu/2n90R33.

Today Australia’s introduced species cause immense environmental and economic damage and have caused more extinctions of native Australian animals than any other factor. The Acclimatisation Society of Victoria, however, was certainly not to blame for all this devastation. While their lists of “liberated” animals include many of our most destructive invasives, they are generally only credited with the introduction of starlings, sparrows, sambar deer and European carp (Tout-Smith, 2003).

The legacy they expected to leave behind is very different from the one presented here, as evidenced by McCoy’s statement in his anniversary address delivered at the Society’s first annual meeting:

…the good we do will live after us, and the work of our hands will thrive and prosper to our hearts’ content, and so become a lasting benefit to the millions of men who will in the fullness of time inhabit this land. (McCoy, 1862)

References

Acclimatisation Society of Victoria, 1862a. Annual report of the Acclimatisation Society of Victoria. No. 1.
Acclimatisation Society of Victoria, 1862b, Proceedings of the Annual General Meeting, 24 November 1862, Annual report of the Acclimatisation Society of Victoria. No. 1.
Acclimatisation Society of Victoria, 1862c. Annual report of the Acclimatisation Society of Victoria. No. 1.
Gillbank, L. 1984. The Origins of the Acclimatisation Society of Victoria: Practical Science in the Wake of the Gold Rush. Historical Records of Australian Science 6, 359-374. https://doi.org/10.1071/HR9860630359.
McCoy, 1862. Anniversary address delivered at the first annual meeting of the Acclimatisation Society of Victoria. In Annual report of the Acclimatisation Society of Victoria. No. 1.
Tout-Smith, D. 2003. Acclimatization Society of Victoria in Museums Victoria Collections. https://collections.museumvictoria.com.au/articles/1803. Accessed 18 January 2018.

January 25, 2018 by ulib-libraryjobs

Page 2 of 3«123 »

A Basic Guide to Rare Book Research

1. Look at the book!

2. Consult catalogue records

3. Locate digitised versions

4. Consult secondary references

5. Remember the wider context

Further Reading

Origins of Australian Ornithology : The Evolution of Australia’s Bird Reference Books

Welcome to Bird Week!

Our Experience Digitising a Rare Book for the Biodiversity Heritage Library

References

Provenance and Library Stamps at Museums Victoria and on BHL

References

Further Reading

A Day for Worms on BHL

BHL Adds Functionality Allowing Partners to Upload Crowdsourced Transcriptions of Digitized Archival Materials

“If it Lives, We Want It.” Exploring the Acclimatisation Society of Victoria’s Role in Australia’s Ecological History

References

Help Support BHL

search

About BHL

Join Our Mailing List

Subscribe to Blog via Email

Subscribe to Blog Via RSS