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

Martin R. Kalfatovic Smithsonian Institution Libraries 25 February 2009 A Natural History of Unicorns Smithsonian 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

Vast, But Not Infinite 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!

Vast, But Not Infinite 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

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)

Memory Institutions: Libraries “ 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)

Memory Institutions: Libraries “ 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. Eisenstein The Printing Revolution in Early Modern Europe (1983)

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

Memory Institutions: Archives

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

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: Archives

Memory Institutions: Museums

Memory Institutions: Museums 26,000,000 21,000,000 5,000,000 Harvard Univ. Herbarium/Mus. Comp. Zoo. 30,000,000 21,000,000 9,000,000 American Museum of Natural History, New York 58,877,300 50,000,000 8,877,300 Musee National d'Histoire Naturelle, Paris 60,200,000 55,000,000 5,200,000 Natural History Museum, London 83,000,000 78,500,000 4,500,000 National Museum of Natural History, Washington, DC Total Animal Specimens Plant Specimens Institution

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!

Memory Institutions: Museums 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 songs
500 million images
500,000 movies
3 million videos, TV shows and short films
100 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)

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

Factors: Wetware

Cheap Scanning
Factors: Hardware

Cheap Print on Demand: Internet Archive Bookmobile
Factors: Hardware

Cheap, mobile devices
Factors: Hardware

“ 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

Smithsonian Institution
137 million objects
19 museums
9 research centers
26.8 million visitors
188.8 million web visitors
~ 6,000 staff

Smithsonian Institution Libraries
1.5 million volumes
4,522 active print journal subscriptions
3,000 electronic journals
190,000 microforms
2,500 digital volumes
~ 100 staff

Smithsonian Libraries Digital Projects

Smithsonian Institution Libraries Art and Design 藝術與設計

Smithsonian Institution Libraries Art and Design 藝術與設計 History and Culture 歷史和文化

Smithsonian Institution Libraries Art and Design 藝術與設計 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

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

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]

The Natural History of Unicorns “ 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)

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

LINKS
Smithsonian Institution Libraries http:// www.sil.si.edu /
Smithsonian Institution Libraries Blog http:// smithsonianlibraries.si.edu
Biodiversity Heritage Library http:// www.biodiversitylibrary.org
Biodiversity Heritage Library Blog http:// biodiversitylibrary.blogspot.com
Encyclopedia of Life http:// www.eol.org

CREDITS
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

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

by Martin Kalfatovic on Feb 20, 2009

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