Beautiful Botanicals

Connect

Smithsonian Institution Libraries Number 2 Summer 2008

Connecting.Ideas.Information.You.
2 Connecting.Ideas.Information.You.director’s corner.

 is published quarterly to inform users 

and benefactors about services, programs and issues 

affecting the Libraries. To be added to the mailing list, or 

to request this publication in a digital format, please contact:

Smithsonian Institution Libraries Development Office

NHB, 24mz - MRC 154, P.O. Box 37012

Washington DC, 20013-7012

Telephone: 202.633.2875

E-mail: libmail@si.edu

Web: http://www.sil.si.edu/

5 Trade Literature 6 Collections 10 Giving

Designer/Editor

Elizabeth Periale

content

In his book Everything Is Miscellaneous: the Power 

of the New Digital 

Disorder, Holt 2007), 

Harvard professor 

David Weinberger explains how the digital information world is turning our thoughts about 

order upside down. Order is paramount in 

libraries, archives, and museums. Social networking, community tagging, and infi nite computer storage are putting the ordering of information in the hands of the users; the fi ltering 

process is often bottom-up, not top-down from 

trusted agencies. “Control has already changed 

hands,” he reports. “The new rules of the information jungle are in effect, transforming the 

landscape in which we work, buy, learn, vote, 

and play.”

Weinberger is one of several speakers we’ve 

invited in 2008 to talk to Smithsonian staff 

about views of the future. What does this new 

world-view mean for us? That is the central 

question my staff and I are asking, as we 

engage with consultant Louella Wetherbee in a 

strategic planning process to set our goals and 

activities for the next fi ve years.

Recently Ann Speyer, the Smithsonian’s Chief 

Information Offi cer, and I visited the library 

and information technology heads of the 

Georgia Institute of 

A Strategic 

Look at the 

Future

Images

Cover Robert John Thornton, “The Sacred Egyptian 

Bean,” New illustration of 

the sexual system of Carolus von Linnaeus..., 1807.

Page 2E.A. Séguy, Insectes, 1927; Jean Jules 

Linden, “Odontoglossum 

Vexillarium Rchb. Var. 

Purpureum,” Lindenia. Iconographie des Orchidées, 

1885-1906.

Back cover Maria Sibylla 

Merian, Metamorphosis 

insectorum surinamensium [Transformations of 

the insects of Surinam], 

[1705].

continued on page 4

CONNECT
Connecting.Ideas.Information.You.director’s corner. 113

Technology, home of our new Secretary Wayne 

Clough, to see how their award-winning partnership enhances student learning. By installing Information Commons areas in the library 

containing fi elds of computer workstations and 

staffed by librarians and technology experts, 

students learn how to use critical software and 

harness the searching power of the Internet.

This year the Libraries is using wikis, vlogs, 

and Basecamp and other social networking 

apparatus. Four teams are conducting environmental scans—reviewing what other libraries, 

businesses and organizations are doing to accommodate the generations of “digital natives” 

who will be tomorrow’s Smithsonian staff. A 

July planning retreat will engage library staff, 

Libraries’ advisory board members and senior Smithsonian staff to defi ne what we want 

the Libraries to look like in 2014. We want to 

establish an environment of experimentation, 

a willingness to try things out (and to drop 

things that don’t work!), an excitement about 

the possibilities before us.

New or expanded roles and partnerships are 

emerging already. With the SI Scholarly Press 

we have become the electronic publisher of 

Smithsonian publications. Our SI Research 

Bibliography captures citations to the intellectual products of SI scientists and curators, 

so we can report on the Institution’s research 

production. Our Smithsonian Digital Repository 

archives and makes accessible those research 

publications. In our Biodiversity Heritage Library project, we and nine other natural history 

and botany libraries are digitizing and making 

searchable and freely accessible the historical literature supporting biodiversity studies. 

What other partnerships or roles would allow 

the Libraries to enhance further the mission of 

the Smithsonian? 

