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Tag: Gardens

Unearthing an 18th-Century Librarian-Gardener

Rare book cataloging can require some detective work. A recent case for me involved a record of ancient coins in the Bodleian Library at the University of Oxford, transferred to the Smithsonian’s Dibner Library for cataloging from the National Museum of American History’s National Numismatic Collection. This is also a tale of how a book can reveal unexpected histories.

Bringing Beautiful Gardens Indoors — Landscape Garden, Design, and History Collections at the Libraries

While the Smithsonian Institution Libraries (SIL) comprises 20 branch libraries, some branch collections naturally overlap when meeting the needs of their library users. That’s the situation with one of our art libraries, the Cooper-Hewitt Design Museum Library located in New York City, and one of our science libraries, the Botany and Horticulture Library located in Washington D.C. It may surprise you to learn both collect books and journals on landscape design and history and the decorative arts.