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Annals of the Smithsonian Institution 2000 



tions, and public programs that advance an understand- 

 ing of scientific and technological progress, the arts, 

 and the American experience. 



We shall foster in our staff common goals of excel- 

 lence, innovation, and cooperation and ensure that all 

 are highly trained, technologically sophisticated, and 

 thoroughly committed to the Smithsonian's research, 

 education, and public outreach mandate. 



The Libraries benefited from a number of gifts. A Natural 

 History Library to house rare books and manuscripts re- 

 ceived a leadership commitment of $2 million from Joseph 

 F. Cullman, 3rd of New York City in May 2000. This newest 

 facility of the 19-branch Smithsonian Institution Libraries 

 will be housed in the National Museum of Natural History. 

 The Cullman Natural History Library Endowment will un- 

 derwrite acquisitions, programs, and staffing for the new 

 library, currently under construction. The gift enables the 

 Libraries to consolidate its world-class collection of an esti- 

 mated 10,000 natural history volumes in a secure facility 

 with state-of-the-art temperature and humidity controls. 

 Among them are early publications in the natural sciences — 

 botany, zoology, anthropology, paleontology, and the earth 

 sciences — with particularly srrong collections of voyage and 

 expedition narratives and scientific studies, with many of the 

 volumes in the Institution's collections from its earliest days. 

 Mr. Cullman's latest contribution follows years of prior gifts 

 to the Smithsonian Libraries. In 1993, Cullman helped to 

 create the S. Dillon Ripley Library Endowment, in honor of 

 Ripley's seminal role in creating the Smithsonian Libraries as 

 a comprehensive library system serving the Smithsonian In- 

 stitution and the public. In 1997 he and his wife Joan 

 established the Joseph F. Cullman 3rd Endowmenr for the 

 Preservation of Natural History Rare Books at the Libraries. 

 The Smithsonian Libraries now has six named endowments 



In December, the Smithsonian Library Catalog, part of 

 the Smithsonian Institution Research Information System 

 (SIRIS), moved to a new system, Horizon, after months of 

 intensive work by staff of the Libraries and the Office of 

 Information Technology. The catalog includes holdings 

 of 20 of the Institution's libraries. The same month, the 

 Institution took a general membership in the Research Li- 

 braries Group, bringing the nation's preeminenr collection 

 of cultural materials into the RLG community. The Smith- 

 sonian Libraries, the Archives of American Art, and the 

 Freer-Sackler Galleries had been special members. RLG, es- 

 tablished 25 years ago, has been very active in digitizing 

 collections, providing resources, services, training, and 

 information access projects, including its database RLIN 

 (Research Library Information Network). 



The Marcia Brady Tucker Foundation pledged $25,000 

 over two years to fund digital editions of ornithology works 

 from the collection donated to the Libraries by Marcia Brady- 

 Tucker many years ago. Along with a $5,000 personal gift 

 for this effort received last year, $30,000 is available to sup- 

 port this project. The Libraries' nth digital edition was 

 launched on the Web at sil.si.edu in September 2000. F. N. 

 Martinet's Ornitbologie (1773-92) is the sixth natural history 



rare book that the Libraries has published on the Web. Thtee 

 works in the history of science and technology and two 

 works on Native American Studies from the Bureau of 

 American Ethnology are also available on the Libraries' Web 

 site at www.sil.si.edu. In June the Libraries hosted members 

 of the Chesapeake Information and Research Library Alliance 

 (CIRLA) for, a workshop on digital technology workshop in 

 the Libraries Imaging Center. CIRLA is a consortium of nine 

 libraries of which SIL is a founding member. Other members 

 are the Library of Congress and the National Agricultural 

 Library and several universities (Georgetown University, 

 George Washington University, Howard University, Johns 

 Hopkins University, University of Delaware, and University 

 of Maryland). 



In August, the Libraries' Spencer Baird Society, the pre- 

 miere annual giving and donor recognition organization, 

 awarded rhe Libraries funds for resident scholars to come to 

 work in the Libraries special collections for up to six months. 

 The Baird Society Resident Scholar Program joins the Li- 

 braries' Dibner Library Resident Scholar Program, supported 

 since 1992 by The Dibner Fund of Wilton, Connecticut. In 

 September, the Libraries held a reception for members of its 

 Spencer Baird Society to welcome a major acquisition pur- 

 chased with funds provided by the society. The 220-volume 

 set of the first scientific journal published, the Journal des 

 SHavans (an early form of savants, the French word for schol- 

 ars), will be available to researchers in the Libraries' Dibner 

 Library of the History of Science and Technology. This major 

 historical resource consists of all volumes published from the 

 first volume in 1665 through 1759. 



The Dibner Fund supported a lecture, several resident 

 scholars, and a new publication this year. The Dibner Library 

 News inaugurated its first issue in June, with reports about 

 current Dibner Library Resident Scholars activities, a report 

 on history of mathematics collections in the library, and a 

 reporr abour Bern Dibner and the origins of the Dibner Li- 

 brary. The News will be published twice a year, is distributed 

 to the history of science and technology community and to 

 friends of the Libraries and the Institution, and appears on- 

 line ar www.sil.si.edu. The Smithsonian Libraries' Dibner 

 Library Lecture was delivered in May by Steven J. Dick, as- 

 tronomer and historian at the U.S. Naval Observatory, on 

 "Extraterrestrial Life and Our World View at the Turn of 

 rhe Millennium." Dr. Dick featured illustrations from four- 

 teenth-, fifteenth-, and sixteenth-century books from the 

 Dibner Library and images taken by the Hubble Space 

 Telescope images. The illustrated published version was dis- 

 tributed free to selected members of Congress, and members 

 of the History of Science Society and the Association of Re- 

 search Libraries. 



Libraries began offering JSTOR journal archives to Insti- 

 tutional users in October 1999. Smithsonian-affiliated 

 researchers now have desktop access to the JSTOR database 

 of 1 17 historical scholarly journals. Fields covered to date in- 

 clude African American studies, anthropology, Asian studies, 

 ecology, economics, mathematics, philosophy, political sci- 

 ence, economics, education, finance, history, literature, 

 population/demography, sociology, and statistics. A new ini- 



