historyproef

Metadata is a cruel mistress. When she has your eye, she’s exhilarating, full of possibilities. When she turns away, or can’t be found, you’re plunged into melancholic despair of hopeless frustration. One current project funded by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation will help map the botanical specimens held at the JSTOR plants database (plants.jstor.org) has  [read on...]

Botanical expeditions over the last few centuries have produced the definitive record of when and where plant specimens were first collected, who collected them, and what institutions came to hold them. As these collections become available online (like the plants database now held at JSTOR), historians now have the raw data to pursue broad research  [read on...]