Of course, sometimes it’s scary. Our job 

descriptions may have to change or expand 

to meet the new challenges. We need to train 

and retrain ourselves to keep up, and that 

takes commitment and energy. We may need 

All of these 

botanical images 

can be found on 

the Libraries’ 

Galaxy of Images

website, http://

www.sil.si.edu/

imagegalaxy/

index

Above: E.A. Séguy, 

Insectes, 1927.

Below: Maria Sibylla 

Merian, Raupen wunderbare Verwandelung und sonderbare 

Blumennahrung, 

1730. 

continued on page 11
4 Connecting.Ideas.Information.You.outreach.

The Libraries hosted 

a Make-A-Book activity for “Take Your 

Kids to Work Day” on 

April 24. Over 20 children and their families attended the Make-A-Book event in the National 

Museum of Natural History.

Richard Naples and Phuong Pham from Preservation Services demonstrated how to make 

different kinds of books. Children were able 

to create books, make their own stickers, and 

decorate their books with decorative papers, 

markers, stickers and rubber stamps.

The event proved to be very popular with the 

children and their parents!

Smithsonian Early Enrichment 

Center Three times this Spring—once each in 

March, April, and May—small groups of kindergarteners from the Smithsonian Early Enrichment Center came to visit the rare-book room 

in the National Museum of Natural History.

The children had been doing a project on the 

early naturalist and pirate William Dampier 

(1652-1715). After a brief talk about old books 

and the rules for using them (and a show of 

clean hands), Cullman Library staff Leslie Overstreet, Daria Wingreen-Mason, and Kirsten van 

der Veen showed the children the books that 

Dampier had written about his three voyages 

(published in London, 1697-1709). Since the 

group was particularly interested in Dampier’s 

discussion of albatrosses, staff also displayed 

hand-colored lithographs of the bird in John 

Gould’s Birds of Australia (London, 1840-1848) 

and wood engravings by Gustave Doré accompanying Coleridge’s Rime of the ancient mariner (New York, 1876).

The children behaved beautifully and had interesting questions and observations about the 

books. Their visits to the Cullman Library were 

a treat for both audience and presenters.

Leslie Overstreet

Education

Above: Richard 

Naples and Phuong 

Pham demonstrate 

how to make a book.

Below: Children 

created their own 

masterpieces.

Below: Studying a 

rare book from the 

Cullman Library.
Connecting.Ideas.Information.You.trade literature. 5

of dowsing cite a 

number of reasons to doubt 

p r a c t i t i o n e r s ’ 

beliefs. James 

Randi, a retired 

magician, author, 

and investigator 

of paranormal 

claims, states 

that movement of 

dowsing devices 

is dependent on 

the “ideomotor 

effect”, a psychological phenomenon in which 

i n v o l u n t a r i l y 

movements are 

affected by the 

dowser’s unconscious thought 

processes or 

ideas, and that 

practiced dowsers have gained a 

familiarity with topological or geological signs that 

indicate the likelihood of the presence of ground 

water (Randi 

2001).

pay for a device that 

“positively...” and 

“automatically locates underground 

water, sewer, [and] 

electric lines of metal, clay or tile”? The 

“Magna-Rod” provided an answer to the 

problem of locating 

these subterranean 

features experienced 

by “plumbers, electrical contractors, 

steam fitters, municipalities, general 

contractors, and others...” For $4.98, one 

could purchase a 

pair of Magna-Rods. 

These L-shaped rods 

were designed to be 

held separately in the 

user’s hands and carried parallel to one 

another. Instructions 

for their use were 

also included in the 

set.

The ancient practice known variously as dowsing, divining, rabdomancy, or “water-witching” 

in the United States continued on page 8

Trade

Literatureof-theMonth T h e 

National Museum 

of American 

History trade literature inventory 

team features an 

item found in the 

collection that merits special attention because it is 

unusual, appealing, humorous, 

strange, or all of 

the above.
6 Connecting.Ideas.Information.You.Collections.

has released Botanicals, a 300-page volume featuring more 

than two centuries of 

natural-history illustrations from the collections 

of the Smithsonian Institution Libraries. Stunning hand-colored engravings, etchings, and 

lithographs of flowers, fruits, and butterflies 

are among the images that come to life in this 

book.

