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    • All Featured Books
    • Book of the Month Series
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Biodiversity Heritage Library - Program news and collection highlights from BHL

All posts tagged with mycology

Blog Reel, User Stories

Finding Refuge in the Library: How BHL Inspired the Mycological Book Club

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On 23 March 2020, the U.K. went into its first national lockdown in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. Social distancing and teleworking became the norm, and the walls of our homes became, in many ways, the boundaries of our individual worlds.

Amateur mycologist Clare Blencowe was eager to find a positive distraction from the realities of life during a pandemic. The Biodiversity Heritage Library’s open access collections, which for Blencowe had become a welcome refuge from the continuous onslaught of negative news articles, now became the inspiration for a new, socially distanced way to connect with other fungi lovers—in the form of “The Mycological Book Club”, an online, Twitter-based book club with a particular focus on open access literature.

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February 1, 2021byGrace Costantino
Blog Reel, Campaigns, Her Natural History

Henrietta Page sketchbook of fungi drawings

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The Harvard Botany Libraries recently acquired and digitized Henrietta Page’s [Sketchbook of drawings of fungi], volume II. The sketchbook was a gift from the Boston Mycological Club (BMC) where Page was a member and served on the executive committee for a time. She was also a member of the Boston Society of Natural History. The sketchbook mostly describes fungi collected during July and August when Page attended three-week long natural history classes held in Alstead, New Hampshire under the Alstead School of Natural History from 1899-1903.

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March 27, 2019byDanielle Castronovo and Jason Karakehian
Blog Reel, User Stories

Uncovering Mycological History…One Sketch at a Time

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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.

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November 8, 2018byGrace Costantino
Blog Reel, Featured Books

Unearthing Scientific History through Art: New Insights from the Archives of Lewis David von Schweinitz, the “Father of North American Mycology”

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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.

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November 1, 2018byGrace Costantino
Blog Reel, User Stories

Mars Invaders: The Wonderful World of Microfungi

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In 1897, a monumental work appeared in print for the first time. It was a story of invasion. It was a story of war. It was a story of Martians. The story, of course, was The War of the Worlds, by H.G. Wells, which first appeared in serialized form in the UK’s Pearson’s Magazine and the US’s Cosmopolitan magazine in 1897. It was later first published in book form by William Heinemann of London in 1898. Written between 1895-97, it is one of the earliest stories centered around conflict between humans and extraterrestrials. An extremely influential work, it has never been out of print. The 1906 Belgian edition of the book included drawings by Brazilian artist Henrique Alvim Corrêa.
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May 14, 2015byGrace Costantino

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The Biodiversity Heritage Library (BHL) is the world’s largest open access digital library for biodiversity literature and archives. Headquartered at the Smithsonian Libraries and Archives in Washington, D.C., BHL operates as a worldwide consortium of natural history, botanical, research, and national libraries working together to digitize the natural history literature held in their collections and make it freely available for open access as part of a global “biodiversity community.”

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