A Natural History of Unicorns: Smithsonian Collaborations in the World of Library, Archives, and Museums

MARTIN R. KALFATOVIC :: SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION LIBRARIES :: 博物館電腦網路協會台灣分會 2009年會 :: 25 February 2009

Martin R. KalfatovicSmithsonian Institution Libraries25 February 2009

A Natural History of UnicornsSmithsonian Collaborations in the World of Library, Archives, and Museums

史密森尼在檔案館圖書館與博物館界的合作案


Vast, But Not Infinite


Vast, But Not Infinite“I assumed you packed the library in 1,000 volume boxes, each box having a capacity of precisely one cubic meter. All space to the farthest known spiral galaxies would not hold the Universal Library. In fact, you would need this volume of space so often that the number of packed universes would be a figure with only some 60 zeros less than the figure for the number of volumes… The figure is not infinite, it is a finite figure.”

- Kurd Lasswitz, “The Universal Library.” 1901


Vast, But Not Infinite• 100 characters (Western

European languages, plus spaces and some punctuation)

• Each line has 50 spaces• Each page is 40 lines long• Each book is 500 pages long• Total Books: 100 1,000,000

• Googolplex: 1 followed by a googol (10 100) zeros



The sum of our collections, Libraries, Archives and Museums is Vast, but by most practical – and even impractical counting methodologies – it is finite. Vast, but Finite!



巨大的，但不是無限的


The Memex

In 1945, Vannavar Bush, Director of the Office of Scientific Research and Development, outlined the ultimate tool of the near term future, the Memex, in the article “As We May Think”




LIBRARIES圖書館


ARCHIVES檔案館

LIBRARIES圖書館


ARCHIVES檔案館

LIBRARIES圖書館

MUSEUMS博物館


Memory Institutions


Memory Institutions: Libraries



“Some bookes are to bee tasted, others to bee

swallowed, and some few to be chewed and digested. That

is, some bookes are to be read only in parts; other to bee

read, but not curiously; and some few to bee read wholly,

and with diligence and attention”

– Francis Bacon (1612)



“Defenders of the book often stress the ‘pleasure of handling

books’ as a reason for the continued use. Of course this

argument sometimes amounts to little more than an appeal to the

bibliophile’s pleasure in handling his possessions”

- Geoffrey Nunberg (1993)



“As an agent of change, printing altered methods of data

collections, storage and retrieval systems, and communications

networks used by learned communities throughout Europe”

- Elizabeth L. EisensteinThe Printing Revolution in Early Modern

Europe (1983)



Fringe works will receive use (the “long tail”)Create a deepened sense of historyA comprehensive topical library will let people know both what they do know and what they don’t knowA new culture of interaction and participation


Memory Institutions: Archives



Unlike libraries, where the objects, books, can have their content transformed to other media without too much loss of original intent…



… a manuscript letter, a mimeographed memo, a diary page, loses some of its being when translated to a printed page or a computer screen.




Memory Institutions: Museums



26,000,00021,000,0005,000,000Harvard Univ. Herbarium/Mus. Comp. Zoo.

30,000,00021,000,0009,000,000American Museum of Natural History, New York

58,877,30050,000,0008,877,300Musee National d'Histoire Naturelle, Paris

60,200,00055,000,0005,200,000Natural History Museum, London

83,000,00078,500,0004,500,000National Museum of Natural History, Washington, DC

TotalAnimal

SpecimensPlant

SpecimensInstitution



Art works: Stephen Weil calculated (in 1990) that in the U.S. alone there were over 8 million art works created:

• 200,000 working artists• 40 works per artist• 8 million total works per

year!









National Palace Museum國立故宮博物院

650,000 + artworks and artifacts


But Is It Google-able?

32 million published books

750 million articles and essays

25 million songs500 million images500,000 movies3 million videos, TV

shows and short films100 billion+ web pages


But Is It Google-able?

• Compressed (at today’s standards) this would be about 50 petabytes (about the size of a small-town (U.S.) library building)


Factors

Here are some of the key factors that I think will guide libraries, archives and museums in the new, digital world


Factors: Wetware


Factors: Hardware

• Cheap Scanning


Factors: Hardware

• Cheap Print on Demand: Internet Archive Bookmobile


Factors: Hardware

• Cheap, mobile devices


“The world has arrived at an age of cheap complex devices of great reliability; and something is bound to come of it”

- Vannevar Bush (1945)

Factors: Conclusion




• 137 million objects• 19 museums• 9 research centers• 26.8 million visitors• 188.8 million web

visitors• ~ 6,000 staff

Smithsonian Institution


• 1.5 million volumes• 4,522 active print

journal subscriptions• 3,000 electronic

journals• 190,000 microforms• 2,500 digital

volumes• ~ 100 staff

Smithsonian Institution Libraries


Smithsonian Libraries Digital Projects


Art and Design藝術與設計





History and Culture歷史和文化




Science科學

History and Culture歷史和文化





The Biodiversity Heritage Library is the largest collaboration yet undertaken by Smithsonian Libraries.

SIL Serves as the Secretariat Hosts the BHL Program Director

Biodiversity Heritage Library


American Museum of Natural History (New York)

Field Museum (Chicago)

Natural History Museum (London)

Smithsonian Institution Libraries (Washington)

Missouri Botanical Garden (St. Louis)

New York Botanical Garden (New York)

Royal Botanic Garden, Kew

Botany Libraries, Harvard University

Ernst Mayr Library of the Museum of Comparative Zoology, Harvard University

Marine Biological Laboratory / Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution

Biodiversity Heritage Library



The cultivation of natural science cannot be efficiently carried on without reference to an extensive library

Charles Darwin, et al (1847)

Darwin, C. R. et al. 1847. Copy of Memorial to the First Lord of the Treasury [Lord John Russell], respecting the Management of the British Museum. Parliamentary Papers, Accounts and Papers 1847, paper number (268), volume XXXIV.253 (13 April): 1-3. [Complete Works of Charles Darwin Online]


“ Each object in the Museum … would have been associated with a book (or several books) in the Library. However, there would also be many books which could not correspond with any exhibit (the natural history of unicorns, for example, or the geometry of round squares) …

The Natural History of Unicorns


…One had then … a perfectly balanced edifice, in which everything which the human mind is capable of inventing or understanding has its place.”

- Andrew Crumey, Pfitz (1995)

The Natural History of Unicorns



Thank You ... for sticking around!感謝你 !


Smithsonian Institution Librarieshttp://www.sil.si.edu/

Smithsonian Institution Libraries Bloghttp://smithsonianlibraries.si.edu

Biodiversity Heritage Libraryhttp://www.biodiversitylibrary.org

Biodiversity Heritage Library Bloghttp://biodiversitylibrary.blogspot.com

Encyclopedia of Lifehttp://www.eol.org

LINKS


Thanks to:

Chris Freeland, Missouri Botanical Garden

Tom Garnett, The Biodiversity Heritage Library

Suzanne C. Pilsk, Smithsonian Institution Libraries

The staff at the Internet Archive

Images from

The Galaxy of Images, Smithsonian Libraries, National Museum of American History, NASA, National Palace Museum, Internet Archive

CREDITS

Technology

A Natural History of Unicorns: Smithsonian Collaborations in the World of Library, Archives, and Museums