Anyone interested in US historic books but unable to access them may be
interested in this project
with the goal to get rare books on-line for beekeepers to read from
home computers. This project is a direct result
of the EAS 2002 conference held at Cornell University.
Please read on or visit the Core Historical Literature of Agriculture
(CHLA) at
http://chla.library.cornell.edu where the beekeeping literature will
be made available.
Mike
EAS 2002 president
Entomologist/ Support Scientist
Plant Protection Research Unit
USDA ARS, U.S. Plant, Soil & Nutrition Lab.
Tower Road, Ithaca, NY 14853
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Digitization of the Phillips Beekeeping Collection
Albert R. Mann Library, Cornell University
An exciting opportunity exists for American beekeepers to help make
spectacular volumes from the E. F. Phillips Beekeeping Collection at
Cornell University's Albert R. Mann Library available to the public via
the World Wide Web. The Phillips Collection, inspired by Cornell's
professor E. Franklin Phillips, is a major repository of information on
bees and beekeeping. It is one of the three major apiculture library
collections in the United States and includes several thousand volumes,
many published before 1900.
The Phillips Collection features many volumes from the personal library
of L.L. Langstroth, who popularized the moveable frame hive. Among
these are Munn's "Description of the bar-and-frame hive" (1844),
Mills' "Essay on the management of bees" (1766), Gelieu's "Bee
preserver" (1829)
and Townley's "Practical treatise on humanity to honey bees" (1848.)
Although the collection was initiated by Phillips, funds for the
library's growth were supplied by beekeepers themselves with proceeds
of designated hives going into the library endowment. These donations
established an endowment that today continues to support new
acquisitions of modern apicultural materials for the collection. In
return, Phillips intended the library to be a storehouse of knowledge
for the beekeeping community.
Now, Mann Library hopes to harness the power of 21st century digital
technology to make the Phillips collection more widely accessible to
the general beekeeping and scholarly communities. The library hopes to
scan some of the most important works from the Phillips collection over
the next few years and make these volumes freely accessible over the
Internet. Digitizing beekeeping books will cost approximately $200 per
volume. Mann is accepting donations to cover these costs and help
realize Phillips' vision of providing beekeepers with a useful
collection of historical information on the science and art of
apiculture. The Eastern Apicultural Society (EAS) has offered to
donate the first $200 for digitizing Langstroth's "The Hive and
Honey Bee" and will further match 1:1 up to $1000 within 2 years.
Mann has a proven record of success in digitizing historical materials,
as evidenced by the Core Historical Literature of Agriculture (CHLA) at
http://chla.library.cornell.edu This collection currently includes
almost 850 volumes that can be browsed or searched by any person who
has access to an internet-connected computer. The field of apiculture
is not yet well represented in the CHLA collection, but as funding
becomes available, Mann will be able to mount an initial selection of
works and continue to add more books as funding allows. The project
would include works in the English language, published prior to 1925,
so that they would be in the public domain. As has been done in
previous projects, Mann staff will work with leading scholars to
identify the most significant books for inclusion.
To make a donation to Mann's Beekeeping Literature Online initiative,
please fill out the form below and send it along with your gift to the
address given. You will receive written acknowledgement of your
contribution, and the support of the EAS will be recognized on Mann's
CHLA website. If you have any questions or for more information on the
digitization of the Phillips Beekeeping Collection, please contact
Janet McCue, Director of Mann Library, at (607) 255-2285 or
[log in to unmask]
I wish to make a gift of $________________ to Mann Library's
Beekeeping Literature Online initiative.
Name________________________________________________
Address____________________________________
City_______________________State & Zip___________
Please makes checks payable to Cornell University. Please return check
and form to the Albert R. Mann Library, Cornell University, Ithaca, NY
14853-4301. Thank you very much for your support!
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BEE-L has no "Frequently Asked Questions",
but any topic can be reviewed by searching
the archives. The archives are the FAQ!
BEE-L archives can be searched at:
http://listserv.albany.edu:8080/cgi-bin/wa?S1=bee-l
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