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July 13, 2005
New Acquisition: North American subset of the Plant Taxonomic Literature
Using funds from the Dr. C. D. Sherbakoff Library Endowment, UT Libraries
has been able to purchase the North American subset of the Plant Taxonomic
Literature microfiche collection. This set of fiche offers a "core
collection of the rarer and more useful basic reference works in plant
taxonomy."
I have posted a list of the works included in the set at
http://www.lib.utk.edu/refs/biology/ptlNA.html. The fiche themselves are
housed in the Documents & Microforms department on the second floor of
Hodges Library. The call number for the set is QK 96 .P47 1985. There is
a guide to the set with the same call number; this is also available in
the Documents department. I have marked the works in the guide that we
own with a check.
The works included in this important collection are not accessible through
the library catalog, so you'll have to remember to check the list when
you're looking for older North American botany materials. I am working on
getting records into the catalog, but didn't want to delay letting you
know about this resource while I figure out the cataloging issues.
The collection is wide-ranging and diverse, including works on vascular
and non-vascular plants as well as fungi and fossil plants. Works on a
continental scale are included alongside more focused works such as W. H.
Pearson's List of Canadian Hepaticae and William Darlington's Flora
Cestrica ("an herborizing companion for the young botanists of Chester
County, Pennsylvania").
Many classics of American botany are included, such as Gronovius's Flora
Virginica, Nuttall's Genera of North American Plants, Sargent's Manual of
the Trees of North America, and Torrey's Catalogue of North American
Genera of Plants, but many of these are already available in more
convenient formats. The real strength of the collection is in the odd and
rare items which are not available as reprints. These include:
* Amos Eaton's Manual of Botany for North America (an earlier edition than
any previously in our collection)
* John Ellis's sixteenth-century publications regarding the Venus Fly-trap
* A rare German edition of Humphry Marshall's Arbustrum Americanum
* A number of short works on Hawaiian plants by explorer J. F. C. Rock
* An 1857 "Catalogue of Plants Gathered ... in Central Park"
There is also a fair amount of travel and exploration literature,
especially regarding the arctic regions.
I hope that this will be helpful to you in your research and teaching. If
you have any questions about this collection or anything else relating to
the library, please don't hesitate to contact me.
Posted by Donna Braquet at July 13, 2005 11:22 AM