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On April 6, 2012 · Leave a Comment · In Hannah Begley,
Maggie Long
We’ve
been working hard in the Earth and Planetary Science department and have found
a lot of really great stuff. In addition to the geologic maps, reports, and
photographs, there are a good number of log books from projects relating to
geology. One particularly interesting one, dating from 1900, contains notes of
the soil and rock compositions encountered while digging the tunnels for one of
the subway lines. The photographs shows one small excerpt from this large
volume. It describes the composition of the material found at 165th st and Broadway.
The text in the photo reads:
136th st and Broadway. Red sand,
from 14ft to 16 ft below the surface, and continuous as greater depths.
November 12th 1900
November 12th 1900
136th st and Broadway. Yellow sand,
overlying the red sand, variable in depth; from 4ft to 2ft below surface, and
extending to the surface.
November 12th 1900
November 12th 1900
This is one of the best examples we
have seen of material relating directly to the New York City Geology, as
opposed to the development of the museum’s collection or the expeditions
undertaken by the museum. It was great to imagine the soil types underneath our
feet and the people responsible for documenting it over 100 years ago.
Tagged with: Earth and Planetary Sciences Archives • geology • IMLS • logbooks • New York City • Spring 2012
On December 14, 2011 · Leave a Comment · In Alison Dundy,
Maggie Long
1890s
Bushnell’s copy book ad. A book of thin onion-skin-like linen paper which you
would moisten and apply to a freshly written letter or document. The wet paper
would absorb the ink of the original and make a perfect copy of same.
Because of the nature of the thin
onion-skin-like linen paper and the age of this type of material, most of the
edges are brittle and must be handled with extreme care. In addition, some of
the images taken off of typewritten pages have faded. Copies made from
impressions on pages written in fountain pen ink have held up better over the
years.
Tagged with: Fall 2011 • IMLS • LARA • Ornithology Archives
On November 17, 2011 · Leave a Comment · In Maggie Long
It is one of the most fascinating
aspects of working in archives. Sometimes at first glance, the messy file
drawer may not look to be that organized but in essence it may be more so than
a file drawer that appears to be more organized- what do we mean?
A golden rule for archivists is to
follow the principle of provenance or the respect des fonds. This means
to maintain the original order in which the records were created and kept. By
keeping the files in their original order in which they were created can be
more useful in telling something about the creator of the work.
It is a loss for us who would like
to know more about what the creator of the work was really thinking when he/she
put those notes in with those photographs. To the outside observer, they may
not seem at all related, but they are and if someone who separates out these
items and the original order is disrupted, some of the story is lost.
Some archivists are now working with
the creator of the work while they are still around to ask questions so not to
lose out on some small details. Having access to this information cannot be
undervalued.
Tagged with: Fall 2011 • IMLS • LARA • Ornithology Archives
On October 20, 2011 · Leave a Comment · In Maggie Long,
Nick Pavlik
E.Thomas
(Ernest Thomas) Gilliard (1912-1965), an American ornithologist and AMNH museum
curator, led or participated in many ornithological expeditions especially in
South America and New Guinea.
Papua New Guinea, officially the
Independent State of Papua New Guinea, is a country located on the island of
New Guinea. It is the second largest island after Greenland.
His first expedition to New Guinea
occurred in 1948 when he was an assistant curator in the AMNH Ornithology
department. He then went on to make six more trips within the next sixteen
years. The results of his observations were published in two volumes; Birds of
Paradise and Bower Birds and Handbook of New Guinea Birds, co-authored by
Austin Rand, both of which can be found in the AMNH Library’s catalog.
Also
in the AMNH library’s catalog, are the published results of one of his
expeditions to New Guinea:1958-1959 Gilliard New Britain Expedition
Tagged with: CAT • Fall 2011 • Gilliard • IMLS • New Guinea • Ornithology Archives
On October 19, 2011 · Leave a Comment · In Maggie Long,
Nick Pavlik
In
1920, at the behest of American Museum of Natural History trustee Dr. Leonard
C. Sanford, Harry Payne Whitney contributed $100,000 to fund a collecting
expedition for birds of Polynesia. AMNH’s Rollo H. Beck, a leader among
American birds collectors, was chosen to led the Whitney South Sea expedition
and did so from 1921 until 1928.
Aboard the 75-ton schooner France,
the team visited almost every island in the South Seas and collected a large
number of birds species during this expedition. The expedition was subsequently
led by the evolutionary biologist Ernst Mayr who would later in 1931 accept a
curatorial position at the AMNH. In the same year, Mayr was instrumental in
acquiring the Walter Rothschild collection of birds skins. Rothschild
unfortunately needed to sell his collection in order to pay off a blackmailer.
The funds used to purchase the Rothschild collection for the AMNH was donated
by Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney, widow of the late Harry Payne Whitney who died
in 1930.
Due to the success of this
expedition, Whitney also offered matching funding to the City of New York to
build an addition to the museum to be devoted entirely to the museum’s
department of birds. The Whitney Wing was completed in 1935. Today’s visitors
can find on the second floor of the Whitney Wing, the Whitney Hall of Oceanic
Birds.