Botanicals features the works of four leading naturalists: Maria Sibylla Merian, a seventeenth-century artist and entomologist; E. A. 

Séguy, whose extraordinary work was inspired 

by the art nouveau and art deco movements; 

Dr. Robert John Thornton, a British visionary 

renowned for his interest in botany; and the 

nineteenth-century orchid collector and horticulturist Jean Jules Linden.

The book’s introduction and text were written 

by Leslie K. Overstreet, the Libraries’ curator 

Robert John Thornton, “The Dragon Arum,” New 

illustration of the sexual system of Carolus von Linnaeus..., 1807.

Dyk, librarian, 

and Elizabeth 

Broman, reference librarian 

at the Libraries’ 

Cooper-Hewitt, 

National Design 

Museum Library, 

provided the 

initial impetus 

for the book and 

worked with Assouline to select 

volumes from the 

Cooper-Hewitt 

Library’s collections. David 

Holbert from the 

Imaging Center handled the 

delicate work of 

scanning the volumes, and Erin 

Rushing from 

the New Media 

Office managed 

the contract arrangements with 

Assouline. 

Botanicals is 

available online 

through Assouline Publishing, http://www.

assouline.com/.

Publication

E.A. Séguy, Papillons, 1925.
Connecting.Ideas.Information.You.Collections. 7

Photographer 

Jonathan Singer and 

botanists John Kress 

and Marc Hachadourian recently presented Libraries Director, Nancy Gwinn, with 

set number one of Botanica Magnifica, a 

five-volume, double-elephant folio-sized work 

of two hundred fifty photographic images of 

plants. Comparable in scale and scope to 

Audubon’s Birds of America, the book presents scientifically identified species grouped 

in themes of horticulture, plant form, orchids 

(Hachadourian’s specialty), gingers (Kress’s 

specialty), and rare species.

Singer, a former podiatrist, developed a 

method of photographing single flowers on a 

large scale with exquisite detail. After meeting 

Kress, a curator and scientist at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History, 

Singer was invited to photograph specimens 

in the Smithsonian’s research center, which 

houses some of the rarest plants in the world. 

Two of the volumes of Botanica Manifica focus 

specifically on these living plant collections at 

the Smithsonian.

Only ten sets of Botanica Magnifica will be 

produced. Each is printed on hand-made 

paper and is custom-bound in Japan by the 

renowned book-binder Tini Miura. Housed in a 

custom-built case that was part of the gift, the 

volumes reside in the Libraries’ Joseph F. Cullman 3rd Library of Natural History.

A coffee-table-sized version, with text by 

Kress and Hachadourian, will be published by 

Abbeville, New York. Catherine Fraser

Above: Donor Jonathan Singer inscribes 

the gift. 

Middle: From left: 

Nancy Gwinn, John 

Kress and Jonathan 

Singer examine the 

book in the Cullman 

Library.

Below: John Kress 

displays the book at 

an event honoring 

the donation at the 

National Museum of 

Natural History.

Libraries in 1980 and worked for eight years 

in the anthropology and zoology libraries in 

the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural 

History before moving to the Libraries’ Special 

Collections Department. She has published bibliographical articles in the journal Archives of 

Natural History and has presented talks at conferences on various natural-history subjects.

B o t a n i c a 

Magnifica
8 Connecting.Ideas.Information.You.trade literature.

a number of tools to locate unseen objects or 

phenomena. Popular tools include the pendulum, bobber wands, the familiar Y-rod (or forked 

stick), and L-rods or angle rods (Swarden 1992: 

N.J.5) such as those pictured in the Magna-Rod 

advertisement. Other sources claim a potential 

dowser needs no other tool than his or her hands 

(Miller 2004:50). The tool’s baseline responses to 

“Yes” and “No” questions are established before 

the dowsing begins. Although responses vary 

by user, parallel L-rods often cross for a “Yes” 

or positive response and move away from each 

other for a “No” or negative (Miller 2004: 16).

