image

With new technologies that can make images of molecules, biology has been returning to its origins as a visual science, according to Moselio Schaechter, writing on his blog Small Things Considered. Biologists can now “see” how an enzyme works or how macromolecules interact with molecules large and small, and the revolution is leading to a specialist field called Structural Biology.
The visual origins of biology are abundantly illustrated in the holdings of The New York Public Library, including original and facsimile editions of Robert Hooke’s beautifully illustrated Micrographia. This flea is reminiscent of Hooke's famous illustration, but actually appeared in Harper's Magazine of 1859.

New York artist Julie Rauer has been making drawings at SIBL inspired by Charles Darwin’s illustrations of barnacles, adding textual information, or making lovely colored versions that stand on their own as fine art. As is common with any user seeking to access rare or valuable items, she gets to sit in a special area behind our delivery desk, making it her temporary studio during her visits. We visited her there recently to find out about the latest illustrations, which she hopes to publish as a book, Barnacle Codex.

A project based at Cambridge University is providing online access to Darwin’s personal archives of writings and publications, including high-quality images from his work. The barnacles that Rauer is working on are particularly well represented and can be found here.

The Astor Library was opened to the public almost 150 years ago. One reason it was not viewed as a success is expressed in the illustration below:

Most of us, I think, would agree that democratization of information is a good thing. Making books, art, music freely available to more people can only bring about societal enrichment. The New York Public Library has a history of doing just that.

Working with the idea of social collective knowledge, libraries seem to be pushing the boundaries further. Even the Library of Congress is considering the benefits of allowing patrons to manipulate and create content. Recently the LOC collaborated with Flickr, uploading two collections of photographs with no applicable copyright restrictions, and allowing other Flickr users to tag the photos with their own descriptions. It is an interesting idea and many of the photographs are great, especially the color transparencies.

Additional images from the NYC Tenement House Department collection of photographic negatives have been added to the Digital Gallery recently. This Summer a number of images from the collection were uploaded, most of which showed the outhouses the Tenement Department photographed for their records. With the new images, we get to see some interiors of the buildings. Having these images on the Digital Gallery is especially good news as this collection cannot be fully accessed by the public due to the delicate nature of the glass plate negatives.

Another new collection in the Digital Gallery is a scrapbook of photographs taken around 1900. The title given to the scrapbook, Frank E. Downs. Trip to Nome, Alaska, May to Sept. 1900, is slightly misleading as less than a quarter of the images are of Downs’ gold-mining expedition to Nome. The other photographs depict travels all over the United States and Mexico, from Mount Desert Island to Mexico City. The quality of the snapshots sometimes leaves a bit to be desired, but where else could you so easily find turn of the century photos of street scenes from an Alaskan mining town or a picture of the “Hot Springs’ Nine” baseball team playing against a women’s team? Nowhere else, I’d wager.

With a bit of research I found that the scrapbook which belonged to Florence D. Muzzy from Connecticut was bequeathed to the library by Florence’s daughter Adrienne, a librarian at the New York Public Library who, according to her obituary, also left the library her household furnishings.

Here is a photograph of the corner of 42nd Street and Sixth Ave. It is part of the Street and Townscape of Metropolitan New York City Collection in our Digital Gallery. Notice anything strikingly different about this picture from the present state of the location?