For more information, see:
Birds collected during the Whitney South Sea Expedition. 45, Notes on New Guinea birds. 8. American Museum novitates ; no. 1133 Mayr, Ernst, 1904-; Whitney South Sea Expedition of the American Museum of Natural History (1920-1941) http://digitallibrary.amnh.org/dspace/handle/2246/4833
Birds collected during the Whitney South Sea Expedition. 45, Notes on New Guinea birds. 8. American Museum novitates ; no. 1133 Mayr, Ernst, 1904-; Whitney South Sea Expedition of the American Museum of Natural History (1920-1941) http://digitallibrary.amnh.org/dspace/handle/2246/4833
Tagged with: CAT • Fall 2011 • IMLS • Ornithology Archives • Whitney
On October 19, 2011 · Leave a Comment · In Alison Dundy,
Maggie Long
Have you Flown a Ford Lately?
The beautiful bird illustrations by
Fuertes were used by Ford Motor Company as inspiration for a new line of
Lincoln Continentals, modeled on particular birds. Correspondence files with
Ford contained comments like: “The Brazilian Oriole (icterus jamacali) is one
of the most beautiful of the American Orioles, or hang-nests…. This contrast of
orange and black has been unusually well interpreted by Judkins in his
Two-Passenger Semi-Collapsible Coupe…an intimate personal car. Illustrations of
the bird and the car were featured together in Ford’s marketing material for
this new car.
Tagged with: CAT • Fall 2011 • Fuertes • IMLS • Ornithology Archives
On October 19, 2011 · Leave a Comment · In Alison Dundy,
Maggie Long
Louis
Agassiz Fuertes (1874-1927), world renowned bird artist, was invited by his
friend and fellow conservationist, Charles T. Church, an officer of Church
& Dwight Co. Inc., to create colorful Bird Cards for their Arm & Hammer
brand. These 1.5 x 3 inch cards are the precursors of baseball cards first
packed in boxes of baking soda in the 1880s.
Tagged with: CAT • Fall 2011 • Fuertes • IMLS • Ornithology Archives
On October 6, 2011 · Leave a Comment · In Maggie Long,
Nick Pavlik
Today in Ornithology we were lucky
enough to take a look at some original engraved copper plates and prints of John
James Audubon, the 19th-century naturalist and painter who became famous for
his depictions of North American birds. Curiously, also found amid the Audubon
treasures was a restoration of an Archaeopteryx panel that is believed to have
been done by Alexander Seidel, another well-known American painter of birds.
Archaeopteryx was a primitive
ancestor of modern-day birds, sometimes referred to by scientists as the very
first bird to ever exist, though its place in the evolution of birds has become
the focus of some recent debate in the scientific community. In 2009, AMNH’s
own Mark Norrell published a paper on the subject,
and as recently as July 2011 Nature News featured an article suggesting a new
candidate as nature’s first “true” bird. Whatever the ultimate verdict, we
certainly enjoyed spending some time admiring the beautiful restoration of the
early bird ancestor (and learning how to pronounce its name).
Tagged with: Archaeopteryx • Fall 2011 • IMLS • Ornithology Archives
On October 5, 2011 · Leave a Comment · In Alison Dundy,
Maggie Long
We
continued cataloguing department files, meticulous bibliographic records for
citations in published manuscripts, back in the day before “EndNote” and
“WordRef.”
We then moved on to the metal
cabinets containing the Department of Ornithology’s rare book collection. The
books are beautifully cared for, organized alphabetically by author and
appropriately housed in archival boxes, where necessary. The hand-colored
plates and watercolors are the hidden gems in this archive. We were
particularly impressed by the works of Japanese artists K. Koizumi and S.
Tsuchioka who published paintings of 1,000 birds or flowers of Japan in 1928.
Each page had an overleaf of rice paper with Japanese text explaining the bird specimen,
and under the rice paper was a thick page with a gorgeous watercolor. The owls
we selected to display here correspond to the (muffled) hoots by archivists
when they discovered this collection.
Tagged with: CAT • Fall 2011 • IMLS • Ornithology Archives
On September 29, 2011 · 1 Comment · In Maggie Long,
Nick Pavlik
Today
in the Ornithology Department, we came across an artist file containing
photographs of some eye-catching illustrations of birds. Through accompanying
documentation, we learned that the original drawings were the work of bird
artist Louis Agassiz Fuertes.
Fuertes (1874-1927) is considered
one of the foremost American painters of birds. He graduated from Cornell
University in 1897 and was associated with the institution throughout his life.
He was among the most widely traveled of bird artists and accompanied many
museum expeditions.
The majority of Fuertes’s field
studies and paintings of birds are now in the possession of the American Museum
of Natural History. The works, made from captured specimens, were invaluable to
the study of ornithology because they not only recorded a bird’s appearance in
life, but also recorded the color changes that occurred in the bird shortly
after death.
Tagged with: CAT • Fall 2011 • Fuertes • IMLS • Ornithology Archives
