1. Harvesting Heritage: Seed & Nursery Catalog
Digitization, Discovery & Access Marty Schlabach Food &
Agriculture Librarian Mann Library Cornell University Cornell
University Reunion Mann Library June 5, 2015
2. Listings of fruit and vegetables with descriptions Amateur's
Fruit and Ornamental Trees, York, PA 1867
3. http://bhort.bh.cornell.edu/catalogs.htm
4. Ethel Zoe Bailey 1889-1983 Curated the seed & nursery
collection for 70+ years, 1911-1980s Daughter of Liberty Hyde
Bailey Graduated from Smith College 1911 Assisted her father with
many of his plant collection trips around the world Assisted and
coauthored with her father many of his botany and horticultural
publications Awarded the George Robert White Medal in 1967 from the
Massachusetts Horticultural Society Awarded the Smith College Medal
in 1970 Continued curating the seed & nursery catalog
collection until her death in 1983 at the age of 93 Lived a long
and distinguished career in botany and horticulture
5. Why were seed & nursery catalogs collected? How was the
collection used? LH Bailey used the collection in support of his
publications, such as: Hortus Third Manual of Cultivated Plants
Annals of Horticulture
6. How was it used? 1889 Introduction of Vicks Irondequoit
Melon, as found in Annals of Horticulture, by LH Bailey
7. Why Digitize Seed & Nursery Catalogs? Taxonomists
Discover dates of early introductions of new plants Gardeners
Peruse old catalogs for historical availability and uses of
traditional cultivars of heirloom annuals and perennials Museums
and botanical gardens Recreate historical gardens Plant breeders
Look for descriptions of plants with unique disease and pest
resistance Historians of art and illustration Drawn to the striking
representations of flowers, fruit & vegetables Historians of
printing Catalogs documented changes in printing Text-only
broadsides & pamphlets Multipage booklets with engraved
illustrations Colorful lithographs added Photographic
illustrations, b&w and later color
8. Collaborative Digitization Effort New York Botanical Garden
LuEsther T. Mertz Library 50,000+ catalogs National Agriculture
Library, USDA Henry G. Gilbert Nursery & Seed Trade Catalog
Collection 200,000+ catalogs Missouri Botanical Garden Peter H.
Raven Library Seed exchange lists Cornell University Cornell
University Library Liberty Hyde Bailey Hortorium (Plant Specimen
Collection) Ethel Zoe Bailey Horticultural Catalog Collection
130,000+ catalogs
9. Cornells Digitization Public Domain items only i.e. no
longer under copyright Pre-1923 American, public domain Post-1922
American, need research to determine Non-US catalogs different
copyright laws apply Began scanning firms that carried grapevines
Ethel Bailey indexed catalogs by specie & cultivated variety
(cultivar) Then scanned firms not held by project partners Funding
in part provided by Institute for Museum & Library Services
(IMLS)
10. Seed & Nursery Catalog Digital Collection Biodiversity
Heritage Library (BHL) http://biodiversitylibrary.org Collaboration
among 20 botanical garden, natural history museum and academic
libraries 157,532 volumes 45,568,082 pages Seed & Nursery
Catalog Collection
http://biodiversitylibrary.org/browse/collection/seedcatalogs A
subcollection in BHL Currently 15,437 volumes and growing 769,163
pages Combining NAL, NYBG, MBG and Cornell digitized catalogs
11. Historical Development of American Seed & Nursery
Catalogs Broadside Multi-page, text only Engraved & woodcut
images added to text Hand-colored engravings Lithography
Chromolithography Black & White photography Color photography
Today: websites
12. Broadside One sheet only Approx 12x18 (Prince Nursery,
1793)
13. Text only, multi-page (J. B. Russels Catalog of Garden
Seeds, 1827)
14. Engravings added to the text (James Vick, 1868)
15. Hand-colored engravings (D. M. Dewey, Rochester, NY,
n.d.)
16. Black & White Lithography, followed by
Chromolithography
17. Black & White Photography (A. Currie & Co, 1923)
Color Photography (Miss Ella V. Baines, 1928)
19. Beekeeping and Dairy Supplies (Manns Superior Seeds,
1934)
20. Poultry, Supplies and Equipment (Manns Superior Seeds,
1934)
21. National Leadership Grant for Libraries awarded to Missouri
Botanical Garden in St Louis. Partners include Harvard, New York
Botanical Garden, Cornell Runs Dec 2013-Nov 2015 Funded in part by
IMLS Purposeful Gaming and BHL: engaging the public in improving
& enhancing discovery & access to digital texts
22. BHL Problem Statement: Major challenge for digital
libraries: full-text searching of scanned texts is significantly
hampered by poor output from Optical Character Recognition (OCR)
software. Historic literature has proven to be particularly
problematic because of its tendency to have varying fonts varying
typesetting varying layouts ink bleed-through foxing other physical
condition issues
23. Building an online game to crowdsource the correction of
inaccurate OCR Crowdsourcing the transcription of inaccurate OCR
and handwritten texts Adding new content types upon which to test
the approach Seed & Nursery Catalogs & Seed Exchange Lists
Test OCR correction on this content type Crowd-source the
transcription when needed Field Notebooks, Handwritten, OCR
virtually impossible Crowd-source the transcription How are we
engaging the public in improving and enhancing the discovery and
access to digital texts in BHL?
24. Beanstalk
25. What happens with the game output? Multiple players enter
the same character string for a word, system considers it correct
String of characters or the correct word is added to the index Made
available for searching & improves discoverability Games
released, June 9, 2015
26. Thanks to my colleagues at: Mann Library, Cornell
University (especially Carol Lowe) Liberty Hyde Bailey Hortorium,
Cornell University (especially Bob Dirig, Bailey Hortorium, retired
for details of Ethel Zoe Baileys life) Biodiversity Heritage
Library Mertz Library, New York Botanical Garden Peter H. Raven
Library, Missouri Botanical Garden National Agriculture Library,
USDA Institute for Museum and Library Services
