A Fine Day For A Lady

This past Wednesday, Susana and I had the opportunity to meet with the two staff members at the Botanic Gardens in Edinburgh, to catch up on our plans for the project and our research, and to view some of the materials available in the archive/library and herbarium holdings of the RBGE. We discussed possibilities for focus in our search for narratives, and decided that our personal interest lay in uncovering narratives of the work of the female collectors, in order to shed light on their lesser-known stories, and contribute to the larger, global and historic narrative of women’s work in STEM. We are, after all, ourselves three women in STEM.

 
After catching up, we headed to the archive/library where staff had prepared a sampling of collection materials belonging to a few collectors whose work spanned the geographic regions of the Himalaya to the Pacific Coast of North America. We handled a variety of materials including field notebooks, photographs, scrapbooks, and two beautiful examples of bound, hand-colored, and annotated expedition maps. While viewing these items, we discussed the possibilities of using the ESRI story mapping tool to juxtapose a digitized version of an expedition map, such as the ones we had accessed, with a modern map of the same region, and how this would be useful for a variety of different, cross-disciplinary research questions including those pertaining to conservation, and urban development, among others. Photographs and geo-referenced specimens could be plotted along the expedition routes of our chosen collectors, and compared with photographs taken in more recent years for comparison. Field notes and journal entries could be geo-referenced and plotted, so that a user, through interaction with the story map, might experience what life would have been like during one of these adventurous collecting trips. After handling the collections, even so briefly, we were all buzzing with eager energy to dive in and begin the weaving of the many, rich narratives so present within the collections.

 
Reluctantly we said goodbye to the maps and notebooks, and headed to lunch. On our way out we noticed for the first time the exhibit that occupied the vestibule leading into the archive, and realizing its significance to our personal research aims, we spent several minutes looking over it. In honor of International Womens Day, which takes place each year on March 8th, RBGE has celebrated the work and achievements of their female team members with a series of biographical posts on their Botanic Stories blog. These profiles have been printed and are currently on display on the walls leading into the archive, as part of an exhibit dedicated to the contributions of female scientists to the RBGE. This portrait gallery of contemporary female scientists hangs parallel to the stories of their predecessors. In the center of this hall run two long glass cases which contain archival materials, such as field notes and illustrations, photographs and biographies belonging to several women who are of historical importance to the Botanic Garden. The exhibit highlights synergies, relationships, and shifts not only in the scientific discipline and its methodologies, but also in society, with the increasing presence of women in STEM.

 
Over lunch, we talked in general about the importance of making scientific data more accessible to wider audiences and creative ways in which to accomplish that aim, such as the spatial display of a story map, or the emerging practice of data sonification. We chatted about the history of botanic collecting and how the field has changed over time, and the incredible richness of information that is contained on an herbarium specimen sheet.

 
In the afternoon we were joined by the second staff member, who caught up with us on the direction of our research and our goals for the project, and gave advice on future digitization and geo-referencing needs. Together, we reviewed the work done by the team of students from Aberdeen, who are also involved in the Crucible funded project, and finalized our plans for our work in the upcoming weeks. Finally, we took a quick trip to the Herbarium to view the digitization set up, become familiar with the storage arrangement, and to locate and view some of the specimens collected by two of the RBGE’s female collectors.

[co-written with Susana Garcia]

Meet the Team

 

Susana García:

I am currently enrolled in an MSc in Information Management and Preservation (Digital)/ (Archives & Records Management) and enjoying a scholarship as Collection Developer in ‘Harvesting Collections for Social and Scientific Benefit: Hidden Stories at the Herbarium of RBGE’ a project funded by a Scottish Crucible 2016 grant. The project involves the partnership of the HATII department at the University of Glasgow, the University of Aberdeen and the Royal Botanic Gardens Edinburgh (RBGE).

I have also a degree in the History of Art and an MSc in Museum Studies, and I hope that my background knowledge in and love for humanities would help enhance new narratives and poetics that connect human disciplines and sensibilities.  I am interested in study the new set of skills archivists and knowledge workers would need to acquire for protecting vulnerable and endangered data from volatile political situations, with an especial focus on the digitally created environmental data.

