Hi All,
I wanted to appraise you on the progress of the digitization effort and
an let you know of an exciting opportunity for beekeepers. Let me give
you a bit of history!
As you may or may not know, EF Phillips came to Cornell from the USDA
in Washington D.C. He immediately realized that there was no
repository of relevant literature available on beekeeping for
scientists or beekeepers and he had no money to start a library. He
turned to the beekeepers of the era with a unique proposition. He
asked that they set aside one hive and donate the profits from it to
help develop an inclusive library for which all beekeepers could
benefit.
The effort was an incredible success providing an endowment for the
acquisition of important works by contemporary beekeepers. At the
time, early 1920's, it was a huge endowment for the library system
promising to fulfill Phillips's goal of collecting the most inclusive
works of the time for any and all beekeepers. As the money flowed
Phillips bought important works, often through the help of industry
contacts.
Ironically, after Phillips death, it became apparent that many of these
books were one of a kind and extremely valuable from an historic
perspective. The most valuable were moved to a protective area with
air conditioning, behind locks & sophisticated alarm system.--the
vault. Now beekeepers can make an appointment to visit the vault and
with the assistance of a curator you can look but don't touch these
books a trained curator with white gloves will do it for you!
Because of our current effort you can now turn on your computer, turn
your browser to http://bees.library.cornell.edu/ and see the first 10
of 91 books proposed to be mounted for anyone anywhere to view on-line.
Phillips would be pleased that finally the internet has arrived to help
make his dream of getting these works to beekeepers a reality.
EAS started the effort with a matching challenge which resulted in the
digitization of the initial 10 of the most important works of American
beekeeping. Now I'm pleased to announce that the Tampa Bay Beekeeping
Association (TBBA) is also joining to help make more, of the 91 volumes
selected to digitize, available on-line by offering a similar
challenge.
http://www.ppru.cornell.edu/ftp/Newchallenge.pdf
Once again beekeepers are needed to help make this a reality. If we
can match the funds that the TBBA we would have enough money to prepare
another 10-15 volumes, which would more than double the volumes
available to all beekeepers worldwide. This project has a win, win,
win outcome. The books are preserved through digitization, are made
available to the audience for which they were collected and this is a
tax exempt donation that may be used as such.
More links to see what & why we are doing this!!
http://bees.library.cornell.edu/b/bees/about.html
http://www.news.cornell.edu/Chronicle/04/6.17.04/Chronicle.pdf
You can either contact the library or myself if you would like further
information!!
Mike Griggs
Entomologist/ Support Scientist
Plant Protection Research Unit
USDA ARS, U.S. Plant, Soil & Nutrition Lab.
Tower Road, Ithaca, NY 14853
http://www.ppru.cornell.edu/PPRU.htm
phone: 607-255-1085
fax: 607-255-1132
email: [log in to unmask]
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