One of my ongoing projects includes item level cataloging of digitized photographs from our manuscript collections. I just finished the Gifford Pinchot South Seas Expedition of 1929. The collection was donated to the Academy in 1972 by Howard H. Cleaves, the official expedition photographer, via Mrs. Roger Tory Peterson. One of my favorite photographs is this image of a Galapagos tortoise approaching Mrs. Gifford Pinchot as she is sewing on the deck of the “Mary Pinchot”.  September 10, 1929.

The original accession came to the Academy in three wooden boxes containing 1,389 glass plate negatives and one wooden box with four photo albums. Since the accession, the glass plate negatives were removed from the wooden boxes and their original acidic paper envelopes. The negatives were placed in acid free archival paper enclosures and boxes specifically made to house fragile glass plate negatives.

Approximately 150 of the negatives were digitized and I just added the metadata (data about data) into our digital asset management system including year, creator, title, and subject headings. In 1930, Gifford Pinchot published a book titled “To the South Seas” about the expedition and many of our digitized images were used in the text.

Mary Pinchot anchored offshore. Stiff (Stephen Stahlnecker) waving to her from foreground. August 1, 1929.

- Danielle Castronovo

Archives & Digital Collections Librarian

Despite intermittent downpours here in San Francisco, I daresay that Spring has sprung in beautiful Golden Gate Park.  The tulips are blooming in the Queen Wilhelmina Tulip Garden, the Calla lilies are taking over JFK Drive, and birds of all shapes and sizes are happily hunkering down over their nests. Apparently in California, the return of cliff swallows (Petrochelidon pyrrhonota) to Mission San Juan Capistrano is said to be a harbinger of spring. Although these days swallows seem to favor nesting sites besides the Mission, and problematically arrive before spring does.

Cliff Swallow from the Manzanita Image Project
Dr. Lloyd Glenn Ingles © California Academy of Sciences

I love this time of year, when the weather gets warmer but everything is still green.  In my daily life, I am both a distance runner and a bicyclist.  I commute to the Academy by bicycle every day, and most days I run outside as well.  I’m in and around Golden Gate Park on foot or on a bike several times a day, and I’ve started to notice more and more of the plants and animals around me (especially as the days grow longer and sunnier).

I don’t listen to music while I run.  But I still seek some distraction to take my mind off the fact that I’m running even though no one is chasing me.  In graduate school, I used the time to plan out my assignments.  If I’m desperate, I’ll do math problems just to take my mind off things.  I’ve resorted to the “If a train leaves Springfield traveling 85 miles per hour…” variety of word problem more than once.  Lately, I’m trying to identify and remember some of the wildlife I see while out and about in the Park.

I’m challenging myself to notice, identify, and remember at least 2 animals or plants I see on every run.  To keep myself honest, I’m going to tweet about my findings, reporting my sightings in 140 characters or less. I’ll include links to images so you can get a look at our co-inhabitants of Golden Gate Park.

First tweet is already out!  Not following me on Twitter yet?  You’ll find me @tiny_librarian (http://twitter.com/tiny_librarian).

Hello world, my name is Julia Specter and I am a second year MLIS student from San Jose State University, and very excited to be completing my internship here at the Academy Library. My background is in art and education, but my very first job was as a library page and I have been hooked ever since. As a collection development intern at the Academy Library, I have stumbled upon interesting images, books, and tidbits of information that I would not otherwise have found. Since much of collection development work so far has been focused on Botany and Entomology, I have taken upon myself to also learn more about both discipline, historical and contemporary scientists alike.

Therefore, I decided to start from the beginning.  In fact the very beginning of botany, to Theophrastus. Student, collaborator, and successor of Aristotle, Theophrastus, (4th century BCE), began the first scientific approach to botany. He is also know to be among some of the first to study medical herbs and weather’s effect on plants. Exploration of the works of Theophrastus also made me discover the wonder of the legume. A plant that most may look over in their pasta salad or soup, but as Theophrastus illustrates in his work, one of great wonder and delightful variation. Enquiry Into Plants translated in English by Arthur Hort (1961), he notes that plants such as Peas or Pisum sativum, have been used for human food and animal feed since before than 300 years BCE. Arthur Hort’s book is available at the Academy Library, and can be located on the stacks at, QK41.T4 1961.

Theophrastus’ work on peas was only a small peek into his accomplishments he completed during his life, including the fact that he was also the first to apply principles of classification to vegetables.

Images of Peas from Theopharasti Eresil De historia plantarum: libri decem, Graece et Latine: in quibus textum Graecum variis lectionibus, emendationibus, hiulcoru (1644).

Another legume, liquorice, derived from two Greek terms, “sweet”, and “root” was also of interest to Theophrastus for its medicinal benefits. The liquorice, turns out to also have a deep root in human history and he found that its medical benefits have been used in different geographical regions and time periods, even before his time. Theophrastus named the plant, “the Scythian root” after the Scythian ethnic group who lived to the north and east of Greece, who had passed down their knowledge on the pharmacological uses of liquorice to the Greeks (Hort, 1961). Liquorice happens to be what I bring camping as a natural alternative to help with common aliments, but I had no idea how truly beneficial (and unoriginal) my remedy is.

