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Dibner Scholar Pamela O. Long Named MacArthur Foundation Fellow
Pamela O. Long, an independent historian of late medieval and Renaissance history and the history of science and technology, was recently awarded the prestigious MacArthur "genius grant." The MacArthur Fellowship is an annual award to "talented individuals who have shown extraordinary originality and dedication in their creative pursuits and a marked capacity for self-direction." Long performed research as a Dibner Library Resident Scholar from February-April 1993. Her research topic was Openness, Secrecy, Authorship, Intellectual Property, and Studies in the Technical, Practical, and Military Traditions of Pre-modern Europe, which led to the published Power, Patronage, and the Authorship of Ars: From Mechanical Know-how to Mechanical Knowledge in the Last Scribal Age (March 1997).
In an interview with the Washington City Paper on September 22nd, Long said, "The greatest under-appreciated library in Washington is the Dibner Library in the Museum of American History. You walk in the Constitution Avenue entrance and bear right and go back into an obscure corner and there it is, one of the great collections of rare technical, engineering, and scientific books in the world."
Long received a B.A. (1965), M.A. (1969), and Ph.D. (1979) from the University of Maryland, College Park, and an M.S.W. (1971) from Catholic University of America. She is currently writing a new book, a cultural history of engineering and knowledge in Rome between 1557 and 1590. Learn more about Long's scholarship in this video.
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Adopt Exploration scientifique de l'Algérie
 This is your chance to adopt Exploration scientifique de l'Algérie (1846-49) by Hippolyte Lucas! Conceived and directed by the naturalist Bory de Saint Vincent, one of the first modern, systematic biological surveys of northern Africa was undertaken by the French government in the early 1840s and resulted in a multi-volume series of scientific publications under the title of the Exploration Scientifique de l'Algérie. The botanical and zoological volumes of this important expedition are of particular interest to researchers at the National Museum of Natural History, since they contain numerous descriptions of species new to science, but the Libraries' holdings of the set was incomplete.
 Hippolyte Pierre Lucas (1814-1899) was an entomologist at the Muséum d'Histoire Naturelle in Paris; he participated in the Algerian expedition from late 1839 to early 1842 and worked up the invertebrate collections for publication in three volumes: one on crustacea, arachnids, myriapods, and hexapods 1849 [i.e., 1846], and two volumes on insects [1846]-1849. The atlas contains 122 beautifully detailed and superbly produced hand-colored engravings. To adopt Exploration scientifique de l'Algérie visit our website or call 202.633.2241.
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Meet Our New Field Book Project Staff!
Julia Blase
 Julia Blase is originally from Tucson, Arizona. She moved to D.C. in 2013 as part of the Library of Congress and the Institute of Museum Library and Services's National Digital Stewardship Residency program, where she led a digital asset management project for the National Security Archive. Prior to D.C. she lived in Denver, Colorado, where she was pursuing her master of library and information science from Denver University while managing the Denali Centennial online exhibit project at the American Alpine Club Library. She also earned a master's degree in management from the Fuqua School of Business and a bachelor's degree in art history from Duke University.
Julia is now the Project Manager for the Field Book Project, a collaborative cataloging, conservation, digitization, and access project involving Smithsonian Libraries, Smithsonian Institution Archives, and the National Museum of Natural History. Julia found out about the Field Book Project through the professional community in D.C. with whom she had connected while at the National Security Archive. She was excited by the cooperative nature, ambitious goals, and continuing momentum of the project.
The initiatives for the current round of the Field Book Project are to catalog another 2,000 field books held at the National Museum of Natural History, digitize 2,600 field books held at the Museum of Natural History and the Smithsonian Institution Archives, and make those digital images available through multiple online platforms including the Smithsonian Collections Search Center and the Biodiversity Heritage Library. Julia helps to coordinate project efforts, which involve staff and materials at the Museum of Natural History, Smithsonian Libraries, and Smithsonian Archives, and also helps plan project activity to ensure that it not only meets current stakeholder needs but also anticipates future stakeholders and directions. She finds it very motivating to work with a cross-departmental project team that is so highly dedicated to helping all of the communities involved.
Julia loves winter and snow sports and was an avid skier when she lived in Denver. Currently, she volunteers at a local farmer's market and, having once studied opera, enjoys attending as many shows at the Kennedy Center as she can afford. As is everyone who works in libraries, she is also a voracious reader.
Lesley Parilla
 Originally from Nebraska, Lesley Parilla is our new cataloger for the Field Book Project. Her first position at the Smithsonian was as a volunteer at the National Museum of Natural History, where she met the staff establishing the Field Book Project. Lesley soon became the first contractor hired for the Project and helped develop its initial cataloging procedures and workflow. The Project then migrated to the Smithsonian Institution Archives, until the summer of 2014 when it officially became part of the Smithsonian Libraries.
Leslie enjoys her role of making field book content easy available to users through cataloging and social media outreach, and working with colleagues across the Smithsonian to coordinate field book care, conservation, and digitization. She is excited to be part of the Field Book Project's transition to the Smithsonian Libraries. "It's an important opportunity to bring these resources to a wider audience as well as demonstrate how these archival materials can be used alongside other forms of natural history documentation like publications," she says.
Although many institutions have worked to digitize their field books, the Field Book Project is the first one dealing with field books as an "object" across an institution that Lesley is aware of. This is important since field books are found everywhere from museum departments to archives to library collections; their level of description in each location varies considerably from detailed item level records found in rare book collections to institutional memory.
The Field Book Project offers a consistent level of description, which is a great benefit. Important collectors like Edgar Mearns, Alexander Wetmore, and Edmund Heller have collections of field books in several different departments. Though they might have primarily collected in one natural history discipline, they often collected for others, so their field books can be found in departments a researcher might not anticipate. Best of all, through the digitization efforts of the Field Book Project, researchers can now locate pertinent field books, and are no longer required to visit onsite to see these items.
In her down time, Leslie enjoys music (especially jazz and bluegrass), romance novels, sailing, running, and kayaking. Her favorite D.C. activities include biking the Mount Vernon Trail, visiting the Mary Livingston Ripley Garden here at the Smithsonian, and taking in Dumbarton Oaks Garden in Georgetown. She also plays the Irish folk harp, and has been to every U.S. state except for Alaska. Lesley earned her bachelor's degree in English from Oberlin College and her master's degree in library and information science from the University of Hawaii at Manoa.
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Upcoming Events
with Christopher Cokinos
Lecture & Book Signing
October 28, 2014
6:00 p.m.
Free and open to the public!
RSVP: SILRSVP@si.edu or 202-633-2241
Washington, DC
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