What would you include if you were asked to list some of the helpful resources available in the United States to support botanical research? Most of our lists would include major gardens such as the Missouri Botanical Garden or the New York Botanical Garden. They would also include university herbaria and the Smithsonian Natural History Museum. Government centers and even private industrial research centers would make some peoples' lists. But there is another gem, housed at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, that deserves wider recognition among botanists. This is an institution that I knew about, but didn't know much about. I think many of you are probably in a similar situation. For this reason I asked Angela Todd, of the Hunt Institute for Botanical Documentation, to submit the following article to held educate some of us about the resources that are available there. -editor

Hunt Institute for Botanical Documentation: A Center for Science and History

The Hunt Institute for Botanical Documentation, a research division of Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, specializes in the history of botany and all aspects of plant science and serves the international scientific community through research and documentation. To this end, the Institute acquires and maintains authoritative collections of books, plant images, manuscripts, portraits and data files, and provides publications and other modes of information service.

Hunt Institute was founded in 1961 as the Rachel McMasters Miller Hunt Botanical Library, an international center for bibliographical research and service in the interests of botany and horticulture, as well as a center for the study of all aspects of the history of the plant sciences. By 1971, the Hunt Botanical Library's activities had so diversified that the name was changed to Hunt Institute for Botanical Documentation. Growth in collections and research projects led to the establishment of four programmatic departments: Archives, Art, Bibliography, and the Library.

The departments provide reference services and make the research collections accessible to others. The collections are available for on-site use by appointment and subject to restrictions placed upon materials by donors or by the Institute. The current collections include approximately 28,000 books; 24,000 portraits; 30,000 prints, drawings and watercolors; and 2,000 autograph letters and manuscripts.

The Institute's Archives department acquires, documents and preserves the evidence of past and present activities of individuals and institutions in the development of plant science worldwide. The Archives includes materials by and about botanists and others working in the plant sciences, including horticulturists, ecologists, botanical artists, and botanical organizations. The collection features citations of published biographical accounts; portraits and field photos (such as Agnes Chase in 1920s Brazil ,below); curricula vitae; manuscripts and letters; personal and institutional papers; records, reports and journals of botanical societies; reprints of biographical articles; and oral-history interviews.

One of the special collections housed in the Archives department is the papers and library of Michel Adanson, consisting of annotated books, letters, manuscripts, certificates, official documents, drawings, and maps by Adanson, his plate collection, herbarium specimens, portraits, and "objets de botanique."

A detailed synopsis of holdings in the Archives, Guide to the Botanical Records and Papers in the Archives of the Hunt Institute, is being published in parts and is currently done through Part 3, G_H. Catalogue of Portraits of Naturalists, Mostly Botanists, in the Collections of the Hunt Institute, The Linnean Society of London, and the Conservatoire et Jardin Botaniques de la Ville de Genève is also being published in parts and is currently done through Part 3, E_H. For further information about Archives' holdings or to place requests, please contact Assistant Archivist Angela Todd at 412-268-2437 or at3i@andrew.cmu.edu.

The Art department holdings include over 30,000 original paintings (mostly 20th-century watercolors), drawings and original prints dating from the Renaissance to the present.

These holdings constitute one of the world's largest collections of botanical art and illustration. The department serves as an international center for the study of botanical art and illustration, acting as a repository for botanical artworks, providing information on artists working with plant themes and worldwide holdings of botanical art, and organizing and staging exhibitions. The department also offers ready-to-hang traveling exhibitions to museums, schools, botanical gardens and other institutions.

The special collections housed in the Art Department include the Ann Ophelia Todd Dowden Collection, the Hitchcock-Chase Collection, the Torner Collection of Sessé and Mociño Biological Illustrations (see below for a reproduction from this collection), and the U.S.D.A. Forest Service Collection. The art collection is fully catalogued, and the whole catalogue is in machine-readable form. A consolidated printed catalogue of our botanical artworks, titled Catalogue of the Botanical Art Collection at the Hunt Institute, has been published in nine parts. For further information about the Art Department, please contact Curator of Art James J. White at 412-268-2440 or jw3u@andrew.cmu.edu.

The Institute's Bibliography department identifies, locates and examines the literature of the plant sciences to make records of essential information from which bibliographical tools can be created and published. These records enable the plant scientist, historian, plant utilizer, educator or general reader to retrieve and exploit the intellectual content of the literature.