Lastly after reviewing Theophrastus’ translated works, it seems clear that he truly understood the interactions between living organisms and their habitats; and could he can also perhaps, be considered the first ecologist. Much like the academy’s mission statement, Theophrastus work was on the bases to, “explain and explore the natural world” in order to preserve it’s important history and make use of the benefits this knowledge can offer us in our daily lives.

“On the wall of a massive stone museum just outside the city of Honolulu, there once hung a famous golden cloak of an island king. This cloak, valuable beyond price, could not be duplicated if all the gold in the world was offered as reward, for it is composed of the yellow feathers of the Mamo, a small Hawaiian bird that is now extinct.

The Mamo, to its utter destruction, hoarded a portion of the islands’ golden sunlight in its feathers.”

Thus opens the adventurous memoir Quest for the Golden Cloak, written by the Steinhart Aquarium’s founding superintendant, the famous ichthyologist Alvin Seale. Recently several members of his extended family visited the Research Library of the California Academy of Sciences in order to look through his manuscript collection, composed of his papers, memoirs, photographs and news clippings, which gave our staff here the opportunity to learn more about this scientific pioneer.

Alvin Seale was an extraordinary man – a real-life Indiana Jones of Ichthyology – whose contributions to science go beyond his efforts towards the founding of the Steinhart Aquarium. His adventures began early in life; as an undergraduate student in 1892 he traveled from Indiana to California by bicycle (a journey of three months) to study under the prestigious David Starr Jordan at Stanford University. While he did go on in time to complete his education, he took frequent sabbaticals to collect animal specimens in Alaska and to try and find Klondike gold, with his adventures taking him as far north as Point Barrow – the northernmost point in the United States (or in his time, U.S. territory).

After trying Alaska (and completing his Stanford degree), he ventured to warmer climes: the South Pacific, and a commission as a field agent for the Bishop Museum in Honolulu, Hawaii at the turn of the century. It is this assignment that forms the basis of Quest for the Golden Cloak. With King Kamehameha I’s famed golden cloak serving as one of the museum’s most prized possessions, museum officials assigned him the duty to scour the South Seas for more great garments of worked feathers – and to keep a passing eye out for vestigial cannibalism. As Seale wrote, “thus was assigned to me a quest for a feather cloak and for cannibals, a quest that would lead me from island to island in the tropical seas.”

Featherwork he would find, and cannibals as well; he had the distinct displeasure of seeing a man consume part of a human leg. But in his adventures he also came across high cliffside caves strewn with ancestral bones, went diving on a forgotten island searching for oysters with golden pearls, and even had a chance to shoot the devil himself (as part of a rare native ceremony he took part in on the Solomon Islands, where he fired his revolver at a massive effigy – the only time during his exotic travels he used his sidearm).

Seale’s quickly paced Golden Cloak was popular when it was published in 1946, four decades after the events it describes took place. It is an easy, exciting read, though of course it is relayed from the occidental point of view of its author and betrays occasional imperialistic impulses. Still, because of Seale’s humble Quaker roots his journeys remain grounded in peacefulness, and he frequently writes of the admiration he felt for many of the Polynesian and Melanesian peoples he encountered.

Seale in his office at the Academy of Sciences

And for all of Seale’s adventures, he was also a serious scientist: by the end of his career he was credited for naming 343 new species of fish (frequently in conjunction with David Starr Jordan, his mentor). His own name is memorialized as well: one type of tropical fish is named for Seale in both its scientific (Apagon sealei) and common name (Seale’s Cardinalfish).

The Academy Research Library has two copies of The Quest for the Golden Cloak available for circulation to staff, as well as Seale’s manuscript collection. Copies of Golden Cloak also exist in a number of local academic libraries, including the libraries of UC-Berkeley, Stanford, CSU-East Bay as well as the Santa Cruz Public Library. Stanford University’s archives include his extensive professional diaries.

Daniel Ransom – Archives and Digital Production Assistant

Does this tarantula fulfill the definition of creepy – ‘experiencing a repugnant tingling sensation’? Or an aesthetic delight?

Entomology - Genus Aranea

These magnificent engravings of spiders come from Natural History volume five in the Cyclopaedia or Universal Dictionary of Arts, Science and Literature.  Abraham Rees, Presbyterian minister and educator, produced this Encyclopedia in 45 volumes between 1802 and 1820.  On the title page of the Cyclopaedia, Rees’ 100 contributors are qualified with the “assistance from eminent professional gentlemen” and “illustrated by most distinguished artists”.

18th Century ‘encyclopedists’ developed the modern idea of recording and widely distributing knowledge as distinct from only publishing facts. The still familiar Encyclopedia Britannica was first published between 1768 and 1771.

Rees’ Cyclopedia was noted for its high quality of illustrations. And we can still enjoy the beauty of nature through these 19th century engravings … creep-ing spiders or … beetles.

Entomology – Genus Goliathus

Karren Elsbernd – Library Assistant for Archives and Digital Collections