News Tag: Global Plants

An initiative to learn how plants have shaped human societies

Plants offer remarkable opportunities for interdisciplinary research, and Dumbarton Oaks and JSTOR are collaborating to launch the Plant Humanities Initiative to foster this work through scholarly programming, the exploration of primary sources, and digital publication via a new scholarly research tool.

Head to the Scientific American blog to learn more about the initiative. There, Yota Batsaki, executive director of Dumbarton Oaks, and Alex Humphreys, director of JSTOR Labs and associate vice president of JSTOR, explore how to confront the considerable… Read more»

Dumbarton Oaks and JSTOR to launch Plant Humanities Initiative

Andrew W. Mellon Foundation provides support for digital tool and research and scholarly programming

Dumbarton Oaks, a research institute of Harvard University, and JSTOR, the digital library for research and teaching that is part of the non-profit ITHAKA, are launching, with the support of The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, the Plant Humanities Initiative: a digital tool with related research and scholarly programming to advance the field of Plant Humanities. To this end, the Foundation has awarded JSTOR a… Read more»

Global Plants growth in 2016

Thanks to the hard work and dedication of our partner herbaria around the world, we wrapped up 2016 with more than 255,400 newly published digital objects, bringing the total to 2,879,000 objects available in Global Plants for your research.

We received new content and new specimens from more than 20 first-time contributors like Cairo University Herbarium (Egypt), I.P. Borodin Herbarium of Saint Petersburg S. M. Kirov Forestry Academy (Russia) and Ivan Franko National University of Lviv Herbarium (Ukraine).

Our most recently… Read more»

Update: Plants & Society

We are continuing to make progress on the development of a new collection inspired by Global Plants, which will include a set of journals, books, and over 100,000 primary source objects ranging from nursery catalogues to expedition maps and records of medicinal plants. Whereas Global Plants was developed for plant taxonomists who needed to access the type specimens critical to their work—Plants & Society is intended to serve a broader audience: scholars, researchers and students from a wider range of disciplines across the sciences, humanities, and social sciences, including Anthropology, Art & Architecture, Botany & Plant Sciences, Ecology, Economics, Garden History & Design, History of Science, Horticulture, and Landscape Architecture. Read more»

Global Plants end-of-year review

It’s been another wonderful year for Global Plants thanks to the hard work and dedication of our partner herbaria around the world! We wrapped up 2016 with 2,878,998 total objects, which includes 231,549 visuals and archive materials. We received content for the first time from over 20 partners!

The Netherlands
Naturalis Biodiversity Centre, formerly Amsterdam University (AMD)

Ukraine
V. N. Karazin National University Herbarium (CWU)
Donetsk Botanical Garden of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine… Read more»

Global Plants at the Society for the Preservation of Natural History Collections

We were delighted to see so many partners and presentations about Global Plants at the Society for the Preservation of Natural History Collections (SPNHC) meeting in June in Berlin!

Thanks to the generosity of Panama-based Smithsonian Institution Tropical Research Institute and The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, we were able to provide funds as travel stipends for representatives of Global Plants partner institutions to attend SPNHC. The recipients included:… Read more»

New Collection: Plants & Society

We have proposed developing and launching a new content collection titled “Plants & Society.” It will be a multi-format resource center—including primary sources, journals, and books—that builds on JSTOR’s existing resources in Ecology, Botany, and the Plant Sciences to provide an innovative lens for examining the complex relationships of plants with nature, society, and humanity. This collection will focus on the historical, cultural, aesthetic, and environmental implications and uses of plants, and will help researchers and students to position… Read more»

Connect with @JSTORPlants

@JSTORPlants on Twitter provides an open channel for discussion with the Global Plants community about all things botanical. Each week we highlight content in Global Plants and promote research and events relevant to the Global Plants partner network. We try to feature and retweet content about our partner institutions, so next time you’re tweeting about an awesome event at your institution, or a paper you publish, let us know! Read more»

Global Plants at European Botanical Horticultural Libraries Group

We were thrilled to attend the European Botanical & Horticultural Libraries (EBHL) Group annual meeting held at Royal Botanic Garden, Edinburgh in April of 2016. Many Global Plants partners attended the EBHL meeting: Botanic Garden Meise, Botanical Research Institute of Texas, Botanischer Garten und Botanisches Museum Berlin-Dahlem, Cambridge University, Chicago Botanic Garden, Conservatoire et Jardin Botaniques de la Ville de Geneve, Harvard University, Linnean Society of London, Missouri Botanical Garden, Muséum national d’histoire naturelle, The New York Botanical Garden,… Read more»

Welcoming botany & plant science publishers

Earlier this year we launched our Plants eBook Collection at JSTOR. It includes 242 books from over 50 publishers, including University of California Press, Columbia University Press, Yale University Press, and University of Pennsylvania Press. The collection is divided into five thematic sets:

The collection is fully customizable so libraries can pick and choose… Read more»

New content: Botanische Staatssammlung München artwork

We are delighted to let you know we have added two new unique collections to Global Plants:

Botanische Staatssammlung München Artwork – Water Colours of Fungi by Fritz Wohlfarth

This collection consists of watercolors of fungi painted by Fritz Wohlfarth (1906–2005). Dr. Fritz Wohlfarth studied at the Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München (Germany) and obtained a Ph.D. degree in chemistry. For many years he worked as a field sales representative for a varnish company in Munich. During his tours around Germany and… Read more»

Teach about Plant Blindness

A world without plants? Would you like to learn more about Plant Blindness and teaching about it in the classroom?  JSTOR has some resources for you to help you get started. Read more»

Livingstone’s Zambezi expedition

Livingstone’s Zambezi Expedition is a beta site built by JSTOR Labs in collaboration with JSTOR’s Content Development team based on David Livingstone’s African expedition along the Zambezi and Shire Rivers from 1858-1864. The site provides students, teachers, and scholars with a greater understanding of the scientific, historical, and cultural contexts of the expedition, offering users both a high-level overview of the expedition and the ability to perform a detailed analysis of the materials.