The father of the ‘total archives’ concept, Hugh Taylor, called for a ‘new tribalism’ in which ‘the capacity to access information will equate to “immediate sensory reading of environment” and the documentary of the past’. He saw in non-literate communities a model for achieving a non-fragmentary cultural heritage[1]

Nowadays environmental historians are looking for ways of making history of humankind more inclusive, telling us to pay attention to a holistic, inclusive view. Otherwise what is left is an incomplete and fragmented human history[2].

That fragmented specialization of Western culture and compartmented field of knowledge have been challenged by new technologies of information. Hyperlinks, horizontal production and exchange of information demands a holistic approach to interpret complex and dynamic realities.

Collections are seeking new audiences thought digitisation projects. Herbaria are becoming increasingly digital, and in doing so, the collections of dead plants are becoming databases. This paradigm shift represents both new opportunities but also new challenges.

This blog will record our journey, please join us and contribute to this ongoing dialogue.

[1] Keli Rylance, ‘Counter Point, Archives and the Intangible’, Archivaria, 62, (2006) 103-120

[2] Candace Loewen, ‘From Human Neglect to Planetary Survival: New Approaches to the Appraisal of Environmental Records’, Archivaria 33, (1991-92), 87-103, p.93.

 

Emily Fendya:

Greetings! I am an MSc student in the HATII department at the University of Glasgow, where I am working towards the degree in Information Management and Preservation. I am eager to engage in the exploration of the RBGE Herbarium collections, to discover hidden narratives therein, and to document and analyze the process of investigation, creation, and final output of new stories using the open source ArcGIS story mapping tool.

In Using Geographical and Taxonomic Metadata to Set Priorities in Specimen Digitization, Walter G. Berendsohn and Peggy Seltmann assert that “(t)he single most important data item besides the taxonomic identification of specimens is the geographic location of the collection event.”[1] I am interested in research into the role of geographical information and metadata within digital preservation practices in the Herbarium, and the impact of this geospatial data on the fields of biodiversity informatics and descriptive taxonomy.

Furthermore, I am interested in the performance of the geospatial context of linked data, and the use of GIS mapping tools for curation of multimedia information for cross-disciplinary use and outreach.

[1] Walter G. Berendsohn and Peggy Seltmann, ‘Using Geographical and Taxonomic Metadata to Set Priorities in Specimen Digitization’, Biodiversity Informatics, 7.2 (2010), p. 121 <https://doi.org/10.17161/bi.v7i2.3988&gt;.

 

Soph McCormack-Gow:

Hi! I too am an MSc Information Management and Preservation student at the University of Glasgow. My Undergraduate degree was also from the University of Glasgow in Joint Honours Digital Media with Information Management and Theatre Studies.

With the Crucible Project I have a variety of areas I am interested in exploring with the RBGE. Firstly I aim to use my theatrical background to explore different ways to pull narratives from the herbarium’s hidden stories; the collections and collectors which are perhaps unknown or have been lost amongst the more famous collections like Darwin’s own work. Focusing particularly on the lesser known collections such as the fungi and lichens I hope will help to highlight the incredible diversity that can be found in the herbarium.

The second area I am interested in exploring with the RBGE is how we can make existing resources more accessible to the general public. Be that through using API technology to allow users to interact with the digitised collections without needing a knowledge of botanical taxonomy, or finding other ways to make the collection as a whole more accessible.

Welcome/About

Welcome! This is the project journal of three intrepid Information Studies students, documenting the process as they delve into the hidden spaces of the Royal Botanic Garden, Edinburgh collections, on an expedition in search of new varieties of narrative. This blog serves to record our journey working on the “Harvesting Collections for Social and Scientific Benefit: Hidden Stories at the Herbarium of RBGE” project.

Herbaria are collections of plant specimens and associated data that are used for scientific study and species definitions. They tell stories of a particular time and place, and have been collected for several centuries. Most obviously, they are a physical representation of the plants that made up a landscape. They can also track the movements of a particular collector, and tell the story of an expeditionary journey, or, over time, the story of shifting climates. Our aim is to make these stories visible, via a proof-of-concept project that will form links between the collections, their stories, and the present through georeferenced images on social media.

The investigation is intended, on the one hand, to highlight digital preservation practices that support cross-disciplinary narratives, and on the other, to reveal different ways in which fine-grained narratives might be expressed and presented for communication beyond the immediate scientific community.