Theories vary on the mechanism behind dowsing or water-witching. Some practitioners believe it is a means of communicating with God 

(Swarden 1992: N.J.5) or tapping in to energy 

fields and lines radiated by the Earth (Miller 

2004: 38-49). Others theorize that the devices 

act as an extension of the arms, “...exaggerating tiny, involuntary movements of the wrists... 

[that] ...are caused... by changes in the earth’s 

magnetic field” (Getze 1962: K6). Getze cites a 

British study which found that the human body 

can detect “...abrupt changes in the magnetic 

field as small as a fourth of 1%” with responses 

“...recorded by electrocardiograph and electroencephalograph.” Most dowsing reactions are 

seen when there is “...a definite change in the 

magnetic field... [Features must be] abrupt and 

well-defined.”

 The United States Geological Survey states 

that “...in many areas water would be hard to 

miss. The dowser commonly implies that the 

spot indicated by the rod is the only one where 

water could be found, but this is not necessarily 

true. In a region of adequate rainfall and favorable geology, it is difficult not to drill and find 

water!”

Some water exists under the Earth’s surface 

almost everywhere. This explains why many 

dowsers appear to be successful. To locate 

ground water accurately, however, as to depth, 

quantity, and quality, a number of techniques 

must be used. Hydrologic, geologic, and geophysical knowledge continued on page 9

Works Cited

Carlotta Gulvas 

Swarden, 

SUMMIT. 

“Dowsing: A New, 

Ancient Way of 

Finding Almost 

Anything.” New 

York Times 

(1857-Current 

file), June 21, 

1992, http://

www.proquest.

com/ (Accessed 

July 24, 2007).

United States 

Department of 

the Interior, 

United States 

Geological 

Survey. No Date. 

“Water Dowsing”. 

http://pubs.

usgs.gov/gip/

water_dowsing/

pdf/water_dowsing.pdf (Accessed 

July 25, 2007).
Connecting.Ideas.Information.You.trade literature. 9

George Getze. 

“Water Witching 

Real, Can Do 

it with Coat 

Hanger, Says 

Engineer.” Los 

Angeles Times

(1886-Current 

File), February 

11, 1962, http://

www.proquest.

com/ (Accessed 

July 24, 2007).

Hamish Miller. 

2004. Dowsing: A 

Journey Beyond 

Our Five Senses.

Walker & Co. New 

York. 

James Randi. 

2001. “Library: 

The Matter of 

Dowsing”. James 

Randi Educational 

Foundation.

http://www.randi.

org/library/dowsing/ (Accessed 

July 25, 2007)

ed to determine the depths and extent of the 

different water-bearing strata and the quantity 

and quality of water found in each. The area 

must be thoroughly tested and studied to determine these facts. The U.S. Geological Survey, 

the Federal agency with major responsibility for 

assessing the quantity and quality of the Nation’s surface and ground waters, believes that 

no single technique suffices to locate favorable 

water-well sites. (U.S. Department of the Interior/

United States Geological Survey No Date: 6) “Water 

Dowsing”. http://pubs.usgs.gov/gip/water_dowsing/pdf/water_dowsing.pdf Cassie Mancer
10 Connecting.Ideas.Information.You.Giving.

ly kicked off its yearlong 40th anniversary 

on Tuesday, April 8, 

when 200 Smithsonian staff members 

and guests enjoyed 

ice cream and cake at the Castle Commons. 

Among the attendees at the party were Roger 

Sant, the chairman of the Smithsonian Board 

of Regents, Cristián Samper, the Acting Secretary of the Smithsonian, Ira Rubinoff, Acting 

Undersecretary for Science, National Museum of 

American History Director Brent Glass, National 

Zoological Park Director John Berry, and several 

members of the Libraries’ Board of Directors.

