Science librarians are familiar with digital collections and digitized books, but NYPL’s Classic Illustrated Zoologies and Related Works 1550-1900, and Nature Illustrated: Flowers, Plants and Trees, 1550-1900 are very nice collections that that fall under those categories, but may be unfamiliar to some. These collections have multiple levels of appeal.  They are works of art, with some well known names like John James Audubon and John Gould, as well as others that are only familiar to specialists.

They are important scientific documents,  as noted in the About tab of the Zoologies collection, “documents referred to often by working zoologists, even when the information in their pages is incomplete or has been superseded or refuted by more recent research.”  These classic works also represent a history of printing: “These woodcuts and wood engravings, metal plate engravings, and lithographs”  are “examples of reproductive printmaking before photomechanical processes became the primary method of producing book illustration.”

The navigation interface could perhaps be smoother in the way of providing breadcrumbs, but it allows one to view bibliographic data and to cite items with a ready made citation in various styles. Clicking on a collection brings up a tab with Navigation, About, and Filters. Clicking on a title, such as the Birds of Europe, by John Gould, brings up thumbnails of all the pages. Clicking on a thumbnail brings up a beautiful illustration that you can print or zoom, as well as all associated bibliographical information, and category links – such as author, topic, genre – that you can use to browse an area of interest. (The filter Tab when you first click on a collection also provides targeted browsing).

Under the image is an option to View as Book.  This is actually my favorite way to view because the pages are proportionally large and easy to view (unless you have a tiny screen) and it is easy to flip through the pages in this manner.

With a large screen display, I could easily spend hours browsing through these wonderful collections.

Gavin Paul, Instruction and User Services Librarian, NYU – Tandon School of Engineering

We welcome your comments and suggestions. If you have a resource that you would like to see highlighted please leave us a comment.

We welcome your comments and suggestions. If you have a resource that you would like to see highlighted please leave us a comment.