The resource brings together content from JSTOR… Read more»

Partner interview: María Mercedes Arbo

We interviewed long-time Global Plants partner and respected taxonomist María Mercedes Arbo, who told us about the evolution of botanical research from the 1970s to today and mused about the direction botany might be headed. Among other topics, Dr. Arbo discussed the role of technology and best practices for effective research. As a respected botanist in your field with a long career, you must marvel at what can now be done through projects like Global Plants. How have you seen this have the greatest impact on the work of botanists? I began working in Plant Taxonomy around 1972, in Corrientes, where Botanical Research had started in 1965. The Herbarium was just beginning, and the Library was very small. The main Argentine Botanical Libraries were located at Buenos Aires, 1000 km away. In those years not even photocopies were common. I still keep the photocopy of Urban’s monography on Turneraceae (1883), which I got in Buenos Aires (Darwinian Institute), made on a special photosensible paper. You could request material on loan to each Herbarium, but it wasn't easy, depended on surface or airmail, you had to write a letter, wait sometimes several months to receive an answer, and loans, logically, were partial. In those years, almost the only way to study a good number of the nomenclatural types was to travel to Europe to visit the herbaria of various countries, with different currency and legal standards... Read more»

Global Plants at Botany 2015

We were proud to exhibit for the fifth year in a row at the Botanical Society of America’s annual conference in Edmonton, Canada. The conference provides an excellent venue for us to meet with users, participants, and partners, and discuss their needs and our future plans. It is also a great opportunity to see many of our North American partners in person and to meet faculty and students who are using Global Plants. (A group of graduate students from… Read more»

In the lab: Livingstone’s Zambezi expedition

JSTOR Global Plants has gotten very big--at last count some 2,222,000 plant type specimens and 245,000 primary sources were contained within it. That enormity has helped it to become an indispensable resource for plant taxonomists and botanists but can be overwhelming to non-specialists. At the GPI conference last September, our team spoke with many partners about the potential for highlighting smaller segments of Global Plants content, such as specimens and historical documents from a single expedition, and it was exciting how many shared our enthusiasm. Read more»

Sponsor profile: Shelley James & BISH

Shelley James is a Curator and Expedition Leader at the Bernice Pauahi Bishop Museum’s Herbarium Pacificum (BISH) in Honolulu, Hawaii. She met with us to talk about her work and tell us why she chose to sponsor access to Global Plants for the National Herbarium at the Papua New Guinea Forest Institute (LAE). The two institutions have a long history of collaboration, and the Museum's expeditions to Papua New Guinea date back to its founding in 1889. Read more»

User profile: Gwenaël Le Bras

Gwenaël Le Bras was a database coordinator at the National Herbarium in Paris, acting as a liaison between the GPI team and the IT department of Muséum d’Histoire Naturelle, Paris (MNHN), before moving on to work on the national French portal e-ReColNat. There, he currently divides his time between H SONNERAT (botany), ARTHROTER (arthropods) and INVMAR (marine invertebrates and terrestrial mollusks). When Gwenaël told us what an impact working on Global Plants had had on his career (“Global Plants has been seeding competences in many different ways, and that's a side effect you may be proud of!” he told us), we asked him to fill us in on the details. During our interview, he revealed a commitment not only to his work but also to the continued process of learning and exploring at any given chance. Read more»

Global Plants in the classroom

Part of the shared mission of JSTOR and the Global Plants Initiative is to promote awareness and education in plant sciences, environmental science, and the history of science. For those who are just getting started in their study of plants, the volume of material in Global Plants can be intimidating.  It is with this in mind that we created Global Plants in the Classroom as a way to share these materials and expose students to their possible uses. Above all, we want to encourage curiosity and exploration. Read more»

Partner profile: Kevin Thiele

Kevin Thiele is a systematist and taxonomist with a particular interest in Australian Proteaceae, Rhamnaceae, Viola and Hibbertia (Dilleniaceae). He is currently working on new Western Australian species and other taxonomic matters in Hibbertia, but notes that as a herbarium curator, there is rarely enough time in the day to complete all that has to get done and manage to do much “real work.” So, he does taxonomic work in between other tasks. For Kevin, this time is almost meditative: “By around 3:30 in the afternoon, to stop myself banging my head on the door or going completely barking mad, I disappear into a quiet corner of the vaults and work on taxonomy for a bit – it’s a wonderful salve for sanity.” Read more»

Welcome to the Global Plants Partner blog!

Are you a Global Plants Partner? Would you like to stay up to date on the Global Plants Initiative (GPI) and the progress JSTOR staff is making on the database? Then you're in the right place. Read more»