The Bibliography department utilizes published bibliographies (such as Blanche Henrey's, see below), and maintains comprehensive data files on the history and bibliography of botanical literature. Data files include the following: title-list of all life-sciences periodicals that include botanical literature; author-arranged bibliographical files of plant-science books and periodical articles published in the period 1730_1840; author-arranged file of references to contemporary reviews and announcements of plant-science books published in the period 1730_1840; bibliography of secondary literature relating to life-sciences periodicals; bibliography of reference literature on the plant sciences; bibliography of the instructive literature on natural-history illustration (including photography), 1450-present; directory of natural-history manuscript, library and graphics resources in North American institutions; index to information about the preservation or dispersal of past naturalists' personal libraries; historical directory of graphic-arts printing firms and related specialists working in the British Isles, 1750_1900; biographical index to printmakers working in the British Isles 1750_1900.

Among the bibliographies prepared from our files is the recent B-P-H/S, a supplement to Botanico-Periodicum-Huntianum (out-of-print). A fully revised second edition of B-P-H is in preparation. For information about the Bibliography Department, contact Bibliographer Gavin Bridson at 412-268-2438 or gb1q@andrew.cmu.edu.

The Library identifies, acquires, conserves, catalogues, and provides access to published materials relating to botany and its history, with an emphasis on systematics. Known for its collection of historical works on botany, the Library is a non-circulating research collection consulted by the Institute's staff, visiting scholars and the public. The collection features botanical publications that date from the late 1400s and focuses on the development of botany as a science and includes modern taxonomic monographs, floristic works and serial titles in the plant sciences. Highlights of the collection include: early herbals and taxonomic works; early horticultural works; color-plate books from the 17th, 18th and 19th centuries; accounts of travel and exploration relating to plant discovery.

The special collections maintained by the Library include the Strandell Collection of Linnaeana, a collection of some 3,500 books documenting the impact of the work of Carl Linnaeus on the history of botany and biology and including the works of Linnaeus and his students; and the Michel Adanson Library, which includes 127 books used and annotated by the 18th-century naturalist as he developed his theories and his botanical classification system (see below). Approximately 70% of the Library's catalogue records are available online, with additional records being added weekly. The Carnegie Mellon University Libraries' online catalogue <cameo.library.cmu.edu> contains records from all of Carnegie Mellon's campus libraries, including those of Hunt Institute. For information about the Library holdings, contact Librarian Charlotte Tancin at 412-268-7301 or ct0u@andrew.cmu.edu.

Major involvement in the Flora of North America (FNA) project is a notable component of the Institute's long-term research program. This binationally collaborative endeavor has been undertaken by a consortium of 30 institutions and hundreds of botanists. Flora of North America will comprise 30 volumes when completed. Volumes 1 and 2 were published in 1993, Volume 3 in 1997, and Volume 22 in 1999. The Flora includes scientific and common plant names, illustrations, identification keys, descriptions, distribution maps and other biological information. Until now, no single work has systematically surveyed and classified the more than 20,000 plant species known to grow on the continent north of Mexico. The Flora is an authoritative resource for those working in the fields of conservation, agriculture, natural-resource management, zoology, environmental assessment, and medical research, as well as in botany itself.

For more information about the Flora of North America editorial center at the Institute, please contact the Editorial Coordinator, Elizabeth Polen, at (412) 268-4707 or kiser@andrew.cum.edu.  If you would like to know more about the FNA project in general, see the FNA Web site, http://www.fna.org/.

We invite those individuals who share the Institute's interests to join our Associates program. Regular Members ($25.00 level) receive either the current issue of Huntia, the Institute's journal of botanical history, or the current art exhibition catalogue; Patrons ($100.00 level) receive both. The benefits of membership include the following: a subscription to the Bulletin, the Institute's newsletter; discounts on Institute publications, cards, and reproductions; a page-charge waiver on articles accepted for Huntia; invitations to exhibition preview receptions; preferential eligibility for sale of duplicate books and unaccessioned artworks; preferential query service; discounts on photocopying services;and eligibility for staff volunteer program in curation and research.

For further information about Hunt Institute collections and publications, please visit our Web site at huntbot.andrew.cmu.edu or contact the Institute via telephone at 412-268-2434 or via mail at Hunt Institute for Botanical Documentation, Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh, PA 15213-3890.

Compiled by Elizabeth Polen, Angela Todd, and Scarlett Townsend

Graphics by Frank A. Reynolds