During his remarks, Samper said “I know, we 

all know, how indispensable the twenty libraries 

are to our age-old mission, the increase and diffusion of knowledge. They are invaluable to our 

Smithsonian scholars, and also the general public, offering a galaxy of resources and the help 

of informed staff to anyone via the Internet or 

in person. And they are curators of magnifi cent 

treasures that they share online and through 

exhibitions.”

A library was part of the original legislation that 

founded the Smithsonian in 1846 and it grew rapidly to 40,000 volumes by the 1860s. However, 

following a terrible fi re in 1865 that burned the 

roof and center core of the Smithsonian Building, the Smithsonian’s library was moved to new 

fi reproof stacks in the 

day Celebrations! 

Above: Nancy Gwinn 

and Acting Secretary 

Cristián Samper blow 

out the candles in 

Washington, D.C.

Below: Elizabeth 

Broman and Stephen 

Van Dyk at the Cooper-Hewitt, National 

Design Museum Library in New York.

Left: Smithsonian 

Tropical Research 

Institute Library staff 

with happy birthday 

banner in Panama.

Below: Filling out a 

trivia ballot at the 

party.

continued on page 11
Connecting.Ideas.Information.You.Giving. 11

Library of Congress in the U.S. Capitol. In 1881, 

the second Smithsonian Secretary, Spencer Fullerton Baird, re-created the library as the U.S. 

National Museum Library, a working library designed to support scientifi c research. By 1964, 

a prospective user could fi nd libraries containing 

over 430,000 volumes in nearly 80 locations in 

the Smithsonian and spread among seven U.S. 

cities. When S. Dillon Ripley took offi ce as the 

eighth Smithsonian Secretary in 1964, he found 

a library organization that badly needed an 

overhaul and in 1968 created the Smithsonian 

Institution Libraries. Now 109 staff members 

make accessible and preserve over 1.5 million 

volumes that are housed in just twenty libraries, 

along with a myriad of electronic journals and 

databases.

Other 40th Anniversary activities included 

a June 9 symposium and Washington premiere of the fi lm “The Curious Mister Catesby,” which highlights the life and times of 

Mark Catesby, one of the fi rst British naturalists to collect the fl ora and fauna of the New 

World. His marvelous illustrated publication 

on the natural history of Virginia, South Carolina and the Bahamas is part of the Libraries’ 

collection and several illustrations from it can 

be viewed online at http://www.sil.si.edu/

imagegalaxy/.

The celebratory year will conclude with a grand 

Ruby Gala on October 30 in the Donald F. Reynolds Center, which houses the Smithsonian 

American Art Museum and National Portrait Gallery. Stay tuned for more details! Catherine 

Fraser

Above, middle 

and below: Mark 

Catesby, The natural 

history of Carolina, 

Florida and the Bahama islands: containing the figures of 

birds, beasts, fishes, 

serpents, insects, 

and plants, 1731-43

[1729-48]

to learn new ways of doing things, but one 

thing is clear to me. The skills of librarians to 

make sense out of information, to serve as 

trusted guides, to produce fi ltering mechanisms that save the information seeker and 

researcher time and cost, are needed as never 

before. Nancy E. Gwinn

p.s. A “Donate” button now appears on our 

website. Go to www.sil.si.edu and try it out!

Director’s Corner - continued from page 3 
Happy Anniversary

Smithsonian Institution Libraries

well-wishes from the Libraries 40th Birthday bash:

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Standard

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Washington, D

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May you read forever!Hip, hip hooray and happy birthday!40 years young—keep it going!A world resource! Many more birthdays to you.Happy Birthday! I’m so excited for the future of SIL and its many birthdays to come.Happy 40th! The SIL is full of wonderful folks!Happy Birthday SIL! Hugs and Kisses!Here’s to your 50th!Many happy returns and volumes for the future!