Page transcription
February's Feature Story | THE HUNT BOTANICAL LIBRARY
In October 1961, Carnegie Institute of Technology, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, dedicated and formally opened its new six-floor Hunt Library building, given by Mr. and Mrs. Roy A. Hunt of this city. Of greater significance to students of the history of science in general, and of the literature of botany and horticulture in particular, was the gift by Mr. and Mrs. Hunt to Carnegie Institute of Technology of her library of books in the plant sciences — the Rachel McMasters Miller Hunt Botanical Library, which occupies the top floor of that building.
The decision by Mr. and Mrs. Hunt and their family that this special library remain in Pittsburgh, combined with Carnegie Tech's attractive proposal that it receive the collection, accounts for its present location. Here it enjoys a semi-autonomous role as an administrative unit of the university, whose director is responsible to the President. Its financial structure is independent of C.I.T. operation and development funds and is subject to review and approval by both C.I.T. and its supporting Hunt Foundation. Its program is formulated with guidance from a 14-member Advisory Committee composed of members of The Hunt Foundation, six botanists, the President of C.I.T., and the Library's director. The botanists on the Committee are Wilfrid Blunt and John S. L. Gilmour (England), Dr. Mildred E. Mathias (UCLA), Dr. Rogers McVaugh (Univ. Mich.), Dr. A. C. Smith (Univ. Hawaii), and Dr. F. A. Stafleu (Netherlands).
In function, this Library is more an international institute for bibliographical studies of botanical and horticultural literature than it is a library in the conventional sense. Its collections, which serve as the tools for its research program, are divided into four categories:
Books. These number about 11,000 titles of bound volumes and 2,500 of pamphlets (largely of botanical biography). The strength of the book collection is in works of the midnineteenth century and earlier, and particularly of those on systematic botany, medical and economic botany, herbals, early agriculture, gardening, and voyages. It has a strong representation in both early and contemporary works in bibliography, printing and typography, the graphic arts, and in botanical biography.
Botanical prints and paintings. Mrs. Hunt once said that her collection of botanical prints and paintings represented about as large an investment as did her collection of botanical and horticultural books. A recent inventory shows them to be about evenly divided between original water colors and drawings (numbering about 3,000), and prints. As is true for the books, the strength of this collection is in works produced before the turn of the present century and especially in those of 17th- and 18th-century European origin. The current acquisitions are largely works by contemporary botanical artists and illustrators and particularly of those whose work is represented in current publications.
Autograph letters and manuscripts. In recent decades, Mrs. Hunt collected letters of 18th- and 19th-century botanists. These, together with botanical manuscripts, continue to be added to the collection, with emphasis on acquiring a broad representation of the handwriting of systematic botanists. A volume of handwriting facsimiles of taxonomic botanists is contemplated as an aid to present-day identification of the notes encountered so often in the older collections of herbarium specimens. In addition, these letters serve also as an archive of potentially important biographical and bibliographical material.
Portraits of botanists. Mrs. Hunt's collection included more than 300 engraved portraits of botanists. A majority were prepared for frontispieces and dedication pages of books of the 17th and 18th centuries. Others were engraved for inclusion in biographical memoirs in the periodical literature of that time. A Curator of Botanical Portraits is in charge of a program to develop this nucleus into a major repository of photographs of botanists. Photograph collections at other institutions, here and abroad, are being copied and added to this archive. Private collections, both of black and white prints and of color transparencies, are borrowed and photocopied. Biographical data on each botanist represented are compiled and added to the collection. It is the Library's objective to have both photographic likeness and biographical data on every professional botanist and leading horticulturist, and especially of those who are the authors of published works and of binary and ternary nomenclatural combinations.
The current research program of the Library is best reflected through plans for its publications. The latter are divided into five categories:
The Hunt Catalogue. This work, started by Mrs. Hunt in 1953, accounts in bibliographic detail for pre-19th century books of the Library. Two volumes have been published: Volume I in 1958, compiled by Jane Quinby for books published from 1474 to 1700, and Volume II in 1961, compiled by Dr. Allan H. Stevenson and accounting for books published from 1701 to 1800. Volume III, now being compiled by Ian MacPhail, will account for holdings in the 1801 to 1825 period. A supplement to Volume I is planned for titles acquired since 1957. This Catalogue is published by The Hunt Foundation in a limited edition of 750 copies. The greater part of the printings of the first two volumes was given to Cornell University for distribution by the L. H. Bailey Hortorium as a part of its exchange program to leading botanical and bibliographic centers of the world. Subsequent volumes will be distributed by the Hunt Botanical Library to the same list. No copies are for sale.
Rare Book Lounge.
